Three more suspects were Saturday arrested in a probe into the brutal murder of LGBTQ activist Edwin Kiprotich Kiptoo alias Chiloba.
This brings to four, the number of those in custody, police said.
The three were arrested for assisting in carrying a metal box that was used in disposing of the body of Chiloba.
The three are young men, two of whom are under 18 years, police said.
Police spokeswoman Resla Onyango said detectives have also detained a car that was used in disposing of the body on the road.
She added love triangle is among the theories they are pursuing for now.
The prime suspect in the murder of fashionista Jackton Odhiambo, 24, confessed to killing the model over allegations that he cheated on him.
Police revealed Jackton executed the murder with the help of his two friends.
The suspect said he murdered Chiloba as revenge for betraying him.
Jackton who had been staying with the deceased for one year in Eldoret was arrested on Friday as the main suspect in the murder. The two lived together as husband and wife.
Chiloba’s caretaker Alex Nyamweya said that Jackton called him using Chiloba’s phone on January 4, informing him that he was vacating the house they lived in.
Police said Jackton vacated the house with immediate effect.
Jackton is a Nairobi-based freelance photographer and had joined the deceased for New Year celebrations.
Police disclosed that Jackton told curious neighbors who had smelt a bad smell from a house Chiloba stayed with him and two others that it was a dead rat that had died therein and he was trying to remove it.
“He told the neighbors it was a dead rat that was smelling when they sought to know what was smelling from the house they lived,” Uasin Gishu county DCI boss Peter Kimulwo said.
The body was dumped at Kipkenyo- Kaptinga Road, a few kilometers from Eldoret town.
The neighbors had seen Jackton with the metal box a day earlier. Kimulwo said preliminary findings show the deceased appeared to have been strangled and one eye was gouged out.
Kimulwo said a chief informed police that a metal box was dropped by the roadside on January 3, 2023.
Residents found a dead body of an adult wrapped in a woman’s dress in the metal box.
There were no identification documents on the body. Chiloba lived within Kimumu area and police followed up to a house where they interrogated tenants who confirmed he lived in room No 11 near Noble Bliss Plaza.
The deceased was living with two other men. Kimulwo said on new year eve Chiloba and friends went to Tamasha club and came back at around 3am to where they lived.
When they arrived neighbours heard commotion and cries which subsided minutes later.
Little did they know it was their neighbor who was being killed. The neighbours did not follow up and he deceased was not seen but on January 3 neighbours saw a vehicle with two people loading a metal box into the vehicle and left.
"We suspect the noise heard earlier by the neighbours was the time the deceased was killed,” Kimulwo said.
He said the suspect and the deceased lived together as partners. He had arrived from Nairobi for the new year celebrations.
The family positively identified his body at the Moi Referral Hospital morgue in Eldoret.
His sister Melvin narrated her final moments with Chiloba with whom they met for new year celebrations at Tamasha place in Eldoret.
Melvin works at Tamasha and says Chiloba arrived at about 10pm with a friend whom she did not know.
“At about 1 am after the new year fireworks, I met him and he bid me farewell saying he would miss me,” she told journalists.
The family says Chiloba lived in a rented house at Kimumu on the Eldoret-Iten Road.
Chiloba was found murdered and his body stashed in a metallic box along the Kipenyo-Kaptinga road, in Kapsaret, Uasin Gishu.
Police said initial reports indicate a numberless vehicle was seen dropping the metal box in the area by a Bodaboda rider who happened to be driving by the area when it happened.
The matter was reported to police officers who were manning a nearby roadblock.
The officers abandoned their post and rushed to the scene.
Upon opening the box, a decomposing body of a man dressed in a woman’s clothes was found inside.
It was later established that the deceased was Eldoret-based fashion designer Chiloba.
The body was taken to the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital awaiting post-mortem to establish the cause of death as investigations start.
Chiloba was a known LGBTQ advocate in the area.