Visiting 13-year-old girl murdered in Moi's Bridge
The governor urged residents to remain calm and let authorities follow-up the matter.
3y agoMATHEWS NDANYI AND BARRY SALILCounties
Serial killer Evans Juma Wanjala has confessed in court to the gruesome murder of Stacy Nabiso who at the time of her death was 10 years old.
Nabiso went missing on December 31, 2019, and her body was recovered in the Soweto estate on January 1, 2020, near Mois Bridge in Uasin Gishu County.
The court had ordered for exhumation of her remains before a post-mortem exercise was conducted. Wanjala had denied being involved in the murder.
The prosecution had already produced 10 witnesses in court to testify against Wanjala. The suspect was to take to the stand Monday to defend himself but suddenly changed his mind.
His lawyer Francis Kipsamwo told High Court Judge Reuben Nyakundi that the suspect had confessed to the offence and wanted to enter into a plea bargain with the state.
“My client will not defend himself but wants to enter into a plea bargain over the matter," said Kipsamwo.
The judge then turned to Wanjala and told him that a plea bargain meant he was confessing to the murder of the girl and in turn Wanjala stated that he was aware of the position he was taking.
State Counsel Sidi Kirenge said they were prepared to continue with the murder case but would now wait to hear about the plea bargain application.
The plea bargain means the suspect may get a lesser sentence for the murder if his plea deal is accepted.
Nyakundi directed the matter to be mentioned on November 28, for a status conference.
In an earlier hearing, the High Court had been told how Wanjala confessed to murdering five young girls aged between 10 and 15 years after his arrest by the police in 2021.
DCI Homicide Investigator Chief Inspector Romano Oduor who is the Investigating officer in the case had told the court that after confessing to the heinous murder of the minors from the Mois Bridge area in Uasin Gishu County, Wanjala led a team of experts to various scenes of crimes and enacted the chilling account of how he committed the murders.
The Chief Inspector based at the DCI Headquarters in Nairobi who was testifying in the murder case of Stacy Nabiso said she was called in on July 7, 2021, to help probe a series of murders of the young girls following an outcry from the public.
The five minors had been found murdered and their bodies dumped or buried in separate areas within Moi’s Bridge township.
“At the time, Wanjala had been arrested and was in police custody. We recovered clothes that the deceased was wearing on the day she met her death and the samples from the clothes were subjected to government chemist and matched against samples collected from Wanjala,” she testified in court.
The Court heard that DNA analysis showed that samples collected from the minor’s t-shirt and underwear matched with those taken from Wanjala.
She said Nabiso had been defiled before being killed.
"The results of the tests we carried out indicated that the DNA samples collected matched with those taken from Wanjala", said Oduor.
Another DCI officer Chief Inspector Luta Brigid from the Forensic crime unit also testified and produced photographs taken at the scene where Nabiswa's half-naked body was found.
Dr Dennis Nanyingi from the Kitale Referral Hospital testified virtually stating that he carried out a postmortem which showed that Nabiso died of strangulation and that she had been defiled.
“The cause of death was asphyxia secondary to strangulation. The minor had also been defiled before being killed and her body bore bruises. However, a high vaginal swab was not taken because the body had been washed and samples would not be collected,” said Dr Nanyingi.
During the onset of the investigations, the DCI in a statement at that time had said the minors were lured by the suspect from different locations within Moi’s Bridge, before being taken to secluded areas where the suspected paedophile defiled and strangled them.
The DCI added that the suspect gave an account of how he killed the five girls.
"In a chilling confession by the killer who took detectives on a re-enactment of how he executed his missions, he gave a blow-by-blow account of how he took away the lives of Linda Cherono, 13, Mary Elusa, 14, Grace Njeri, 12, Stacy Nabiso, 10 and Lucy Wanjiru, 15, after defiling them," DCI explained in the statement at the time the suspect was arrested.
Wanjala, 36 is said to be a notorious offender facing a sexual offence case filed in 2017 at Kajiado Law Court and two other similar cases filed in 2018 at Makindu law court.
He was captured on CCTV footage leading one of the victims Linda Cherono occasioning his arrest.
Cherono went missing on June 11 and her body was found on June 15 near Baharini dam.
Another victim Mary Elusa- 14, went missing on December 15 2020, and her body was discovered the next day stacked in a sack in a napier grass plantation just next to Kapkatet dam.
Lucy Wanjiru, 15, went missing in January 2020 and her body was found in a thicket in Tuiyabei, next to a cattle dip.
Wanjala currently faces three separate murder cases as part of the serial killings.
