A chilling tale of abduction, ransom demands, and murder that began with a young woman’s hope of meeting a university acquaintance ended in a High Court murder conviction on Wednesday.
Justice Kanyi Kimondo found Duncan Livingstone Kimathi guilty of murdering Sarah Akello Aruwa, a final-year international relations student at the United States International University (USIU), in a judgment delivered at the Milimani High Court.
The court ruled that the prosecution had proved beyond reasonable doubt that Kimathi, of malice aforethought, caused the death of the 22-year-old student by an unlawful act, contrary to section 203 as read with section 204 of the Penal Code.
The court heard that on the weekend of June 30, 2012, Aruwa confided in her friend, Ivy Gathu, that she was going out to meet a “boy she had met at the university library.”
According to evidence presented in court, Aruwa left a note in her notebook indicating she had gone to meet one “Daniel Mureithi,” described as a USIU student, providing two phone numbers and noting that he “stays in Savanna.”
What followed was a nightmare for her family. On June 30, 2012, Aruwa’s mother, Hellen Atieno Aruwa, received a call from her daughter’s phone demanding a ransom of Sh100,000.
A more menacing demand followed the next day, with her son-in-law, Jim Onyango negotiating the amount down to Sh70,000.
By then, the matter had been reported to Kasarani Police Station.
Aruwa’s boyfriend, Duncan Okore testified that when he called her number on the morning of July 1 2012, a male voice answered, telling him to send Sh100,000 as ransom.
Later that afternoon, he and others broke into Aruwa’s locked house and found the notebook containing her last known plans.
An SMS received by Okore threatened: “sent within 30 minutes or she dies.”
On July 1, 2012, police constable John Amalemba received information that herdsmen had spotted a body in a thicket at Ndithiati Village, between Ngewa and Ruiru, off the Githunguri road.
He arrived to find about 100 villagers waiting.
The body of the deceased was inside a thicket, two three meters off the road.
A postmortem conducted by government pathologist Dr. Johansen Oduor revealed a laceration at the back of the head, bruises on the neck, and a protruding tongue.
The cause of death was determined to be “neck compression by manual strangulation.”
The court heard evidence from Jonathan Limo, a Safaricom Law Enforcement Liaison Officer, who produced subscriber and call data records for six mobile lines.
A key number, 0717370647, was registered to Duncan Kimathi the accused.
This same number appeared in the deceased’s notebook and was also given to Paul Muiru, a car hire operator, when the accused hired a motor vehicle on June 30, 2012.
Muiru testified that he leased a Toyota NZE Saloon, registration KBH 642R, to the accused at about 10:30 a.m. that day.
A tracking device showed the vehicle in Ngewa, Ruiru, heading towards Githunguri.
When the accused returned the car at 8:00 p.m., he claimed he had been teaching his girlfriend to drive.
Another number in the notebook, 0727872133, was unregistered but was in communication with the deceased’s line on June 29 and 30, 2012, including up to 1:33 p.m. on the day she disappeared.
When Onyango sent Sh200 to the two numbers on July 2, 2012, the mobile money transfer to 0717370647 revealed the recipient as Duncan Livingstone Mureithi the accused.
Boniface Kbiego Koech, head of security at USIU, testified that he knew the accused as a student at the campus. He confirmed that both he and the accused attended a common course on Criminal Justice.
Records showed that Kimathi was still a registered student in June 2012, though he was not in class on the day in question. When questioned, he had told his mother there were no classes.
The court found that the accused had access to the campus and the opportunity to lure the deceased into a trap. The deceased lived off-campus, only five minutes from USIU.
The prosecution presented a forensic document examination report by Senior Superintendent of police John Muinde who concluded that the handwriting in the notebook matched known samples of the deceased.
The defence called Emmanuel Karisa Kenga, a retired document examiner, who agreed that the notebook and samples shared a common handwriting.
However, he questioned whether the last digit in the phone number 0717370647 was clear, suggesting it could be “9” or “1.”
Justice Kimondo dismissed this as “splitting hairs,” noting that Kenga had worked from photocopies, while Muinde had examined the originals.
The court was satisfied the number was clearly 0717370647.
The accused raised an alibi, claiming he was not at USIU on June 30, 2012, never hired a car from Muiru that day, and was never near Ngewa.
He claimed he had called Muiru to hire a vehicle for a Michael Jackson tribute concert at Carnivore but cancelled when it was not delivered.
Justice Kimondo found the alibi “fictitious,” ruling that the concert was advertised for June 30, 2012 from 8:00 p.m. onwards by which time the deceased was already in the hands of her captors.
The court also ruled that the accused admitted he missed the show.
The court heard that the accused’s girlfriend, Winnie Wairimu Kariuki the second accused who jumped bail lived in Savannah.
When police visited her house, they recovered a bra, panties, and a bloodied top belonging to the deceased.
The notebook indicated that the phantom “Daniel Murithi” lived in Savannah.
The accused admitted in cross-examination that he had been convicted in Makadara Chief Magistrates Criminal Case 3413 of 2012 for abduction of a girl and demanding ransom.
The defence argued this admission was inadmissible under section 34(1)(d) of the Evidence Act and section 277 of the Criminal Procedure Code.
Justice Kimondo disagreed, ruling that the conviction was directly relevant to the fact in issue.
Justice Kimondo, in his judgement found a strong chain of circumstantial evidence linking Kimathi to the murder of Sarah.
The judge said the prosecution had proved the four ingredients of murder death, its cause, the unlawful act by the accused and malice aforethought.
The court relied on evidence showing Kimathi had access to USIU and an opportunity to abduct the deceased.
He also lied about leaving the university in December 2011.
Call records linked him to the deceased and a hired vehicle, while vehicle tracking placed the car in Ngewa on the day of the murder.
The court also ruled that the deceased’s clothes were recovered at Kimathi’s girlfriend’s house in Savannah.
“The conduct of the accused person is inconsistent with his plea of innocence or counterfeit alibi,” the judge said.
“The entire corpus of direct, circumstantial, electronic and documentary evidence points irresistibly to his guilt.”
Sentencing is set for September 26, 2026
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