For 26 years, Jacinta Muthoni, 62, sold sugarcane in Murang’a town, winning herself popularity and love among residents.
Her customers fondly referred to her as the ‘nun’ since she abandoned her journey to become a Catholic nun in the early 1980s.
But she never discarded her religious headscarf, which she judiciously donned throughout as a mark of her faith.
When news came out on April 11 that she had been attacked, apparently gang raped, and murdered in her house, there was anger and disbelief.
“We are issuing a two-day ultimatum to police to either shoot dead or arrest the culprits, failing which we will gang up as Murang’a residents and look for them,” said Michael Njoroge, who chairs the Kiharu East Young Hustlers Association.
The police retrieved her body from her Muthigiriri village house.
“The victim had attack injuries on her face, neck, and arms. She appeared sexually assaulted,” reads the incident report by the scene of crime detectives.
The report adds that the rooms had been ransacked and seats torn, suggesting the attacker or attackers were looking for something. It also indicated that the victim appeared to have been tortured to a point of being fed salty water “perhaps in a bid to force her to disclose what was being sought in the ransacking”.
It was her firstborn son Stanley Githoo who reported his mother’s death.
In his police statement, Mr Githoo narrated how he became suspicious after she failed to open her sugarcane kiosk in Murang’a town as usual.
“As a boda boda operator in the town, I would see my mother countless times as I rode on the town’s roads. I called her mobile number, and it was not going through,” he said.
Mr Githoo added that he called the bodaboda operators who were known to take her to shambas to buy sugarcane for sale, but all said they had not seen her.
“I called my younger sister and directed her to proceed home in the evening and see whether she was around,” he says.
Mr Githoo revealed that his mother had a strict routine of getting home before 6.30pm, preparing her meals up to 7.30pm and locking herself inside the house since she lived alone and in an isolated area.
“She had given spare keys to her two married daughters just in case they quarrelled with their husbands and needed to return to her care. She argued that there would be no need to get to their mother’s home and wait outside,” he said.
When her last-born daughter arrived to check on her as directed by Mr Githoo and found the door locked from the outside, she used the spare keys to access the house. “It hit me like a thunderbolt. All indications were that all was not well. Signs of violence were all over. The ransacked house and ugali and sukuma [wiki] dish not taken,” she wrote in her police statement.
She added that she went into the bedroom and the find of her mother sprawled, naked, and with visible injuries, which made her retreat to the outside and called her brother.
“It was around 8pm when I arrived, and after confirming what my hysterical sister had told me on the phone, I went to Kambirwa police station to report,” he said.
After officers, who accompanied him back to the house ascertained that the house was a crime scene, Directorate of Criminal Investigations detectives were called in, and the body was removed to Murang’a Level Five Hospital mortuary at around 2am.
In a recent interview on March 26, 2023, Ms Muthoni narrated to Nation.Africa how she was pressured by her family members to abandon the nunnery and start a family.
“I was born in the Catholic faith in 1961 and decided to commence the journey to becoming a nun in 1977.
“I underwent all the steps and took my final vows after three years and was admitted to Githumua monastery where I had commenced ministry and prayer life for the good of the world,” she said.
After deserting under pressure in 1983, she immediately got married, but she found it difficult to discard the headscarf.
She parted ways with her husband in 1992 and lived as she had vowed to, although she could not rejoin the monastery since she had broken most of the guidelines. She came out of the marriage with four children and became a tenant, and depended on odd jobs to foot the bills.
“My two boys did not like my hand-to-mouth life and volunteered to drop out of school at the primary level. I concentrated on educating the two daughters, though one dropped out while the other finished Form Four,” she said.
She said she worked hard and gave each of her children capital to start businesses “and today I am a proud mother of four independent children and grandmother to seven”.
She narrated how she in 1997 ventured into the sugarcane business and on a good day she would make a Sh200 profit.
“The profits have remained constant…only the currency value has been changing. But I was able to save with Family Bank and get myself into table banking arrangements,” she said.
In 2017, she paid a Sh180,000 deposit for a Sh300,000 worth of a quarter-acre piece of land and was allowed to develop it as she settled the balance.
“That is how I became a homeowner and I have since settled the balance and built a permanent house for myself and daughters if they came back from their marriages,” she had told Nation.Africa, saying that by January this year, the property was worth Sh2.5 million.
Her husband, Peter Njuguna, told Nation.Africa that he was hurt by the murder of her wife.
“Why attack, rape, and murder a grandmother? Why think of such brutality to a human being?
“She loved her peace, and that is why she left me. But for all those years of separation, she would call me at least once a week to check on me,” he said.
Mr Njuguna revealed that he had been visiting her at her new home and we would chat about their children.
“She appreciated that I never married again after she left me and she never got into another relationship. We were soulmates though living separately and our children bonded us into respecting one another,” he said.
Mr Njuguna described the deceased as a happy, peaceful and well-meaning woman who loved her children “and was a pillar of honesty”.
In February, a neighbouring youth broke into her house and stole Sh20,000 and a sack of beans valued at Sh10,000.
“After the arrest, my wife said she was willing to forgive him, and she had already issued a notice of her intention to withdraw the case on April 24, 2023, when it was coming up for mention,” said Mr Njuguna.
Murang’a East police boss Mary Kasyoki said so far investigations had netted three suspects.
“The prime suspect has scratches on his face and hands, and it is believed he incurred them in the fight with the deceased,” said Ms Kasyoki.
She said a postmortem and tests on swabs would give the case a bearing, and she prayed for patience as investigations went on.
The deceased’s family said all they want is justice to be served.
