On 26 June 2024, 26-year-old Josephine Owino, a hairdresser from Mukuru Kwa Njenga, in Nairobi the capital of Kenya, went missing after receiving an unexpected phone call and leaving her home at short notice to meet someone. She was never seen again. In the weeks that followed, Josephine’s younger sister, Peris Keya, visited three different police stations to ask for help finding her sister. She claims her missing sister had appeared to her in a dream and was leading her to a body of water to search for her. Distraught with worry and fear, on 12 July 2024, Peris went to the Mukuru quarry dump site, not far from where Josephine lived, and enlisted the help of local garbage workers to search the quarry for remains.
Within the next few days, between the local men they managed to retrieve no less than 10 nylon sacks with suspicious contents. Once the sacks were opened their horrible suspicion were confirmed. The sacks contained human remains and Pery summoned the police at the police station just opposite the quarry. They ascertained that eight of the sacks contained the remains of eight women, the ninth set of remains appeared to be those of an unidentified male and the tenth bag was identified as possible animal remains. The newest remains appear to be as recent as Thursday the 11th of July.
The detectives were jumpstarted into action and after analyzing money transfers made on a mobile phone belonging to an identified victim from the quarry, they were able to trace a suspect, 33-year old Collins Jumaisi Khalusha. On 14 July 2024 he was apprehended while watching the Euro 2024 football final between Spain and England at a local tavern. He later told the police that he was in the process of luring his next victim when they arrested him.
During the subsequent raid on Khalusha’s room in a shanty town home in Mukuru Kwa Njenga, situated about 100 meters from the dump site, police uncovered several key pieces of evidence including: 10 mobile phones, a machete, rope and nylon sacks similar to the ones the remains were found in, rolls of tape, industrial rubber gloves, several identity cards of suspected victims as well as personal items such as women’s underwear and a handbag. Further searches have also revealed more incriminating evidence including a blood-soaked hammer and blood-stained clothing and bedding.
Josephine Owino has not yet been identified as one of the victims found in the quarry, although her family are still hopeful that pathology reports will link her to the remains found. But another victim was identified as Roselyn Akoth Ogongo, whose family identified her torso at the morgue and the handbag found at the suspect’s home as belonging to her. Police were able to track down another suspect after tracing Ogongo’s mobile phone. He was found with her phone and admitted to purchasing it. He then led police to third man who had originally sold him the phone. The seller confirmed that he regularly purchased mobile phones from Khalusha. Both men were detained for further questioning.
According to Amin Mohamed, the head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigation, during their interrogation Khalusha confessed not only to the murders the police had already discovered, but also allegedly admitted to killing as many as 42 victims in total over two years before being arrested. He also admitted to having had carnal knowledge of all his victims and claimed that he targeted beautiful, good-looking women whom he would charm into trusting him. 2023 was his most prolific year with a total of 20 victims, if he is to be believed, with 10 more so far this year. He also told police that he would take the belongings of the victims and gifted them to friends or sell them for profit.
In January 2024 the dismembered bodies of two young women were discovered in separate short-term rental apartments in Nairobi. One of the victims was identified as 20-year-old Rita Waeni. As yet, these cases have not been linked to the Mukuru dumping site murders. One of the victims in the apartments was stuffed into a plastic bag. Khalusha’s arrest comes at a time when Kenya is grappling with political unrest and a social media awareness campaign of violence against women.
While Khalusha has allegedly stated in his confession that he began his killing spree in 2022 starting with his wife, Imelda Khalenya, police have not yet found her remains nor the remains of 34 other possible victims. Khalenya’s mother stated that she opened a missing person’s report at her local police station when her daughter disappeared two years ago, but she could not produce a formal case number when asked for one.
When questioned about his wife’s murder, Khalusha recounted that in 2022 he sponsored his wife in several business opportunities at great expense to himself, but rather than work and become successful, his wife chose to take the money and spend it on partying and spoiling herself. In his opinion she had squandered their success and deeply disrespected everything he had done for her and this caused him to snap and kill her. Police have not yet established a clear motive for the other murders, but Khalusha allegedly maintains that this first killing was the trigger that set him on to his path of unremorseful killing.
Khalusha’s defence attorney, Mr John Maina Ndegwa states that his client was coerced into making a confession and was subjected to intimidation and torture at the hands of the investigative authorities. These claims are currently under investigation.
Pathologists are still in process of compiling reports, as the remains are all in varying stages of decomposition. Autopsy reports on the less decomposed remains suggest that the victims may have all died by similar means, as there is evidence of blunt force trauma to the head that led to excessive bleeding in the brain as well as signs of strangulation. The victims’ ages range from 18 to 30 years. The remains were also discarded in the same manner. The bodies were cut into at least two equal parts at the waist with some cut at the knees and shoulders and again at the torso through the lumbar area, for them to fit into the nylon bags they were found in. Only one body was found intact. Dr Johansen Oduor, a government pathologist, states that none of the corpses bore bullet wounds. DNA analysis has identified two victims, while the rest of the remains were too severely decomposed to make immediate identification possible.
Collins Jumaisi Khalusha’s life
The suspect, Collins Jumaisi Khalusha was born on the 3 February 1991 in Vihiga County in Kenya, about 400 kilometers from Uganda. His father died in 1995, when Kalusha was just four years old, and his mother moved with her three children to Migori. Kalusha left school in Form 3 and would regularly disappear from home for years before returning. His sister claims that he was offered the opportunity to attend school in Uganda and so she arranged for his transport to school where he supposedly studied for three years. Unfortunately, when she arrived in Uganda after his course was complete, he was nowhere to be found. His family says they last heard from him in 2022 and he has never returned to see his mother who lives in Migori County. She had spent the last few years unsure if her son was even alive. Khalusha’s brother mentioned that he had purchased a parcel of land and a house but left these for his mother when he disappeared.
At the time of his arrest, Khalusha had been living in a rented room near the Mukuru quarry in Nairobi. According to the New York Times, his neighbours reported he mostly kept to himself and sold SIM cards at the nearby market. They said they saw women visiting him, some of whom stayed over the weekend and socialized with other neighbours, but they never witnessed him abusing the women or heard any screams or loud noises from his room. It would have been impossible for him to assault, never mind kill women in such close quarters.
Josephine Owino has not yet been identified as one of the victims found in the quarry, although her family are still hopeful that pathology reports will link her to the remains found.
Questions Asked
As with any serial killer investigation, the moment the shock and horror of a serial killer on the loose hits a community, many questions and speculations rise. Communities are understandably terrified and angry and need answers.
I have been asked on social media about my opinion on this case. Several questions came up:
How come the police was unable to detect that bodies were being left less than100 meters from one of their offices in the informal settlement of Mukuru Kwa Njenga?
Mukuru is a collection of slums in the city of Nairobi. It is approximately 7 kilometres south of the central business district of Nairobi and consists of approximately 30 villages of which Kwa Njenga, is one.
The bodies were dumped in the sprawling, waterlogged Mukuru quarry dumping site. Anyone who has ever approached a dumping site such as this one, would testify to the putrid, rancid odour emanating from the site. Often dead animals and human sewerage mingle with rotting food attracting maggots. Decomposing bodies would not be smelled under these conditions. Garbage is also often dumped in sacks, whom no-one investigates.
Dumping sites are sources of air pollution caused by incineration of varied waste, as well as the stench from the unauthorised landfills in the slums. Rumours that the Mukuru dumping site was deliberately set on fire, might not be true as sporadically rubbish may combust into fire.
Although on a much smaller scale, the Cleveland serial killer, David Selepe also dumped the bodies of his victims in dumping sites, one after the other and it took the Brixton Murder and Robbery detectives several months to find the bodies and to establish a pattern that he would dump a body in exactly the same vicinity where a previous one was already found.
Kenyan Acting Police Chief Douglas Kanja announced on Sunday 21 July 2024 that the officers from Kware police post near the scene had been transferred.
Why did the police take so long to identify that a serial killer was operative, in this case allegedly for two years undetected?
Globally police forces struggle in detecting a serial killer on the loose. In South Africa the Station Strangler began killing young boys in 1986. Only in February 1994 was an official task force established to exclusively focus on this case and then he was arrested two months later in April 1994. Andrei Chikatilo of Russia began murdering in 1978 and was only arrested in 1990. In the US alone, the FBI estimates there are between 25 to 50 active serial killers at any given time, despite the authorities not being aware of them or connecting the killings together. Samuel Little went undetected for 40 years, claimed to have killed 90 people, police linked him to 34, but he was convicted of only three in 2014 and sentenced to life in prison.
One of the many impairments in such an investigation is that bodies are often left in different jurisdictions, as was the case of the Atteridgeville serial killers who left bodies in Atteridgeville, Rosslyn, Bon Accord, Onderstepoort and Boksburg. All these areas would have different police stations investigating crimes committed in those areas and quite often they do not communicate with each other. Centralized computer systems have only been implemented over the last few decades in many police forces, and even these do not always make provision for detailed descriptions of modus operandi or victim profiles that could alert to a serial killer at large. Crime scene analysts who attend different scenes over different districts may pick up similarities if they are trained.
When I established the Investigative Psychology Unit of the South African Police Service, one of the first items on the agenda was to train Murder and Robbery detectives nationwide to recognise a serial killer’s modus operandi – later crime scene analysts were also trained. The detectives then alerted me when they suspected a serial killer was active and then the authorities assembled a team of detectives, profiler and forensic specialists to focus solely on the case. This worked and as a team we became proficient in making arrests sooner.
One could argue that the Nairobi bodies were not dispersed over several districts, but they were dumped in an almost inaccessible site, where they would go undetected. It reminds me of Moses Sithole’s crime scene near the Boksburg prison where 11 bodies were discovered, also in different stages of decomposition, indicating the killer had been using this site for months. It was remote, and the bodies were only discovered because a dog out on a walk alerted his owner to the bodies.
The Nairobi police may not have been aware that there was a serial killer active – I do not know if they have been trained in the Investigation of serial killers. But they should be commended that within a few days of the discovery they had identified a suspect and arrested him almost immediately. Their speedy arrest also prevented the suspect from removing incriminating evidence from his room.
His neighbours claim he could not have committed murders within the confines of his abode?
Mukuru Kwa Njenga is similar to many slums all over the world. It faces challenges of poverty, squalor, crime, drug abuse and prostitution. Whole families live in cramped one-roomed corrugated iron shacks, like the one Khalusha lived in. There is no access to electricity and many families might share a communal water tap and an outside latrine. The slums have a high prevalence of respiratory diseases, Malaria, HIV AIDS and waterborne diseases.
It is highly unlikely that he could have killed or dismembered the women in his room, without his neighbours hearing or suspecting anything. However, he could have easily done this somewhere else undetected during the night, not far from the dumping site. Even blood spilled at a location near a dumping site would attract stray dogs, who would devour any evidence.
Would Khalusha fit the profile of an organized or disorganized serial killer?
At this stage, Khalusha is a suspect under investigation. He has not yet been convicted.
If I was a profiler involved in this case, I would surmise that the dismemberment of the bodies was not the work of a disorganized serial killer, but given the similarities in cuts, according to the pathologist, they were purposefully dismembered to fit inside the nylon sacks to conceal them. Organized serial killers conceal their murders, disorganized serial killers do not. The bodies were not disembowelled. Jeffrey Dahmer and Dennis Nielson also dismembered bodies in order to get rid of them more easily. They did this inside their apartments.
Choosing a sprawling waterlogged dump site to dispose of the bodies is an indication of a rational mind and planning. No-one would detect the smell of a rotting body among the putrid stench of such a dumping site, where animal carcasses might also be regularly dumped.
It does not surprize me that Khalusha’s neighbours describe him as an ordinary introverted man, who did not attract attention, nor that his sister could not believe it may be her brother who committed these crimes. Like sharks blend in, unnoticed by other fish, because they are fish, serial killers live unnoticed among other humans because they are human. Khalusha sold SIM cards at a market, he watched a soccer match – very ordinary activities.
As to the motive, Khalusha in his alleged confession to the police claims he killed his wife because she disrespected him and squandered his money – this may be true. He allegedly claimed thereafter it was easy to kill more women. This may also be true and may be the rationalized attempts of a man to make sense of what he has done. Yet his claim that he lured beautiful women, invites speculation of a deeper hidden psychological motive embedded in a very low self-esteem. Moses Sithole, the Atteridgeville serial killer admitted he raped only the ‘pretty ones’ and Mglengwa Zikode, the Donnybrook serial killer killed the women because he had no social skills to approach them and form a normal relationship.
The magistrate granted the police 30 days to keep their suspect in detention to further investigate his case.
Top image: A street scene of Nairobi’s Mukuru shanty town where alleged serial killer Collins Jumaisi Khalusha rented a room (Public Domain)
