A Kenyan court on Tuesday ordered the 30-day detention of a man who police said confessed to killing and dismembering 42 women.
Collins Jumasi Khalusha, 33, who police have described as a “vampire, psychopath”, was arrested on Monday morning following the gruesome discovery of mutilated bodies in a Nairobi rubbish dump.
He appeared in a court in Kenya’s capital, where a magistrate granted police’s request that he be detained for 30 days so they could complete their investigations.
The bodies of 10 murdered women tied in plastic bags have been recovered from an abandoned mine site in Mukuru, Nairobi since Friday, according to the Kenya National Human Rights Commission.
Directorate of Criminal Investigations chief Mohammed Amin said on Monday that Kalusha had confessed to killing 42 women over a two-year period from 2022 and that his wife was his first victim.
In a statement on Tuesday, the DCI said investigators have detained two other suspects, one of whom was allegedly found in possession of a phone belonging to one of the victims.
Caught ‘luring another victim’
Kalusha was detained on Monday morning near a bar where he was watching a Euro 2024 football match after authorities examined the phone of one of his alleged victims.
Amin told reporters that when officers arrived, “he was trying to trap another victim.”
“We are dealing with a vampire, a psychopath,” Amin said.
Acting national police chief Douglas Kanja said on Monday that the gruesome incident occurred just 100 metres from the police station and officers there have been transferred to ensure a fair investigation.
Amin said the area – which includes Kalusha’s home, which is about 100 metres from where the bodies were found – would remain an “active crime scene”.
The dumped bodies have threatened the image of Kenyan police and increased pressure on President William Ruto, who is already facing a crisis over protests that have left dozens of demonstrators dead and officers accused of using excessive force.
The state-funded KNCHR said it was conducting its own investigation into the Mukuru case because of “the need to rule out any possibility of extrajudicial killings”.
Amnesty International said it had been directly involved in the removal of some bodies and had sent independent pathologists to carry out post-mortems on victims.
“Although this is a multiple murder crime, only after the completion of these autopsies can the ongoing investigation into the perpetrators of these killings be confirmed,” Irungu Houghton, executive director of Amnesty’s Kenya branch, told AFP.
Kenya’s police watchdog, the Independent Police Oversight Authority, also said on Friday it was investigating whether there was any police involvement or “any failure to act” to prevent the killings.
Tensions ran high at the crime scene over the weekend, as volunteers searched through huge piles of trash for more victims and officers briefly fired tear gas to disperse crowds.
Kenyan police are often accused by human rights groups of carrying out unlawful killings or running murder squads, but very few cases have been brought to justice.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
