The High Court in Eldoret has finally brought a sense of justice in the case of Vera Beauty College student Emma Wanyota’s gruesome murder in Moi’s Bridge, Uasin Gishu County.
In a ruling on Thursday, November 2, Judge Reuben Nyakundi found the main suspect, Mustafa Idd Lokono, guilty of murder.
This comes a little over four years after Emma’s body was found in a nappier grass farm next to her mother’s house, mutilated in a manner that shook even the most hardened detectives. The 21-year-old had been hit on the head with a blunt object, raped, strangled, and her limbs severed and her private parts mutilated by her 31-year-old ex-boyfriend.
Emma’s sister, Sheila Wanyotta, revealed that Mustafa and Emma were in a short-lived relationship. The suspect, a carpenter based in Kitale, then started threatening her following their breakup in August 2019.
Sheila also mentioned that the suspect had threatened the men in Emma’s contact list. Before the shocking incident, he had also told Sheila casually that no woman could outsmart him, and that he would go to any length, including killing, to prove his point.
“He kept saying that women are weak people. He said it was so easy to strangle women, and that were the woman he is accused of killing to ever resurrect he would get a panga and cut her into pieces to ensure she is ‘properly dead”. She recalled.
Sheila did not report the confession to anyone as she believed that Idd was merely bluffing, something he often did about many other things.
“I did not know he could ever do this to my sister,” Sheila said as quoted by the Daily Monitor four years ago.
.“I now believe that he would have preferred to take her dismembered limbs and hands, put them in a suitcase, and walk around Moi’s Bridge as he had told me. It hurts to think that this has happened to my beautiful sister.”
Mustafa, who was well known to Emma’s family having made them some furniture, would later carry out his threats on September 30, 2019.
Surprisingly, the killer then surrendered himself to police in Moi’s bridge, and told officers that he had just killed his girlfriend and dismembered her.
During investigations, it emerged that he was a confessed serial killer who often bragged to whoever gave him attention that he had killed and gotten away with it.
“This suspect is a notorious criminal. Back in 2014, he killed a lady in Mombasa and he went scot-free. In 2017 again, at Kapkoi here in Moi’s Bridge, he killed another lady and he was released this year in March on bond,” said village elder Edward Ayub Bondeni at the time.
In August 2017, Mustafa was charged in the Kitale High Court with strangling to death Nancy Narogoi on July 25, of the same year in Kapkoi village, Kiminini sub-county. He reportedly went into hiding but was soon arrested and arraigned in court.
Narogoi’s father, Mr William Edome, said he was shocked to learn that he had been released by the court without the family’s knowledge.
“Someone told me he had seen him in Moi’s Bridge. We rushed to court to ask why and we were told he had been released on bond. We were never informed he was going to be released.
“It’s painful to learn that he was released without my daughter getting justice and now he is said to have killed another young woman,” Mr Edome said in October 2019.
Mustafa was released on a Sh1 million bond. He deposited the title deed of a piece of land to secure his release.
Sheila’s brother, Job Manyasi, also recounted the chilling stories the village carpenter told him.
“He said he was so mad with his former girlfriend that he would not hesitate to kill her if he were to find her alive. I always asked him why he was so angry with her but he never told me,” said Manyasi.
He expressed concern that Idd could pose a threat to the community and urged his family to arrange for a counselor.
Mr. Manyasi, drawing on his counseling experience, took it upon himself to provide guidance, consistently advising Idd to let go of past grievances. Despite these efforts, he believed that further counseling was necessary for Idd.
Sheila noted: “He said that while in prison(during his bond hearing) he was planning with some of his colleagues in remand to escape, buy a gun and kill those accusing him of killing his girlfriend.”
Mustafa Idd now awaits his sentencing for the murder of Emma Wanyota scheduled for November 22, 2023.
