Kenyan police arrest suspected serial killer

A man has confessed to 42 murders, according to officials in Nairobi

Police in Kenya have arrested a man believed to have killed dozens of women over the past two years in the capital, Nairobi.

Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) Chief Mohammed Amin announced on Monday that the suspect – identified as Collins Jumaisi Khalusa – had admitted to taking the lives of 42 women, including his wife, Imelda Judith Khalenya since 2022.

During a media briefing at the DCI headquarters in Nairobi, Amin said: “We are dealing with a psychopathic serial killer who has no respect for human life.”

“Unfortunately, and this is very sad, the suspect alleged that his first victim was his wife... who he strangled to death, before dismembering her body and disposing it at the same site,” he said, referring to the Kware landfill in the Embakasi neighbourhood of Nairobi.

The 33-year-old was apprehended in the capital on Monday night after detectives tracked his mobile signal. The DCI chief said investigators located the killer after he made a mobile money transaction using the phone number of one of his victims.

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Police reported that just before his capture, Jumaisi was attempting to ensnare another victim. Detectives have asked her to come forward and record a statement.

Officers involved in the operation revealed that Jumaisi was detained approximately 500 meters from the Kware dumpsite, an abandoned quarry, where several women’s bodies had been recovered as of Sunday evening. After confessing to the murders, Jumaisi led detectives to the location.

Douglas Kanja Kirocho, Kenya’s acting chief of police, reported that nine bodies had so far been recovered from the quarry.

During the media briefing, Mohammed Amin displayed several items seized from the suspect’s house. They included a machete believed to have been used to dismember some of the victims, along with mobile phones, identity cards, SIM cards, gloves, ropes, and several empty sacks similar to those found with the bodies at the dumpsite.

“Investigations are still ongoing and the suspect’s house and the dumping site remain active crime scenes,” the DCI said in the document, posted on X (formerly Twitter). 

In another major homicide case, Kenyan cult leader Paul Mackenzie went on trial on July 8 over the deaths of more than 430 of his followers in a forest area near his church. Mackenzie allegedly instructed his devotees to starve themselves to death so that they could “meet Jesus Christ before the end of the world.” However, autopsies show that some died from strangulation or suffocation.