Rita Waeni Muendo’s cause of death has finally been revealed by government pathologist Johansen Oduor.
In a media appearance on Thursday, January 25, Oduor revealed the horrifying results that followed the discovery of Waeni’s severed head, concluding that she had been strangled to death.
“Upon examining that head, the main findings were that the head had been chopped off at the neck, at the level of the C5 vertebra. There was bruising on the scalp, which to me looked like it was caused by a blunt object,” Johansen Oduor noted.
adding:
“Upon examining the neck structures, we also saw some fractures of bones which are usually very important in homicides.
One of the bones is called the hyoid bone, and there was also the thyroid cartilage bone which had some fractures and hemorrhage.”
“From all this, I can comfortably say that what caused the death of that young lady was strangulation, after which she was decapitated and her body dumped.”
The family of Rita Waeni has since positively identified a severed head found in Kiambaa dam, Kiambu, based on her forehead, hair, and teeth formation.
The family had identified a blouse that had been found wrapped around the head when it was discovered.
Detectives suspect the killing of Waeni was part of an ongoing occultism in the country.
“It looks like a ritual which I think was motivated by a cult-like belief,” said an officer aware of the issue.
The investigation team wants to know if there are more such killings similar to that of Waeni.
The dismembered body of Waeni was found at an apartment on TRM Drive, Kasarani but her head was missing.
On Sunday, police recovered the head covered in a sack and wrapped in a purple blouse. A missing mobile phone that belonged to the deceased was also recovered at the scene.
A postmortem conducted on the body on Friday, January 19 showed she had missing fingernails.
Mystery surrounds the move by the killer to clip off her fingernails. Her body was found in a dustbin.
A postmortem conducted on the body on Friday showed she had missing nails.
“This person who did all these also tried to clip off the fingernails for reasons which I might not be able to know but for us scientists when we see fingernails clipped off, we think probably the person was trying to hide evidence so that we are unable to get his DNA from the victim,” government pathologist Johansen Oduor told reporters after the exercise.
Police were Monday allowed to hold two Nigerians in the probe into the murder of university student Rita Waeni Muendo.
A Makadara court granted police eight days to detain the two Nigerians identified as William Ovie Opia for eight days pending a probe into their possible involvement in the murder of the student.
The two were arrested in the Ndenderu area, Kiambu County on Sunday evening moments after the head of a woman was discovered at Ite Dam at Kimuga village in the area.
