On Tuesday, January 30, a pastor was presented in the High Court in Nanyuki in connection to the 2018 murder of a woman whose remains were only recently discovered.<\/p>\n
However, Pastor David Wagiita of First Pentecostal Church-Nanyuki, the prime suspect in the murder of Ruth Gathoni, did not enter a plea when he appeared before Justice Anthony Ndung\u2019u.<\/p>\n
The prosecution requested the court to adjourn the case, allowing the state to appoint a lawyer for the accused.<\/p>\n
Murder is a capital offence, and suspects who cannot afford a lawyer are given legal representation funded by the state.<\/p>\n
Judge Ndung\u2019u ordered that the accused be brought before him on February 21 to be formally charged with murder.<\/p>\n
Gathoni went missing on August 18, 2018, with the family telling detectives that she was last seen with Pastor Wagiita in Nyeri Town, boarding a matatu bound for Nanyuki.<\/p>\n
Shortly after her disappearance, Wagiita was arrested and charged with kidnapping but was acquitted due to a lack of evidence linking him to the crime.<\/p>\n
This prompted the family to embark on a frantic search for their lost loved one, which only ended on September 30 last year when construction workers at Muthaiga Estate in Nanyuki Town discovered a human skull in a shallow grave.<\/p>\n
The workers were digging a trench to build a perimeter wall when they came across a human skull and hair believed to be that of a woman. It is in the same compound where Gathoni and the pastor allegedly spent a night before she was reported missing.<\/p>\n
Detectives visited the site and exhumed more remains, which were confirmed by DNA tests earlier this month to be those of the long-lost woman.<\/p>\n
Gathoni\u2019s remains were finally given a proper burial on January 9 this year in Unjiru village, Tetu Sub-county, Nyeri County, during an emotional funeral presided over by clerics from the African Independent Pentecostal Church of Africa (AIPCA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On Tuesday, January 30, a pastor was presented in the High Court in Nanyuki in connection to the 2018 murder of a woman whose remains were only recently discovered. However, Pastor David Wagiita of First Pentecostal Church-Nanyuki, the prime suspect in the murder of Ruth Gathoni, did not enter a plea when he appeared before […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6069,"featured_media":186428,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[310],"tags":[138453],"class_list":["post-200502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-kenyan-crime-news"],"yoast_head":"\n