Mystery of murdered woman and Sh1.9 million debt

 

When Milka Chemutai Rono told her family on January 7 that she had a huge debt she was struggling to pay, they didn’t know she would lose her life not long after, possibly in relation to the money.

Her badly mutilated and decomposing body was found at a river bank in Burnt Forest area in Eldoret.

Chemutai's face was deformed beyond recognition, her right hand cut off and her left thumb smashed. She was 29 and a mother of one.

Her family buried her on March 26 despite the cloud of mystery surrounding her death.

She had been staying and working in Eldoret town all her life after high school. At their Burn Forest home on January 7, she cast a crestfallen figure, clearly disturbed by the debt burden, her brother Ignatius Kimeli told the Star.

Chemutai was generally a quiet person and it took much effort to get her to tell one about her life.

The family tried to know who the debtor was and how much it was, without much success. They engaged their local reverend to try getting the information from her, again with little success. After some digging, at some point the family managed to get the contact of the said debtor and to establish that she owed him Sh1.9 million.

It later emerged that the alleged debtor was a senior police officer in the town. It is suspected that the mother of one had a relationship with the alleged officer and after she was given the money, she vanished.

On January 14, Chemutai left home, saying that she was going to Eldoret to produce the M-Pesa statement to show the money trail in the transaction. She would not be seen again until March 20 when her body got discovered rotting at the river.

Kimeli said once his sister finished high school, she went to stay in Eldoret town as a waitress. When she returned two years later, she said someone was organizing for her a job in Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital.

Nothing much emerged from her and she led a normal lifestyle, sending money to parents once in a while, he said.

After she disappeared, frantic efforts were made by the reverend and the family to meet the alleged debtor to discuss how he could be refunded his money.

"The meeting was elusive with the guy changing goal posts. His main demand was to meet Milka," Kimeli said, explaining that the debtor declined to be in a meeting where Chemutai was not present.

He said the family was willing to engage the debtor and make arrangements to settle the debt to save the life of the woman.

A postmortem examination showed she was strangled and her face repeatedly hit with a blunt object, deforming it.  BY THE STAR