Kenyan authorities say they have arrested a suspected serial killer who confessed to killing 42 women, including his wife, between 2022 and July 11, 2024. Nine dismembered bodies of his victims were found in an abandoned quarry turned into a rubbish dump on Monday.
The suspect, Collins Jomaisi Khalusha, 33, was arrested at a bar around 3 am local time on Monday while he was watching the Euro final.
“We are dealing with a serial killer, a psychopathic serial killer. The suspect confessed to have lured, killed, and disposed of 42 female bodies at the dumping site. 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,” Kenyan’s head of Criminal Investigations, Mohamed Amin is quoted to have said.
There has been shock and outrage in Kenya since the first of the dismembered bodies were found on Friday at the Mukuru quarry in the capital, Nairobi, the BBC reported.
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The dump site where the bodies were discovered was close to a police station, putting the Kenyan police force into the spotlight again, especially after recent anti-government protests led to the killing of 30 demonstrators.
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Kenya’s police watchdog, the Independent Policing Oversight Authority (IPOA), said on Friday it was looking into whether there was any police involvement in the crimes as the dumpsite is close to the station. The IPOA was also investigating whether there had been a “failure to act to prevent” the gruesome killings.
The officers working there have been transferred, to ensure “fair and unbiased investigations” into the “heinous” deaths, the acting police chief, Douglas Kanja told reporters.
“The killings are being seen as the latest police failure to adequately deal with crime especially as it happened so close to a police station. Some Kenyans are questioning why the police have been unable to solve the death of Rita Waeni, whose dismembered body was found earlier this year at a short-term rental apartment in Nairobi,” the BBC reported.
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