By James Wafula in Kiambu.
Her grave has gone cold and green grass has grown on it almost two years since she was brutally shot to death outside her home.
The murder of British born Kiambu forest conservationist M/S Joannah Stutchbury, 67, drew public outrage with then President Uhuru Kenyatta vowing to find the killers and punish them for the “senseless murder”.
The president who retired September 15 2022 handing power to his deputy now President William Ruto, however failed to fulfill his pledge retiring without even arresting a single suspect!
The conservationist joins a long list of unresolved murders that include the daughter of British hotelier Julie Ward in 1995, IEBC head of IT Chris Muhando (2017), and even more recently an IEBC returning officer for Embakasi east in the August 2022 general elections.
Brutal, mysterious killings that have gone unresolved is nothing new in Kenya including several bodies that had been retrieved from the river Yala that later turned out to be loved ones who had gone missing. This combined with the doomsday cult deaths in Shakahola 2023 associated with a local church paints a very bleak picture indeed!
Since the daylight murder of then economic affairs Minister Tom Joseph Mboya outside a Nairobi chemist July 1969 and populist MP for Nyandarau North JM Kariuki 1975, foreign affairs Minister Robert Ouko (February 1990) and later murder of powerful businessman Jacob Juma (2015), Kenya appears to have excelled in mafia style killings that go unresolved!
Many others have fallen at the hands of brutal assassins who later vanished without a trace giving credence to popular Kenyan novelist title claiming the country was a “Petals of Blood” (read state of blood).
President Kenyatta had repeatedly condemned the killing of the forester who was based in his home county. Like that of KBC journalist Betty Barasa, not a single suspect has been arrested.
President Ruto upon ascending into power September 2022 abolished a special “hit squad” in the police force he accused of running a murderous extortion cartel that answered to nobody!
Then a furious President Ruto ordered the wing disbanded and warned against police extra-judicial killings of suspects saying his government would uphold the rule of law.
More than two years, relatives and friends of the Kiambu forester are still crying for justice. Stutchbury had stopped her car to clear branches blocking her driveway when she was shot several times. Neighbours found her body in the car with the engine still running and valuables still in the vehicle, suggesting the attack was not a robbery.
Stutchbury had vocally opposed attempts by powerful local businessmen to build on the nearby Kiambu forest, and had reported receiving death threats on her phone.
It later emerged that she had opposed a plan by some powerful local figures to construct a road through her forest home, but police found no basis for pursuing this lead.
Her ‘senseless death’ remains just one of the cruel twists that has come to characterize life among people involved in championing popular causes. President Kenyatta had condemned the killers he termed enemies of good Samaritans trying to improve life in society. For her friends and relatives, the conservationist died for protecting trees she loved with a passion■
