Shocking death of the Murang’a ‘sugarcane nun’ Jacinta Muthoni

Jacinta Muthoni, 62, has gained popularity and adoration from the locals over the course of his 26 years selling sugar cane in the town of Muranga.

Since she gave up trying to become a Catholic nun in the early 1980s, her clients have affectionately referred to her as “The Nun”.

She wore a headscarf as a sign of her faith all the time, and never took it off.

When news came out on April 11 that she had been attacked, gang raped and apparently murdered in her own home, there was outrage and disbelief.

“We are issuing a two-day ultimatum to the police to either shoot or shoot the perpetrators, or else we will round them up as residents of Muranga and search for them,” said Michael Njoroge, who heads the Kiharu East Young Hustlers Association.

Police recovered her body from her home in Muthigiri village.

The victim sustained offensive injuries to her face, neck, and arms. It appears she was sexually assaulted,” reads the incident report by crime scene investigators.

According to the report, the rooms were ransacked and the pews were torn apart, indicating that the attacker or attackers were looking for something. In addition, it stated that the woman was apparently subjected to severe torture, including being forced to drink salt water, “perhaps in an effort to force her to reveal what was being asked for in the loot.”

Stanley Jeetho, her eldest child, broke the news of his mother’s death.

Mr. Jeethu described his anxiety after she failed to open her sugar cane stand in Muranga town as usual in the police report.

“As a boda-boda worker in the city, I would see my mother countless times as I walked the city roads. I called her mobile number, and he was not passing.”

Mr. Jeethu added that he contacted Bodaboda workers who were known to have taken her to Chambas to buy sugarcane for sale, but all said they had not seen her.

“I called my younger sister and told her to come home in the evening and see if she was there,” he says.

Mr Jeethu revealed that his mum used to follow a strict routine of coming home before 6.30pm, preparing her meals till 7.30pm and locking herself inside the house as she lives alone and in an isolated area.

“She gave spare keys to her two married daughters just in case they had a fight with their husbands and needed to return to her care. There would be no need to get to their mother’s house and wait outside,” she said.

When her last daughter arrives to check on her as directed by Mr. Jeethu and finds the door locked from the outside, she uses the spare keys to get into the house. “It hit me like a thunderbolt. All indications were that everything was not right. The signs of violence ended everywhere. The looted house, Ugale and Sukuma [wiki] She wrote in her statement to the police.

She added that she entered the bedroom and found her mother lying naked with visible injuries, which made her retreat outside and call her brother.

He said, “It was around 8pm when I arrived, and after confirming what my hysterical sister had told me over the phone, I went to Camberua Police Station to report.”

The officers who escorted him home determined that it was a crime scene, so they called investigators from the Criminal Investigation Directorate, and the body was taken to Muranga Level-5 Hospital mortuary at around 2 am.