Kenyan police: ‘Psychopathic serial killer’ arrested after woman’s remains found in garbage dump

Johannesburg — The Kenya National Police said Monday they had arrested a 33-year-old man they described as a “psychopathic serial killer with no respect for human life.” The suspect, Collins Jumaisi Khalusha, admitted to murdering 42 women, including his wife, whom he described as his first victim.

Mohammed Amin, head of Kenya’s criminal investigation department, said Khalusha had murdered several victims just four days before his arrest, but his alleged killing spree began in 2022.

Amin made the statement during a press conference at DCI headquarters in Nairobi on Monday and the agency also shared his remarks in a series of social media posts, including a photo of the detained Khalusha.

Police said they had tracked Jumaisha’s cellphone signal.

“It was the mobile money transfer using Josphine Owino’s phone number that put investigators on the trail of the suspect,” Amin said of one of the victims.

Khalusha was arrested early Monday morning outside a club where he was due to watch the Euro 2016 final on Sunday. Police said Khalusha confessed after his arrest to “luring, killing and disposing of 42 female bodies”, including those of his wife and Owino.

The suspect lived in a rented one-room house just 100 meters from the Kware dumping site, an abandoned quarry now filled with garbage where the remains of some of the victims were previously found, police said.

When Khalusha was arrested, he was reportedly in the process of luring another victim, a woman identified by police only as Susan.

“We have a second suspect who was caught with one of the victims’ cell phones,” Amin added, without providing further information on the identity of the second suspect or his alleged connection to the murders.

At the press conference, police displayed a number of items they say they found in Khalusha’s possession, including ten mobile phones and 24 SIM cards, six male and two female identity cards, a pair of rubber gloves, twelve nylon bags, ropes, gloves and a machete, which police believe was used to dismember some of the victims.

Last week, officials discovered the mutilated remains of women aged between 18 and 30 stuffed into sacks near the Kware garbage dump, prompting residents and police to speculate that a cult or serial killer might be at work in the area.

When the remains of the murdered women were discovered last week, the leader of a doomsday cult went to court in the country, on terrorism charges over the Deaths of more than 400 his supporters in an unrelated case that shocked the country.

Owino’s sister said she disappeared from Nairobi’s sprawling slums in Mukuru on June 26 and her body was among the dismembered corpses found at the garbage dump.

Police said autopsies were being conducted on the nine mutilated bodies found so far at the Kware dump and that additional police officers had been deployed to further search the area.