Ms Elizabeth Njeri,79, was last seen entering her semi-permanent house on February 9, 2025, at around 7pm, singing a praise and worship song as she was fond of doing, only to later be sexually assaulted and murdered in her sleep that night.

The beastly act happened at Kamucheru village in Maragua Constituency, Murang'a a County, leaving area residents seething with anger.

She lived alone and her neighbours describe her as good hearted, jovial and highly religious woman.

"There are things that come to shame a whole village. If I had a way, I would wish the media never highlighted the case. Yet, we should be bared for what we are. This murder convicts our societal moral decadence. I feel shy to introduce myself as a human male from a village where a 79-year-old woman can be raped and murdered," said Mr Njuguna Maina,86.

According to Murang'a South Deputy County Commissioner Gitonga Murungi, the incident is a mystery that needs patience to unravel.

"The biggest puzzle in this murder is that after the family discovered her dead at around 11:30am, it was not until 11:30pm that it removed the body in a private vehicle to Maragua Police Station," Mr Murungi said.

According to the narration that her daughter Hannah Nyambura recorded at Maragua police station, she had sent her two children to go and check on their grandmother.

"The children had travelled about four kilometres to their grandmother's house. I had detailed them to go and help her draw water from a nearby river," Ms Nyambura told the police.

The narration continued to state that the children found their grandmother's house door open.

"The children called out the name of their grandmother but she did not respond. It was after they ventured into her bedroom that they found her dead," the police report states.

The children are reported to have screamed and went back four(4) kilometres to their mother's home to report about their finding.

"Ms Nyambura travelled to her mother's house and found her dead. With the help of the neighbours, she packed the dead body in a private vehicle and took it to Maragua police station," the police report adds.

The report states: "She brought the body to the station at around 10:10pm packed in a private motor vehicle whose registration number is KBU 148H".

Under normal circumstances, human bodies found outside medical facilities are supposed to be removed by police officers after scene of crime officers have profiled the scene.

Mr Murungi said police officers on duty examined the body that had been delivered and discovered that it had bruises on the left side of the head.

"As further follow-up, police visited the deceased's house that has now been declared a scene and on her bed was blood and sputum. No suspected weapon was recovered from the scene," Mr Murungi said.

He added that the general duties officers who first visited the scene called their scene of crime experts from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI).

"They documented the scene and later afterwards escorted the dead body to the Murang'a Level 5 Hospital morgue where a postmortem report will be conducted to ascertain the circumstances under which she died," he said.

Mr Murungi said all the grey areas in the whole episode will be straightened by the investigations, urging all interested parties to be patient.

Maragua MP Mary wa Maua demanded immediate action plan to deal with circumstances that lead the society to be home to cruel minds.

"This is now too much to handle. My constituency has become home to nauseating news about runaway murder cases and nearly all of them never get resolved. We now demand our officers to pull up their socks," Ms Wa Maua said.

Ms Wa Maua added that "war on narcotics must be escalated to target even those in government who exercise leniency on dealers".

She said some of the murders being recorded in the area especially those that involve sexual assaults against children and the elderly are narcotics-influenced.

"While as political leaders we will do our part supporting security officers achieve best working conditions, they must reciprocate by doing what they have to do to enforce the rule of law," she said.

She said that "when these murders happen, we should see actual suspects arrested and charged in court, prosecution winning deterrent convictions so as to disabuse the notion that human life has become all this cheap".

It is only a month ago that three(3) children were burnt to death in a mysterious house fire at Gakoigo market while a three-year old girl was on Monday found defiled, strangled, and dumped in a public dam.

For the past two hours, the constituency has suffered more then 20 murders, a big percentage not yet resolved.

Murang'a Senator Joe Nyutu said area sleuths are notorious of documenting murder scenes but with no court cases to prove hard work. 

"Let us start with the July 18, 2020, murder of eight-year old girl from Mahiga-ini village in Maragua constituency who was found buried in a shallow grave. The suspect who neighbours had delivered to Maragua police station escaped custody under mysterious circumstances and has never been rearrested. We can safely accuse our DCI of dereliction of duty since many more murders have remained unresolved," Mr Nyutu said.