The issue of rich men dying mysteriously with blame fingers pointing at their widows is no longer news.
For about 10 years, a number of assassination cases have been reported; some get to the limelight and to the courts while others don’t.
But a confession by one woman from a counselling session with Pastor JJ Gitahi of Priesthood Fellowship Church has exposed a deeper rot.
According to Gitahi, there’s a special group of women in Kenya where all members must have personally plotted the deaths of their rich husbands so as to bask in fancy opulence and extravagance.
During a live broadcast at Inooro FM, the pastor narrated how a member of the ‘Graveside Club’, whom he could not name due to the sensitivity of the matter arising from a private counselling session, was gnawed with the guilt after hiring hit-men to kill her rich husband.
But the images of her husband asking for water as he lay dying haunted her to a point of being suicidal- she had to confess it.
‘Fortunately’, the killers she hired had some business with his husband and he had no qualms when they called him from his house at night. It was outside his home that he was bludgeoned with a railway size hammers to death.
The killers then disappeared into the night leaving the husband calling for the wife in a moan and bleeding as he lay dying.
That was how she joined the club where fellow members seemed to have gelled well with new planned widowhood and financial freedom, but the guilt of having planned the murder of her husband was too much to bear.
She, therefore, sought redemption from the pastor confessing that she was lured by widows in the ‘Graveside Club’ all of whom had planned their wealthy husbands’ deaths.
Bilha Njoki (left) with her sister Lucy Mwangi at Buruburu police station in 2016. (Photo: Courtesy)
But what is this Graveside Club?
According to inside sources, this is an organized group where members must be women who’re ready to kill their rich husbands so as to enjoy the wealth. In most cases, they hire killers who shoot in stage-managed car robberies.
The ‘Graveside Club’ is for ‘eating’ life with a big spoon. At least, you’re sure the husband is not cheating, no questions on what time you reported home, or why you’re sleeping with young boys. But the most important thing is to acquire all the wealth belonging to your late husband.
According to a guarded secret, these women meet regularly (like once a month) in at least four-star hotels and fancy places to discuss the next casualties and life at large.
One of the pastor’s close associates, who sought anonymity, admits to Opera News about how the group conducts its devilish ‘rituals’ but insists it’s a sensitive matter that doesn’t allow her to give finer details.
“You know some things are done in secret, and it’s tricky to expose such people,” she told Opera News.
Were it not for the confession, it would have been hard to know the group exists, but a slew of cases of women arrested and arraigned in court after being busted procuring the murder of their husbands are telling.
In September 2013, Kenyans were treated to a murder case in which Faith Wairimu Maina was to be jailed for life after pleading guilty to hiring hitmen to kill her husband, John Muthee. But shockingly, Muthee later withdrew the case and she was freed.
“I want to forgive her for the sake of our children and family,” he said at that time.
Muthee had made his money in the macadamia business while his wife operated a kiosk in Nairobi’s Zimmerman estate.
According to a planned script captured on the court papers, Wairimu’s hit-men were to pose as macadamia customers and lure Muthee out of the house, but he did not appear interested the first day.
The next day, Wairimu asked the new killers, whom she had paid Sh40, 000 deposit, to position themselves outside the Equity bank in Zimmerman where she was with her hubby then the shooting was to appear like they shot Muthee for the money as he left the bank.
She told the hit-men that they had to present bloodstained clothes of her husband as proof of his death to receive the balance of Sh160, 000.
Wairimu had explained on her guilty plea that she conspired to murder her husband of 15 years over infidelity.
Then there was another case in 2016 when Bilha Njoki, the estranged wife of Joseph Muraya, paid hit-men Ksh100, 000 to kill him. A call from the killers that the father of two children had been killed and body dumped at a dumpsite in Dandora was made to Njoki.
She was awaiting the news with her sister, Lucy Mwangi, inside her black Harrier parked outside Mama Lucy Hospital in Umoja. They had assorted wines and spirits in the car, six cellphones and the Sh400, 000 balance for the hitmen after accomplishing the murder.
But the death had to be confirmed first. Bilha, who married Muraya in 2007 sent her brother Peter Gakungi and alleged new lover Jimmy Waititu at the murder scene where they found Muraya covered in blood. They made jubilant calls to Bilha but alas! Muraya had been covered in tomato sauce to make it appear like a bloody murder. The killers were undercover police!