NAIROBI: Kenyan police said they arrested on Monday a suspected serial killer who confessed to murdering 42 women, including his wife, and discarding their dismembered bodies in a Nairobi rubbish dump. Since Friday, nine butchered bodies trussed up in plastic bags have been recovered from the site of an abandoned quarry in the Mukuru slum, a gruesome discovery that has horrified the nation.

Acting Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja said the 33-year-old suspect, named as Collins Jumaisi Khalusha, was arrested at around 3:00 am (0000 GMT) near a Nairobi bar where he had been watching the Euro 2024 football final. "We are dealing with a serial killer, a psychopathic serial killer who has no respect for human life," the head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) Mohamed Amin told reporters. "We are dealing with a vampire, a psychopath."

Amin said Khalusha claimed the murders took place between 2022 and July 11 this year. "The suspect confessed to have lured, killed and disposed of 42 female bodies at the dumping site," he added. "Unfortunately, and this is very sad, the suspect alleged that his first victim was his wife ... who he strangled to death, before dismembering her body and disposing it at the same site." Police said Khalusha would appear in court Tuesday.

'Luring another victim'

The suspect was tracked down after analysis of one of the victim's mobile phones, Amin said, in a joint operation by the DCI and the National Police Service. As officers swooped, "he was in the process of luring another victim", Amin said. Khalusha had confessed to having had "carnal knowledge" with some of his victims, he added.

Officers searched his one-room house, located just 100 meters (300 feet) from where the bodies were found, discovering a machete, nylon sacks, rope, a pair of industrial rubber gloves — as well as a "pink female handbag", and "two female panties". The areas will remain "active crime scenes", Amin said, promising a thorough investigation.

Nine mutilated and dismembered bodies have so far been retrieved from the crime scene, according to police, with Kanja saying autopsies on the victims would be carried out on Monday. Eight have been confirmed to be female. A second suspect who was caught with a phone belonging to one of the victims has also been arrested, Amin said.

After the discovery of the bodies, Kenya's State Department For Gender and Affirmative Action on Sunday condemned the "horrific act" and urged more action against gender-based violence. In 2022 the East African country recorded 725 femicide cases according to a UN report, the highest number since data collection began in 2015.

Police under spotlight

The dumped bodies have thrown yet another spotlight on Kenyan police and added more pressure on President William Ruto, who is struggling to contain a crisis over widespread anti-government protests that saw dozens of demonstrators killed. Kenya's police watchdog, the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA), said Friday it was looking into whether there was any police involvement in the bodies found in the dump, noting the dumpsite was just 100 meters from a police station. IPOA was also investigating if there had been a "failure to act to prevent" the grisly killings. Kanja told reporters on Sunday that all officers at the nearby police post had been transferred.

Still, tensions ran high at the crime scene over the weekend, as volunteers combed through the vast piles of rubbish in search of more victims with officers briefly firing tear gas to disperse the crowds. Kenyan police are often accused by rights groups of using excessive force and carrying out unlawful killings or running hit squads, but few have faced justice. The Mukuru killings follow the so-called "Shakahola forest massacre" when the bodies of some 400 members of a doomsday cult were discovered in mass graves near the coast last year. — AFP