Kenyan police announced Monday the arrest of a suspected serial killer who admitted to murdering 42 women, including his wife, and discarding their dismembered remains at a Nairobi landfill.
Since Friday, authorities have recovered nine mutilated bodies wrapped in plastic bags from the garbage site in Mukuru slum, south of the capital – a chilling find that has shocked the nation.
Acting Inspector General of Police Douglas Kanja reported that the 33-year-old suspect, identified as Collins Jumaisi Khalusha, was apprehended around 3 a.m. (12 a.m. GMT) Monday near a Nairobi bar, where he had been watching the Euro 2024 football finals.
"We are dealing with a serial killer, a psychopath who has no respect for human life," said Mohamed Amin, head of the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI), addressing reporters.
"He's a vampire, a psychopath."
Amin said Khalusha claimed the murders occurred between 2022 and July 11 of this year.
"The suspect confessed to luring, killing, and disposing 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 ... whom he strangled to death, dismembered, and disposed of at the same site," he said.
Luring another victim
The suspect was tracked down after analysis of one victim's mobile phone, Amin said, in a joint operation by the DCI and the National Police Service.
As officers swooped in, "he was in the process of luring another victim," Amin said.
Khalusha confessed to having had "carnal knowledge" with some of his victims, he added.
Officers searched his one-room house, located just 100 meters (yards) from where the bodies were found, discovering a machete, nylon sacks, rope, a pair of industrial rubber gloves, a pink female handbag, and two pairs of women's underwear.
The areas will remain "active crime scenes," Amin said, promising a thorough investigation.
According to police, nine mutilated and dismembered bodies have been retrieved from the crime scene, with Kanja stating autopsies on the victims would be conducted Monday. Eight of the victims have been confirmed as female.
A second suspect who was found with a phone belonging to one of the victims has also been arrested, Amin said.
Police under scrutiny
The discoveries have cast a spotlight on Kenyan police and increased pressure on President William Ruto, who is grappling with a crisis stemming from widespread anti-government protests that resulted in the deaths of dozens of demonstrators.
Kenya's police oversight body, the Independent Police Oversight Authority (IPOA), said Friday it was investigating whether police were involved in the bodies found at the tip, noting the dumpsite is only 100 meters from a police station.
IPOA is also investigating whether there was a "failure to act to prevent" the grisly killings.
Kanja, in office for only a week following fallout from last month's protest deaths, told reporters last week that all officers at the police post near the rubbish tip had been transferred.
Still, tensions were high at the crime scene over the weekend as volunteers sifted through vast piles of rubbish in the abandoned quarry in search of additional victims.
Brief trouble erupted when locals attempted to take a bag they had retrieved from the pit to the police station but were met with tear gas volleys, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist at the scene.
Kenyan police are frequently accused by rights groups of using excessive force, carrying out unlawful killings, or operating hit squads, with few facing justice.