Saturday, May 11, 2024 - Police also believe that before the suspect killed Rita, he forcefully obtained the passwords to her mobile phone, granting him access even after the brutal act.
Throughout that fateful night, there was no communication between Rita and her family until 5:30 a.m., when the first shocking message arrived.
The sender claimed to have Rita in custody and demanded a ransom of Ksh 500,000 using her own phone to send the text.
At that time her phone was turned off, including her Airtel line, which sent the ransom message.
These messages, arriving at intervals of 10 minutes, left her parents baffled.
Their attempts to communicate with Rita yielded no response.
Concerned for her safety, they began preparing to pay the ransom, hoping for her release.
Little did they know that their daughter was already gone.
The last time they had spoken with Rita was the previous day when she mentioned meeting a friend for dinner.
That call would mark their final conversation.
The ransom message prompted Rita's parents to rush to Syokimau, where Rita was last seen before her disappearance.
Later that day, another message arrived from the same number, warning them of only 13 hours remaining to send the ransom.
A subsequent message underscored the urgency of the situation.
These messages provided crucial leads for investigators, who traced the signal to a building along River Road in Nairobi's CBD.
Despite a nighttime search, they were unable to locate the suspects.
“At around 10, 11 at night, we were at the city center. They were attempting to see if they could locate that phone. Unfortunately, after a futile search of about 2-3 hours, we didn't succeed, and so the police left, and we left for home,” Rita's father said.
Even after identifying her body at City Mortuary, the suspects continued to harass them via Rita's phone.
“Even after we had identified the body from City Mortuary, the suspects were still sending us messages, and so we expected the action to have been taken, which wasn't,” the mother says.
They responded by asking if they could have a contact through which to discuss this ransom.
“I don't know what had happened, because every time we received a message, we were communicating to the police and telling them that the phone has been opened, a message has been sent, and we expected them to do something,” Rita's mother insists.
Rita Waeni's father believes that the police had the capacity to trace the phone at a certain time before we were asking the phone could go so far away.
“I thought the government machinery would have the capacity to trace such a phone,” he laments.
Despite their cooperation with the police, the phone's location remained elusive, with signals indicating movement along Kangudo Road and then a loss of network in Ruaka.
Rita's parents felt frustrated by the lack of progress in the investigation and the seriousness of the ransom demand.
“As to whether we could raise the money, as to whether we could channel the money, that was not provided at all. So, for me, I didn't think it was a serious question of ransom seeking,“ Rita's father concludes.
By Cyprian Nyakundi.
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