A man wanted in Massachusetts to face murder charges has been rearrested, a week after he dramatically escaped from police custody, Kenyan police said Wednesday. Kevin Adam Kinyanjui Kangethe escaped while awaiting extradition on a Massachusetts warrant alleging he killed his girlfriend and left her body in a car at a Boston airport. Last week he slipped out of a police station and jumped into a privately owned minivan. Kangethe was arrested in Embulbul, Kajiado County, on the outskirts of Kenya's capital Nairobi on Tuesday evening as he sought refuge at one of his relatives' homes.
The officer's report seen by the AP said that on the day Kangethe escaped, a man named John Maina Ndegwa introduced himself to the officers as Kangethe's lawyer and said he wanted to speak with his client. "The officers agreed to his request and removed the prisoner from the cells and took him to (an) office ... leaving them there. After a short while the prisoner escaped by running away and left the (lawyer) behind," the report said. Officers pursued Kangethe but did not catch him, the police report said, adding that Ndegwa was arrested.
In a country where corruption is endemic and the police force has been ranked for decades as the most corrupt institution in the country, Kangethe's escape raised suspicion that police officers working at the time may have been bribed to allow his escape. Indeed, Nairobi police chief Adamson Bungei told CNN that Kangethe's "unfortunate" escape was the result of "unethical conduct." Four officers have been suspended awaiting disciplinary action and may face prosecution. Kangethe, 40, had been detained pending a ruling on whether he should be extradited to face a first-degree murder charge in connection with the death of Margaret Mbitu on Oct. 31, 2023.
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Massachusetts State Police said in early November that Kangethe had left her body in a car at Logan International Airport and boarded a flight to Kenya. Massachusetts officials said they were working with Kenyan authorities to locate him, and he was arrested in a nightclub on Jan. 30 after being on the run for three months. A police official told the AP that Kangethe said he had renounced his US citizenship. The official said if Kangethe were an American citizen he would have been repatriated without a court process. The court approved a police application for him to be detained for 30 days while the extradition issue was heard.
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