Investigators and government officials at the spot where Dr Ouko’s remains were discovered at the foot of Got Alila. This was about three kilometres from the late minister’s Koru home where a herdsboy stumbled on the remains, three days after the former foreign affairs minister had gone missing on the night of February 12/13 1990.
The discovery of Ouko’s grotesquely charred body triggered mass protests both in Nairobi and Kisumu. Earlier, the government, through the then Voice of Kenya, had put out an announcement the previous day that Dr Ouko was missing and appealed to anybody with information on his whereabouts to come forward.
In the days that followed, an under pressure President Moi called in the Scotland Yard to conduct an investigation to unravel the murder mystery and find the killer(s).
A public Commission of Inquiry under Appeal Court Judge Evans Gicheru, who would later serve as Chief Justice under the Kibaki administration, was constituted.
Forensic evidence suggested that the minister had been murdered, killed by a single shot to the head, his right leg broken at multiple places, and his body partially burned. There was also evidence that a gun had been discharged at the scene, although the bullet was never found.
The report by Scotland Yard’s Supt. Troon, who led the probe team, recommended further investigation into Ouko’s murder. It called for ‘further inquiries’ on the roles of Hezekiah Oyugi, a Permanent Secretary in the Internal Security ministry, James Omino, who was Kisumu Town MP, and Nicholas Biwott, then a powerful minister for energy.
It was also evident that in the run up to the murder, Ouko’s relations with powerful government figures who included Moi and Biwott became strained.
This was during President Moi’s trip to the United States. Biwott and Ouko were among government officials who accompanied the then president on the trip.
But if Ouko’s murder was a mystery, the deaths of witnesses and his former associates were equally mysterious. Among those who followed Ouko to the grave were Hezekiah Oyugi in 1992, Justice Fidahuseein Abdalla in 1992 (he died before he could deliver a ruling on the murder case), lead investigator Joseph Mbogo in 1993, Oidho Agalo, who was a farmhand at Ouko’s farm, and Otieno Gor, who was the last person to have seen Ouko alive.
Others were Joseph Otieno Yogo, the late minister’s driver and bodyguard, who died at the Mater Hospital in 1992 ‘after a short illness’ and Paul Shikuku, the herdsboy who found Ouko’s remains. Philip Kilonzo was at the centre of the investigations as he was the Police Commissioner at the time of Ouko’s murder.
He died at his Ndalas Pub in Matuu, shortly after ordering his favourite drink. Moments before he died, he is said to have received a call and walked out.
When he returned, he took a sip from his glass and exclaimed: ‘This beer tastes different. What have you done to it?’
He collapsed and died minutes later.