10 Most Notorious Criminals In Kenya's History

Crime in Kenya is not a strange topic and some of the people compiled on this are hardcore criminals and what they did will give you chills down the spine.

What they did was inhumane and despicable!

Without further ado,let me take you through the list and several videos we were able to gather;

1.EDWARD MAINA SHIMOLI 'THE JACKAL'

This was one of the most slippery criminals that Kenya has ever seen.

He was nicknamed after ‘Carlos the Jackal’, the terrorist from Venezuela who managed to escape from the police numerous times.

Shimoli succeeded in staying away from police radar for more than a decade.

He also escaped from jail three times.

In 1996, his colleagues busted him out of Kamiti maximum prison by shooting their way through, a day before he was scheduled to face the hangman’s noose.

He was convicted of hundreds of bank robberies, 88 rapes, 14 murders and numerous drug deals…

2. JOHN 'BATISTA' KIRIAMITI

He was born in 1950 in Central Kenya.

By the time he was only 20 years old, Kiriamiti was already on the most wanted list for a string of violent robberies around Nairobi.

He was arrested in 1971 and jailed for 20 years in prison.

While serving his sentence, he started writing his famous novel My Life in Crime.

He was released 13 years later for portraying good conduct.

However, he was jailed again in 1986 after being accused of being part of those planning to dethrone the then president Moi.

3. GERALD WAMBUGU MUNYERIA ALIAS WANUGU

Gerald Wambugu Munyeria Alias Wanugu- He was a tout before becoming a mechanic.

Wanugu started criminal activities in the late 80s and was part of a gang that terrorized Kenyans until the 90s.

He was a famous bank robber, managing to outrun the elite flying squad police unit plenty of times.

This was until 1996, when his illustrious career came to an end in Nakuru.

Both he and his girlfriend were sprayed with bullets when they were spotted running errands together.

Wanugu reportedly tried to use his girlfriend as a human shield, hoping for a negotiation..…

4. SIMON MATHERI IKERE

When the entry on the Most Wanted List is titled Public Enemy No. 1, then you know the police have a funky content creator for their website or the man are completely badass.

Matheri begun his working life as a taxi driver in…you guessed right, Rongai.

He was arrested and jailed for arson for five years at the one place where hardened criminals in KE are manufactured, Kamiti Prison.

In his short career, Matheri was said to have shot and killed or wounded: prominent African AIDS researcher, Job Bwayo; Lois Anderson, a Presbyterian missionary, and her daughter Zelda White, the wife of a U.S. embassy employee, a Carol Briggs, a missionary volunteer.

He is probably the only violent robber in Kenya who once had a Wikipedia page(It has since been removed).

Matheri lived a very simple but wild life.

Of all the criminals on this list, he showed the most ingenuity for someone who had never attended a military school.

He had never used the front door of the house in Kitengela, and his wife of two years knew him as Matheru because there is nothing like hiding ones identity by switching a vowel.

When he was killed,the only things found in the house were two mattresses, a coffee table, a sofa set, a DVD and a 14-inch TV.

The police swoop was carried out by over 100 police officers who, after riddling his body with bullets the typical Kenya police way, soiled the crime scene in unrestrained joy.

They were too excited to remember to remove the handcuffs from the man they had just killed.

How hard can it be to stage a he started shooting at my (m)boys and they returned fire scenario?

So the body camera crews beamed to the world had the hands stuck curiously behind because the officers had slept through their pathology class and new zero about rigor mortis.

The next day, an accomplice of his committed suicide.

Unless there is an unspoken suicide pact between such criminals, the death itself was as interesting as the fact that the Gachie villagers burned his body…

5. ANTHONY NGUGI KANAGI ALIAS WACUCU

Was part of a gang that reigned supreme for almost a decade.

This was from the 80s to the 90s.

He committed hundreds of armed robberies, bank heists and murders.

In his earlier years, Wacucu was a matatu driver with exceptional mechanic skills.

This explains how he was able to out run the police during car chases.

In 1996, he was gunned down in Rongai, Kajiado.

The controversy in his death came from his mother.

She claimed that the body which they buried didn’t belong to his son raising questions as to whether he really died or escaped…

6. DANIEL KIPTUM CHERUIYOT ALIAS FRANK

No, this is not Frank Martin but I can see why you would make that error.

Neither was he ever a CID detective, as he made everyone believe.

He had only once been a Police Reservist who lost his job for hiring out his gun out to robbers. Cheruiyot was also soft-spoken, murderous, cunning, and meticulous.

Like Matheri and Wakinyonga, he sparingly furnished the houses he lived in.

In his house in Zimmerman where he was killed in 2005, he only had a single bed, a five seater sofa set (because a gang of five is not going to sit on the floor is it now?) and a black coffee table (I am resisting referring to it as ‘a black loot-counting table’).

He was also the chairman of the Imara Daima Estate Security Committee.

“Only a few metres from the Deliverance Church, and tucked away in a secluded part of the vast estate, the house has a high perimeter wall ringed with broken glass. It is less than 200 metres away from the busy Thika Highway, and boasts burglar proof doors and windows.Sandwiched between two houses, a passer-by has no view of Cheruiyot’s den, let alone the activities of its residents.

The house’s backyard is, however, not barricaded with a wall like the front, and offers a possible escape route to the highway. “

He killed the first officer who went to arrest him in Imara Daima, Charles Karue and later killed Maina Cheserem.

What more would a man who has already survived several gunfights, become a gangster complete with several homes and police murders, already using multiple phones in 2005, and died holding an Uzi sub-machine gun, do to be even more badass?

“Cheruiyot recently telephoned the control room at police headquarters and warned that he would continue killing police officers because he knows clearly that they are looking for him.”

The man who did was rewarded…

7. BERNARD MATHERI ALIAS RASTA

He and his wife Mary Wanjiku were more than lovers, they were accomplices in crime.

This is very uncommon in the lifestyle of Kenyan criminals since most prefer keeping their dirty laundry from their significant others.

Their gang consisted of four. Matheri was killed in 1997.

Two years later, his lover was arrested and jailed for seven years in prison when a robbery attempt on an armoured vehicle went wrong.

The other member was John Kibera, the famous coffin stealer who recently got saved after escaping death.

The last member, Timothy Ndegwa, is currently serving a life sentence at Kamiti Maximum Prison…

8. HARRISON OKUMU

A serial killer, Harrison Okumu has died after a fight following a disagreement with cellmates at Kisumu’s Kodiaga Maximum Prison.Okumu was facing charges of killing 5 people and burying them in his compound.

The suspect was arrested in August 2013 2015 after Miguye village residents in Kisumu County unearthed human remains buried in a shallow grave next to his house.

He was arrested in Mombasa where he had boarded a Garissa bound bus after weeks of police tracking…

9. PHILIP ONYANCHA

Philip Onyancha is Kenya's most brutal if not terrifying serial killer in history.

Onyancha is said to have killed and drunk the blood of 17 women after in what he claimed was a satanic ritual.

Onyancha mainly targeted prostitutes and street children and was arrested and now serves time in prison.

10. PETER MWEA WAKINYONGA ALIAS WAKINYONGA

His surname Wakinyonga is Swahili for strangle which is quite ironic.

Apart from being a famous bank robber, he was also a cold blooded killer.

He is the ‘Godfather’ in the history of Kenyan crime due to the lots of gangsters that he influenced.

In the 1970s, Wakinyonga was the most wanted man in Kenya with a bounty of KES 100, 000 (USD 1,160) on his head.

That was quite a large amount in those days.

In his lifetime, he robbed millions of shillings from various banks countrywide.

He was killed in 1978 after a dramatic gunfight with the police in a club in Kangemi, Nairobi.

Culled from the Internet.

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