(CNN) — A suspected serial killer has confessed to murdering 42 women over the past two years, police in Kenya have said, in a shocking case that has sparked calls for increased measures to combat gender-based violence in the country.
Authorities said Collins Jumaisi Khalusha, 33, “lured, killed, and disposed of 42 female bodies,” of which only nine have been recovered.
He was arrested in Soweto, east of the capital Nairobi, at 3 a.m. local time on Monday, outside a club where he had gone to watch the Euro 2024 soccer final, Kenya’s director of criminal investigations, Mohamed Amin, told journalists on Monday.
“On interrogation, the suspect confessed to having lured, killed, and disposed of 42 female bodies at the dumping site, all murdered between 2022 and Thursday, 11 July, 2024,” Amin said.
Acting police inspector general, Douglas Kanja, added in a statement that the “post-mortem examination is happening today” on the nine bodies recovered so far.
In a news conference on Sunday before the suspect’s arrest, Kanja said the bodies “were severely dismembered, in different states of decomposition, and left in sacks.”
“We are dealing with a serial killer, a psychopathic serial killer who has no respect for life,” Amin said Monday.
Khalusha “led officers to his single room rented house,” which is located about 100 meters (328 feet) from the crime scene, Amin said. A machete, 12 nylon sacks, a pair of industrial rubber gloves, a hard drive, and eight smart phones were among “crucial” items police said they discovered in the rented house.
Amin said that, according to the suspect’s confession, his first victim was his wife, whom he “strangled to death before dismembering her body and disposing it at the site.”
“From his interrogation, all his victims have been murdered in like manner,” he said.
Khalusha’s arrest followed “forensic analysis of a mobile phone belonging to one of the victims, Josphine Mulongo Owino, where mobile money transactions conducted on the day she went missing pointed to the suspect,” according to Amin.
The first six bodies were discovered on Friday by residents of Kware, in Nairobi’s Mukuru kwa Njenga neighborhood. Kenyan Police said the bodies were found in an “abandoned quarry,” currently “filled with water and used as a dumpsite.”
On Monday, police said the suspect lived a short walk from the dumpsite, raising questions about how he evaded detection for two years. The site is also close to a police station.
A group of female leaders called for enhanced protections for Kenyan women on Monday after increasing cases of femicide.
“Those women might have been killed today, but which woman is next in line?” asked Kajiado lawmaker Leah Sankaire Sopiato at a press briefing. “It is so sad that someone who killed 42 people was still roaming out there. Women’s lives must count, and women’s lives must be protected.”
They called for the re-establishment of gender desks at police stations countrywide with well-trained officers to address cases of gender-based violence.
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