In a heart-wrenching case that shocked the community, it was revealed in court that Joyce Muthoni — the woman seen smiling in the picture — orchestrated a chilling plot to murder her foster father, Mr. Mburu Kinani. Her motive? To prevent him from dividing his property among the family of his wife, Magdalene, whom he married after separating from Joyce’s mother back in the 1970s.
Despite living in the United Kingdom, Joyce remained fixated on the property her foster father owned in Kenya. Her obsession turned sinister in 2009, when she instructed her younger sister, Hannah Wanjiku — pictured beside their dying father — to poison the porridge meant for him. Hannah obeyed. But fate intervened.
The elderly Mr. Kinani, sensing something amiss from the unusual smell of the porridge, refused to eat it. He demanded that it be sent to the Kenya Government Laboratory for analysis. The results were chilling: the porridge had been laced with a highly toxic pesticide. Had he consumed it, he would have died instantly. In what many described as divine intervention, the old man was spared — that time.
Years later, in 2024, Mr. Kinani passed away from unrelated causes. But the battle over his burial and property reignited with a vengeance. Joyce Muthoni, the same daughter once implicated in an attempt to take his life, returned — not to mourn, but to claim. She launched a legal battle against the very family that had cared for Mr. Kinani in his final years at his home in Gilgil.
Tragically, nearly a year after his death, Mr. Kinani’s body still lies in a mortuary — unburied, unsettled — because Joyce insists he be laid to rest in Gatanga, where her mother (who separated from Mr. Kinani decades ago) once lived. Meanwhile, the family that stood by him, nursed him, and honored his wishes, continues to fight to grant him peace in the place he called home.
What should have been a solemn moment of closure has instead become a symbol of how greed and betrayal can fracture families, even beyond death. See the toxicology report
