The victim claims her ex once had her "committed to a mental health facility," before she fled to the States from Kenya for safety; he allegedly tracked her down and planned to have her killed with pure fentanyl.
A Kenyan man is accused of traveling to the United States to follow his ex and kids, before plotting to kill her with the help of an Uber driver and a hitman.
Leonard Thuo Mwithiga was arrested on Monday in Putnam, Connecticut on charges of attempt to commit murder and attempt to commit murder with special circumstances, according to PEOPLE.
Per court documents (via The Messenger), an Uber driver who later became a confidential informant for the Connecticut State Police Department began driving Mwithiga in early September 2023. In interviews with police, the driver said Mwithiga came to the States from Kenya to “find his children” — and claimed he often drove the man to their high school and another residence to watch “children getting on the buses.”
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During their many rides together throughout a three-month span, the suspect is alleged to have then “mentioned that his divorce has been difficult and that he was considering harming his wife,” before asking the driver if he knew anyone who could put a hit on his “evil” ex to “finish her” and “put that woman down.” He allegedly wanted the driver to find a hitman for him so that there would be no connection between him and the victim’s death.
“Mwithiga asked [the driver] to find someone who can put ‘some injection’ in his wife’s food or water that would kill her slowly,” read the docs.
The driver began recording his conversations with the suspect, before sharing those recordings with detectives. Authorities then met with the woman in question, who said she had been in a relationship with the suspect for 22 years and the pair shared two children. She told police Mwithiga was physically abusive and threatened to kill both her and their children, adding that she attempted to leave the country with her kids but was stopped by authorities and “committed to a mental health facility by police because Mwithiga had filed a police report.”
Feeling nobody could help her due to “Mwithiga’s stature and influence in Kenya,” she flew to the States in 2022, enrolling the kids in school in Connecticut, before eventually moving into a shelter in August 2023. A custody battle reportedly ensued, with the victim saying they had a hearing scheduled for December 6, 2023.
Before that happened, however, Mwithiga was arrested.
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On December 4, an undercover officer posed as a hitman and was connected with Mwithiga via the Uber driver.
“It was agreed between Mwithiga and the undercover (hitman) that he was going to take Victim #1 on a date, at which time the ‘hitman’ was going to snort a line of cocaine while Victim #1 was to snort a ‘hot batch’ which would be pure fentanyl,” read the court docs. While Mwithiga allegedly wanted the phony hitman to “research a slow death,” he eventually “agreed that the hitman could kill the victim in any manner” — wanting it to happen while he was in Kenya, to throw off suspicion.
Mwithiga allegedly paid the undercover officer $300, with another $4,000 promised upon completion of the job. Cops say he then sent the driver a photo of the victim, as well as what he believed was her address. Mwithiga was arrested that same day and is being held on a $5,000,000 bond.
According to NBC Connecticut, should he post bail, he must surrender his passport and remain in Connecticut with GPS monitoring.
He’s due back in court on January 26.
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