CLOSE to three and a half years after his arrest, Kenyan nurse Kenneth Bunge Orina has been found guilty on charges of murder and attempting to defeat or obstruct the course of justice.
The only reasonable inference that could be drawn from the evidence heard during Orina’s trial is that he committed an assault on his wife, Rose Chepkemoi Kiplangat (33), with the intent to kill, and that he then tried to mutilate her body beyond identification by dismembering it and strewing her remains at different sites in and around Grootfontein, Judge Christie Liebenberg found in the verdict he delivered in the High Court at Oshakati yesterday.Orina (38) was accused of murdering his wife in their flat at the Grootfontein State Hospital Nurses’ Home between September 14 and 17 2007.Body parts that were alleged to have been Kiplangat’s remains were found at four different scenes in and around Grootfontein between September 17 and 25 2007.Orina was arrested on October 30 2007.During his trial he claimed his wife had left their home around September 15 2007, and that she never returned. He also disputed that the body parts that were found were her remains.In his verdict yesterday, Judge Liebenberg rejected Orina’s evidence as untruthful.’In the present circumstances the State case is based on real, direct and circumstantial evidence,’ Judge Liebenberg said in his judgement.Fingerprint and DNA evidence which the prosecution presented to the court to prove that the body parts were the remains of Kiplangat was real evidence which undoubtedly proved the identity of the deceased person in the case, the judge found.The prosecution proved that a fingerprint of Orina was found on a plastic bag that contained two human forearms and a head, and that DNA matching Orina’s was found on latex gloves which lay at the scene where the first body parts were picked up, the judge found.’In addition thereto, is the direct evidence given by the accused in statements and pointing out voluntarily made to a magistrate and two police officers, respectively. Circumstantial evidence, inter alia, would be the evidence of clear plastic (sheets) used for wrapping furniture found in the accused’s home, similar to what was used to wrap some of the body parts in; latex gloves found in the flat identical to those found at the scene; the disappearance of the accused’s wife under circumstances that appear suspect; and explanations given by the accused to several independent witnesses concerning the whereabouts of the deceased, in circumstances where she in all probability, was already dead,’ Judge Liebenberg said.In the statement that he made to a magistrate at Grootfontein on November 14 2007, Orina related that his wife was killed accidentally when she sustained a cut to the neck while he was wrestling with her in an attempt to disarm her, after she had threatened to kill him with a knife.Orina however claimed during the trial that the statement was not made freely and voluntarily, and that Police officers had instructed him what to say to the magistrate.’If regard is had to the smallest of detail in which the story was narrated to the magistrate, one is inclined to conclude that this is not something that had been dictated to him by someone else; but rather something coming from the accused,’ Liebenberg commented on this score.Arguments before Orina’s sentencing are scheduled to be heard on May 17.
