15/07/2026
Having followed this case since 2019 till the conviction today (7 years later), all I’d say is that this man is so evil and vile. He groomed her while she was underage, married her right after high school, got her pregnant twice, only to deny the children, then killed them all in cold blood.
Before I tell you this story, let me leave you with a thought that may one day save someone’s life.
The day you separate from someone who suddenly begins questioning the paternity of children they have always acknowledged, don’t spend years trying to convince them otherwise. Walk away. Raise those children alone if you must.
I say the above because from years of observation and countless stories passed down generations, an African father may fail in many ways: He may be poor. He may be absent. He may even be bitter after a separation. But a father who casually disowns his own children is often signaling that something far deeper has broken inside him.
Hata wakuekelewa watu wanalea hapa nje after realizing they were played. I know people still raising kids their estranged wives came into their now broken marriages with. That’s who an African father is.
Sometimes the argument is no longer about DNA but revenge. And revenge has no conscience.
Now, this is the story of how former Kenya Air Force Major, Peter Mwaura Mugure, murdered his estranged wife, Joyce Syombua, and their two young children (Shanice Maua (10) and Prince Michael (5)), before secretly burying them in a shallow grave near Laikipia Air Base in Nanyuki.
It is a story that begins, as many tragedies do, with love.
Peter and Syombua were children of Nairobi’s sprawling Kayole estate. Both were raised in humble circumstances by two very hardworking mothers, Hannah Mugure and Elizabeth Maua Malombe. They understood hardship before they understood romance.
After High School, Peter Mwaura Mugure earned admission to Egerton University to study Civil Engineering. While he was pursuing his degree, Syombua was still in high school. He visited her during school visiting days, and by the time she completed her education, he had graduated.
The two young adults fell in love.
He introduced her to his family… then they got married.
Soon, they welcomed their first child, Shanice Maua.
To everyone watching from the outside, they looked like a young family beginning a beautiful life together. But appearances can be dangerously deceptive.
The marriage collapsed within a short time. Syombua left and began raising their daughter alone. According to evidence later presented in court, Peter declined to support the child financially, forcing her to work multiple jobs, including one at a local bakery in Kayole, simply to provide for her daughter.
Yet, like many separated couples who struggle to let go completely, their paths crossed again. In one of these many mini-comebacks, she became pregnant with their second child, a little boy named Prince.
When Syombua once again sought child support, Peter responded by denying that either child was his.
Syombua would refused to fight him physically or through emotions. She chose the law. The court ordered DNA, a test whose results were conclusive. It was medically determined that both children were Peter’s.
He was ordered by the court to pay Ksh. 25,000 every month in child maintenance and was granted visitation rights. Syombua was legally required to facilitate those visits whenever.
One day, Peter lured them to Nanyuki, under the pretext he wanted to see his kids. Syombua would honour the court order and agree to travel with her kids.
Her mother, Elizabeth Maua Malombe, was uncomfortable with the arrangement. To Syombua’s mother, something about the trip to Nanyuki didn’t feel or sit right.
But Syombua reportedly insisted.
“I have to do this for the children.”
Those words would become heartbreaking in hindsight.
Before leaving Nairobi, she kept a close friend, Farizana, updated through text messages. She shared their journey, their arrival at Laikipia Air Base and the events unfolding there.
The first night passed, though not as queitly as it should have. According to Farzana’s account, later, after the children had gone to sleep, Peter allegedly suggested they shower together.
She (Syombua) refused.
The following morning Syombua texted Farizana, saying they had simply slept “like brother and sister” and that perhaps that was the healthiest way for them to coexist as separated parents.
Farizana replied with a simple warning.
“Please be careful...”
The next day, Peter said he wanted to take the children for a walk around the military base.
Syombua stayed behind and used the time to jump in the shower.
Hours passed.
The children never returned.
When she asked where they were, he reportedly reassured her that they were safe at a friend’s, and urged her instead to focus on their private time and resolving their own differences.
It was the last reassurance she would ever receive.
Syombua’s phone fell silent from that last chat with her friend. Farizana called repeatedly without success.
When she finally reached Peter, he claimed Syombua had already travelled back to Nairobi after an emergency at the barracks and that he had escorted her to the bus stage in Nanyuki.
The explanation didn’t make sense. Not after everything Syombua had shared.
Trusting her instincts, Farizana reported her disappearance to the local police in Nairobi.
Then came a twist no one could have imagined.
A public service vehicle operator travelling the Nakuru–Nanyuki route found a mobile phone abandoned inside one of their vehicles. As staff searched for its owner, they noticed one number appearing repeatedly in the recent conversations.
It belonged to Farizana.
They called it.
The phone was Syombua’s.
It was the first crack in a carefully constructed lie to try cool the investigators’ lead towards the main suspect.
As investigators pieced together the evidence, an even darker picture emerged.
The prosecution demonstrated that this was not a crime committed in a moment of uncontrollable rage.
It was a plan.
According to the judgment delivered by the High Court in Nyeri, Peter Mugure lured Syombua and the children to Laikipia Air Base on 25 October 2019, presenting it as nothing more than a father exercising his court-sanctioned visitation rights.
The following morning, he took the children away under the innocent pretext of showing them around the military installation.
They never came back alive. He strangled his two kids.
Later that evening, he came back home and told Syombua he had taken the kids to a friends so they could have some privacy. He took their mother out at a local restaurant for dinner, drove her back and killed her that night. The autopsy report revealed that Syombua died as a result of blunt force trauma.
The court found that after the murders, he concealed the kids’ bodies in an adjacent house to his and later sought help from a casual labourer around the Barracks to help carry them out of the Barracks.
It is this man who would later sign a plea-bargain and turn into a State Witness helping resolve the murder. According to his witness account, he helped Major Mugure hide the three bodies, in the boot of his vehicle, drove them away from the air base and disposed of them by burying them at a graveyard in a nearby remote location.
Apart from promising to help him secure a recruitment in the military, Major Mugure also threaten to harm him should he reveal what he had seen.
But perhaps the most chilling evidence was not how children were strangled and their bodies hidden in a house just a spitting distance from where their mother was waiting from the whole day, before being sneaked out of the barracks to the burial site. No. It was what happened before anyone died.
Witnesses testified that three days before the killings, Peter had already visited the remote site and arranged for a shallow grave to be dug.
The grave was waiting.
He wasn’t looking for somewhere to bury his family after they were dead. No. He had prepared their final resting place while they were still alive.
That single fact transformed the case from one of violence into one of calculated ex*****on.
The High Court concluded that the prosecution had presented credible, consistent and overwhelming evidence proving beyond reasonable doubt that the murders were premeditated. He was convicted to life imprisonment on all three counts of murder.
Now, there’s a lesson buried beneath this tragedy: Many people imagine that evil announces itself with shouting, threats and public violence.
Often, it doesn’t. Major Mugure is said to have been a very quite and polite man. One of his siblings is on record describing him as someone who “wouldn’t have harmed a fly.”
So, it therefore suffices to say that sometimes evil smiles.
It agrees to meet. It asks to see the children and does so politely. It follows court orders, until it no longer intends to.
And perhaps that is the hardest lesson of all.
May I also add that not every act of forgiveness deserves another opportunity. Not every shared child guarantees shared humanity.
Sadly, I have to end by saying this: Sometimes the bravest thing a parent can do is not to save a relationship, but to recognize when protecting the children means walking away, and doing so forever.
