Janet Mbugua - How I Was Conned By the Family of Serial Killer's 'Victim'

Media personality, Janet Mbugua has narrated how she once fell victim to suave con-artists that thrive in the city of Nairobi.

Ms Mbugua, in the latest episode of Janjaruka, says the incident happened as she was doing a feature story in Kenya having been assigned by her employer in South Africa, where she was working at the time.

She recounted how she went to the home of an alleged victim of self-confessed serial killer Philip Onyancha in Nairobi’s Lenana area to interview the family about the alleged crime.

It was there that the alleged victim’s father tricked her and her cameraman to trust a group of men that he called in to help offer more security and protection for them and their expensive equipment during the shoot.

The man then went ahead to invite her to his home for tea, leaving the cameraman and driver who at the scene when the serial killer’s victim had been found.

But her colleagues were shortly after attacked and kidnapped by the group of men who were supposed to offer them security and taken to Ngong where they were dumped and left to their own devices.

The former anchor and her cameraman weren’t reunited until later that evening when he found his way back to their hotel, with no shoes on, shaken and all their equipment gone!

“The man that we were going to interview is behind this whole thing. He basically set us up!” she recalls his cameraman telling her upon his return.

Other than their equipment, she estimated to be worth Sh500,000, Ms Mbugua also lost her handbag and other personal effects, including her passport.

Although they reported the matter to the police, they never got a chance to ascertain if the man’s son was an actual victim to the serial killer.

But Ms Mbugua says the incident left her so shaken.

“I remember thinking to myself, you can be set up in way that is so tactful, and its organised and there is a rhythm and as system to it,” she says.