Kenyan assistant pastor kills his wife, the head pastor, then himself
The husband of a pastor in Kenya killed his wife in a fit of rage during a church ceremony while she was on the altar. He left behind an angry suicide note
During a church service on Sunday, an assistant pastor in Kenya walked up to the pulpit and fatally stabbed his minister wife before taking his own life.
As the congregation prayed, Elijah Misiko, an assistant pastor with the Ground for God’s Gospel Church in Mombasa, got up from his front row seat, walked up to the pulpit and appeared to be whispering something in his wife’s ear. But instead, he stabbed Ann Mughoi, who served as the church’s senior pastor, two times as the congregation looked on in shock, according to CNN.
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Police said eyewitnesses tell them Misiko had hidden a knife inside of an envelope.
“He walked up to his wife while the church was praying as if he wanted to whisper something to her,” Mombasa sub-county police commander Julius Kiragu said, according to CNN. “Then he took one of the knives and stabbed her (wife) two times. He believed she was dead. He then stabbed himself three times in the stomach and slit his throat.”
Misiko died immediately. His wife died a few hours later at a local hospital, police said.
Kiragu said the couple, which had four children, had been living apart for the past two years after they got into a feud over the direction of the church, according to CNN.
Mughoi went to Mombasa police in 2017, claiming that Misiko was planning to kill her. He was detained by police but then released the next day after police found the accusations to be unsubstantiated.
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“She had been trying to stay away from the husband since the dispute over the ownership of the church began,” Kiragu told CNN. “They had even reported the matter to church leaders but they were unable to resolve the dispute.”
Misiko left a 17-page suicide letter behind. In it, he accused his wife of changing the church’s ownership, which he claimed the couple founded, to her name alone, police said.
