The city had already begun to slow when the night closed in. Apartment corridors fell quiet, lights dimmed behind drawn curtains, and the ordinary movements of Nairobi settled into sleep. It was in this stillness, prosecutors told the court, that a life ended — unseen, unheard, and later pieced together through testimony.
In a Milimani courtroom, police officers retraced that silence with words. One by one, they described the events that followed the discovery of Starlet Wahu Mwangi’s body in a short-stay apartment in South B. Their testimony, delivered months after the night itself, sought to connect those final hours to a single figure: John Matara.
An officer told the court how he was among the first responders, arriving at Papino Apartments after reports of a woman found unresponsive. Inside, investigators encountered a confined scene — a room marked by signs of struggle, a body bearing multiple stab wounds, and the stillness that follows violence once it has passed. The testimony did not linger on spectacle. Instead, it moved carefully through observation, evidence, and sequence.
According to the prosecution, Starlet Wahu had checked into the apartment earlier that night in the company of Matara. CCTV footage from the building, police said, showed the pair entering together. Later images captured a man believed to be Matara leaving alone, his clothes appearing stained. These fragments — video frames, timestamps, movements — were presented as quiet witnesses to a night that no longer speaks for itself.
Forensic analysts added another layer. Biological samples collected from the scene and from items recovered during the investigation were examined, with DNA results presented as linking Matara to the apartment and to the weapon prosecutors allege was used in the killing. The defence has challenged aspects of this evidence, and the court has yet to weigh its final significance. For now, the testimony remains part of a larger mosaic still being assembled.
Matara was later traced to Mbagathi Hospital, where he sought treatment for injuries. Police described his arrest not as a dramatic pursuit, but as a continuation of a trail already laid by cameras, medical records, and physical evidence. In court, Matara has pleaded not guilty, maintaining his innocence as the prosecution continues to call witnesses.
Beyond the technical language of the trial, the case carries a quieter weight. Starlet Wahu, known publicly as a socialite, appears in court records now mostly as evidence — as a timeline, a scene, a set of findings. Yet each testimony returns, implicitly, to the same absence: a woman whose story is now told by others, in a room far from where it ended.
The proceedings are ongoing. No verdict has been delivered, no conclusion reached. What remains, for now, is the slow, deliberate work of the court — listening, recording, and attempting to reconstruct a night that left little behind except questions, evidence, and a silence that testimony is still trying to fill.
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Sources
Capital FM Nation Media Group TV47 Digital Kenya Police Service Milimani High Court