A Kenyan man has been extradited to the US nearly a year since he fled the country after police accused him of murdering his girlfriend.
Kevin Adam Kinyanjui Kangethe, 42, had been wanted in Massachusetts. Police found the body of his girlfriend, Margaret Mbitu, in an SUV at Boston Logan International Airport on October 31 after she was reported missing two days prior.
He fled the country a day before her body was found with investigators stating that surveillance footage showed Kangethe leaving a parking garage and entering an airport terminal.
In January, police spotted the man at a Nairobi nightclub and arrested him. He managed to escape from jail days later and was on the run for a week before he was taken into custody a second time in February.
The FBI said Kangethe left Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, on Sunday. The country has an extradition treaty with the US.
He appeared in Suffolk Superior Court on Tuesday, where he was charged with murder and held without bail.
“Mr Kangethe brutally attacked Ms Mbitu in the car with a knife, causing multiple sharp force injuries to Ms Mbitu’s body,” prosecutor Mark Lee said. “Ten wounds just to her neck and face alone.”
Mbitu was a 31-year-old nurse from Whitman. Her two older sisters and mother are all nurses. She was the youngest in the family. Her family reported her missing in late October after she failed to show up for work.
Investigators thought Kangethe could have been involved in the girl’s disappearance from the beginning, CNN reported. Police tracked the man’s Toyota SUV to the airport where they found the woman’s body inside the car. Mbitu had slash marks on her face and neck.
“Our lives have changed forever. I feel the pain every day of losing my sister and I will always fight for her as she would fight for me,” Ann Mbitu, the woman’s sister, said in a statement following the man’s capture.
