This archive report was first published on 8 July 2020.
On June 11, a trader outside the Athi River police station witnessed two young children, Alvina Mutheu, 3, and Henry Jacktone, 4, walk into the police station yard. However, he never saw them leave.
More than a month later, on May 1, the children's bodies were discovered in a car at the police station. A postmortem examination was conducted, but the cause of their deaths remains unknown.
Government pathologist Johansen Oduor explained that the decomposed state of the bodies made it impossible to determine the cause of death. He estimated that the bodies could have been lying in the car for up to four weeks.
"What was left of the children's bodies was not enough to reveal what may have caused their death," Oduor said.
Despite the inconclusive postmortem results, investigators have ruled out the hit-and-run accident theory. They now believe the children may have suffocated after locking themselves inside the car at the police yard.
Forensic examination of maggots collected from the decomposing bodies may provide the only hope left to unravel the murder mystery.
