A British father-of-three has escaped a life sentence in an African jail after an 18-month battle that started when he was accused of murdering a Kenyan woman.
Businessman Richard Alden was incarcerated for 63 days in a block for alleged killers, but flew out of Nairobi yesterday after hiring one the world’s most famous private investigators.
After the married 54-year-old proved his innocence, he told how he found himself at the centre of an investigation following the death of his alleged mistress, with whom he denied having an affair.
Richard Alden was held in a prison that is reserved for alleged murderers in Kenya after he was accused of shooting dead a woman in Nairobi
‘Initially it was a public witch-hunt,’ he told The Sunday Times. ‘I was going to be the sacrificial lamb.
‘Somebody’s died; there’s been a gunshot and the person who has supposedly perpetrated it is a foreigner and not only that, he is supposedly a very wealthy foreigner.’
His situation was worsened by the country’s outcry when white landowner Thomas Cholmondeley shot a game ranger and a poacher dead in two separate killings in 2005 and 2006.
Cholmondeley was heir to the Delamere peerage and descended from the founder of the British settler group who came to Kenya.
Grace Wangchechi Kinyanjui was fatally shot at the suburban family home and later pronounced dead at hospital
Alden says the British Empire’s legacy still has consequences for Kenyans today.
‘There is a feeling in Kenya 54 years after independence that white people and wealthy people get away with things,’ he said.
Such was Mr Alden’s distrust of the Kenyan police that he called in private investigator Jeffrey Katz.
Katz probed the death of Vatican banker Roberto Calvi, who was nicknamed ‘God’s banker’ and whose body was found hanging from London’s Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.
After Katz secured Alden’s freedom, the businessman also thanked wife Martine, who visited him daily in prison and ignored false reports in the press that her husband was having an affair with the victim, 42-year-old Grace Wangechi Kinyanjui.
Alden’s battle began on June 4 last year, when he was spending his Saturday clearing out the house he and his family rented in Karen, Nairobi.
He was living in the suburb during a three-year term as chief executive of home entertainment company Wananchi.
Because his contract had expired months before, Alden’s wife and children had already left Kenya and he had asked Kinyanjui, a local woman, to help.
He and his wife got to know Kinyanjui due to their shared passion for marathon running.
Thomas Cholmondeley is pictured receiving his sentence after being found guilty of manslaughter
On the day, Alden, Kinyanjui and his housekeeper were at the property when at about 1pm he heard a gunshot while sorting through paperwork he had taken from a safe in the adjoining dressing room.
After hearing the shot, Alden was seen by his housekeeper rushing back into the dressing room.
He found a seriously injured Kinyanjui lying on the floor after a single shot from the Glock 17 handgun he stored in the safe.
Alden hit a panic button to alert security guards, called the police and tried to stem her bleeding with a towel.
He joined the housekeeper and two guards to drive her to a nearby hospital where she was pronounced dead. Alden was arrested that evening and six days later charged with murder.
Roberto Calvi, whose body was found hanging from a London bridge. Katz, who proved Alder’s innocence, became one of the world’s most famous private investigators after investigating the Vatican banker’s death
Friends would quiz him in the months that followed as to why he did not escape to Tanzania as soon as Kinyanjui died, to which Alden responded he was innocent.
‘I had nothing to hide,’ he said. ‘I had no expectation they were going to charge me with murder.
‘Why would they? I was sitting there in hospital, sobbing my eyes out, my friend had just died and I was in shock.’
False reports, partly based on police briefings, cast Kinyanjui as Alden’s lover. Articles also stated she was found with stab wounds and that her body was dragged to a car.
The prosecution successfully argued his safety could only be guaranteed in jail, due to the risk he was judged to be at from vigilantes. They also established he should not initially be granted bail.
Public hostility also dogged his wife, who hired protection when she came back to Nairobi to help her husband.
While visiting him in prison, she developed a rapport with Alden’s jailers and reached out to Kinyanjui’s family.
Alden said: ‘If it hadn’t been for [my wife] I would still be there.’
The victim’s mother, Anastasia, told Alden she didn’t believe the prosecution’s case.
‘I don’t believe that a person like you would murder anybody,’ she said.
Kinyanjui died after being hit with a single bullet from a Glock 17 (pictured: file photo of the Austrian-made pistol)
‘But if you were going to do it, why on earth would you do it in broad daylight and then take my daughter to hospital?’
Anastasia even filed an affidavit stating her family believed the death was down to an accident and not murder.
Alden spent hundreds of thousands of pounds on lawyers in Kenya and the UK as well as enlisting Katz.
The chief executive of the corporate investigations firm Bishop Group, he credited a former forensics expert with the case’s key breakthrough.
Geoffrey Arnold, who specialised in firearms while working with the Metropolitan police, found that the bullet hit the floor first, killing Kinyanjui on the rebound.
His report concluded she had picked up the gun from the open safe, posed with the weapon in front of the mirror and pulled the trigger back before the Glock went off with tragic consequences.
Alden usually stored his ammunition separately from the firearm, but had left a single bullet in the pistol a few months previously.
Despite his ordeal, Alden has kept in touch with other inmates who have since been acquitted and says he still loves Kenya and its people
He kept the bullet in the gun because of night-time intruders in his garden, but forgot the weapon was loaded when he opened the safe.
‘There is an element of culpability in that — and I am not hiding from it,’ he said.
‘I am going to have to live with that for the rest of my life. There is a tragic story behind this.’
Kenyan prosecutors ruled the case could not continue, allowing Alden to walk free on October 30, leaving behind a prison cell he described as like ‘a scene from Mad Max, quite frankly’.
Keen to forget the lack of sanitation inflicted on him at the jail, he prefers to recall inmates with whom he forged surprising friendships.
Alden remains in touch with Pastor Peter and block ‘boss’ George Wafula, who have both since been acquitted.
And his family have also formed strong relationships with members of Kinyanjui’s extended family, joining them for Christmas last year, when they celebrated at the Aldens’ holiday home in Nanyuki, a town near Mount Kenya.
Last week Alden finally transported the contents of his Nairobi home to Nanyuki and intends to return with his family for future holidays.
Despite his ordeal, he said: ‘I love the country, I love the people.’