Former UK Serviceman Accused of Murdering Kenyan Female Shows Up in Courtroom

A man has been presented in court as extradition proceedings started in the legal matter of Agnes Wanjiru, a female from Kenya who was murdered near a British army base in the year 2012.

The accused Robert Purkiss, thirty-eight, who is a native of Greater Manchester, was presented at the magistrates' court in Westminster on the last Friday, and informed the court he would challenge the deportation. Reports indicate that he was arrested on Thursday night.

A warrant for arrest for Purkiss was authorized by a Kenyan court in Nairobi in September. The state attorneys told the Kenyan court that the individual had been facing a sole charge, of homicide, and that the Kenyan government would request his deportation to answer to accusations.

Purkiss previously worked as a medical attendant with the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, the infantry regiment for the English northwest, including on deployments in Afghanistan.

Wanjiru, twenty-one, a hair stylist who had a young daughter, went missing after a night on the town, and her body was located two months later in the premises of the hotel where she had previously spotted.

No one had earlier been taken into custody or charged in connection to her passing. Purkiss’s arrest was the result of a new police inquiry, which came after a exposé in the year 2021 by the Sunday Times, in which the publication reached out to several active and retired troops in the military group.

The probe has been headed by Kenyan detectives, which, under a bilateral defence agreement, retains jurisdiction in the legal case.