Kenyan Banker Arrested In US For Allegedly Trying To Hire Hitman For His Wife After She Left Him

• Leonard Thuo Mwithiga and his wife had been married for 22 years and gotten two children before their marriage turned sour
• The banker became abusive and once locked up his estranged wife in a mental facility when she tried to seek refuge abroad
• She finally managed to move to the US, upon which Mr Mwithiga followed her and tried to hire a hitman to kill her before he was arrested

Leonard Thuo Mwithiga, a 52-year-old Kenyan man, has been arrested in the US for soliciting the services of a hitman to kill his wife.

The former bank executive was nabbed after approaching a hitman who turned out to be a Confidential Informant (CI).

Mwithiga had wife locked in mental facility

Law and Crime reports that before the intent to kill, Mr Mwithiga once had his wife locked up in a mental facility when she tried to escape him with their children.

According to a report by the Connecticut State Police, the suspect and the CI, posing as an Uber driver, had several meetings between September 9 and December 1.

The former banker told the "hitman" about his divorce, calling his wife evil and accusing her of turning their kids against him.

“Mwithiga stated that he was ‘very, very mad, I need someone who is a killer,'” read part of the state police report.

The Mwithigas have 2 kids

As the plans picked gear, the informant started recording every conversation between him and the client, which bordered on the plans to do away with the woman.

The would-be victim, who worked for a local airline before moving to the US, disclosed that she had been married to the suspect for 22 years.

She fled Kenya in September 2022 because her husband was physically abusive and had on several occasions threatened to kill her together with their two children.

Before she successfully ran away, the victim had ended up in a mental facility after her husband filed a police report accusing her of being "mentally disturbed".

“Once Victim #1 was released from the hospital, Mwithiga apologized for sending her to the hospital, and they reconciled,” the report adds.

Hitman turned out to be informant

On Monday, December 4, Mwithiga, the Uber driver, and an undercover state police sergeant met outside the Motel where he was staying.

He allegedly paid the undercover cop KSh 46,000 and the Uber driver KSh 15,000 upon reaching an agreement that he would kill the victim between January 28 and February 3, 2024.

He set the date ahead to enable him to travel back to Kenya so that the murder would occur while he was not in the US.

Mwithiga would then send the Uber driver KSh 613,000 to pay the hitman once he received his estranged wife’s obituary.

Things came crumbling on December 4 when he was arrested and jailed on a KSh 766 million bond for criminal attempt murder with special circumstances, conspiracy, and witness intimidation.