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A man has appeared in court as extradition proceedings began in the case of Agnes Wanjiru, a Kenyan woman who was killed near a British army base in 2012.
Robert Purkiss, 38, who is originally from Greater Manchester, appeared before Westminster magistrates court on Friday , and told the court he intended to contest the extradition. It is understood that he was arrested on Thursday night.
An arrest warrant for Purkiss was issued by a court in Nairobi in September. The prosecution told the Kenyan court that Purkiss had been charged with a single count, of murder, and that the Kenyan government would seek his extradition to face charges.
Purkiss served formerly as a medic with the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, the infantry regiment for the north-west of England, including on tours of Afghanistan.
Wanjiru, 21, a hairdresser who had a baby daughter, vanished after a night out, and her body was found two months later in the grounds of the hotel where she had last been seen.
Joel Smith KC, appearing on behalf of the Home Office, told the court: “The allegation dates back to ... between February and April of 2012.
“Soldiers in the British Army ... were in Nanyuki, Kenya on a six-week training exercise. The defendant was amongst those soldiers.
“During the time that they were in Kenya, they were given two days off on March 31 and April 1, and subsequently ... they returned to the United Kingdom.
“There is evidence that when the soldiers were given time off, they would go into town, drink heavily, and they would pay local women for sex.”
Smith said some of the soldiers left their base and went drinking in the town on the night of 31 March. “They were drinking heavily. Many of them, including this defendant, ended up in the Lions Court hotel,” he said.
Smith told the court that “some soldiers had booked rooms or cottages in the hotel grounds,” and that “also on that night, Ms Wanjiru and two of her friends went into Nanyuki town”.
“She had left her baby daughter with a friend, and they ended up at the Lions Court hotel where they met a number of soldiers,” Smith said.
“The last time Ms Wanjiru was seen alive, she was leaving the hotel with a soldier. As she left, she told a friend in her local language that she was going to ‘hustle for her daughter’.”
He told the court that Wanjiru “was never seen alive again”.
“She didn’t return home the next day to pick up her daughter,” he told the court. “Her friends started to look for her, and on April 2 she was reported missing to the police.”
Smith said that about two months later, on 5 June, “in the grounds within the hotel, they found her body decomposing in a septic tank”.
He said the body was “significantly decomposed” and a post-mortem examination identified a 2cm stab wound to the lower abdomen and a collapsed lung.
Nobody had previously been arrested or charged in connection to her death. Purkiss’s arrest followed a fresh police investigation, which came after a report in 2021 by the Sunday Times, in which the newspaper approached several current and former soldiers in the regiment.
The investigation has been led by detectives in Kenya, which, under a bilateral defence agreement, retains jurisdiction in the case.
