Former UK Serviceman Charged of Killing Kenya Woman Appears in Courtroom

A man has appeared in court as extradition proceedings started in the case of Agnes Wanjiru, a Kenyan woman who was found dead near a UK military installation in 2012.

Purkiss, 38, who is hailing from Greater Manchester region, was presented at Westminster magistrates court on the last Friday, and told the court he would challenge the extradition. Sources suggest that he was taken into custody on the evening of Thursday.

A warrant for arrest for the defendant was authorized by a court in Nairobi in September. The state attorneys informed the Kenyan judiciary that the accused had been facing a sole charge, of killing, and that the government of Kenya would request his deportation to stand trial.

Purkiss was once employed as a medical attendant with the Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment, the infantry regiment for the northwestern England, including on deployments in Afghanistan.

Agnes Wanjiru, twenty-one, a hairdresser who had a young daughter, vanished after a night out, and her body was discovered two months later in the premises of the accommodation where she had last been seen.

Nobody had before been detained or charged in relation to her death. His detention came after a new police inquiry, which was initiated after a report in 2021 by a Sunday newspaper, in which the publication contacted several current and former soldiers in the unit.

The probe has been spearheaded by detectives in Kenya, which, under a bilateral defence agreement, retains jurisdiction in the case.