KINLEY and IVYN OGENDI - 10 and 9 yo - (2010) Vadnais Heights (N of Minneapolis) MN

A Vadnais Heights man has confessed to killing his wife and two young children, authorities say.The victims were found Wednesday night after authorities got a call from a relative of 43-year-old Justus Kebabe. The relative was concerned about Kebabe, his wife, 32-year-old Bilha Omare, and their three children, ages 10, 9 and 4.When authorities arrived at the family's Vadnais Heights apartment, they found Omare dead in a bathroom. Ten-year-old Kinley Ogendi and 9-year-old Ivyn Ogendi were found dead in different rooms.More than an hour before the discovery, authorities say Justin Kebabe ran out of gas on southbound Interstate 35, just south of Elko. When a State Trooper pulled over to assist, Kebabe fled the scene; he was caught a short time later.According to the State Patrol, Kebabe appeared to be intoxicated or high. His 4-year-old child was found in the car unharmed and is now in protective custody.Ramsey County Sheriff Bob Fletcher says the deaths mark the county's first triple murder in 33 years. He said investigators do not know how long the victims have been dead. Omare hadn't been at work in a week and her children had been missing from school.Fletcher said it is possible the children were living with their mother's dead body.Friends say the two children were polite, kind-hearted kids who were popular in the neighborhood. Ivyn was a student at Willow Lane Elementary in White Bear and Kinley was a student at Sunrise Jr. High, they said.In an e-mail to 5 EYEWITNESS News, Kebabe's cousin, Joseph Lister Nyaringo, said his relative called him Wednesday afternoon distraught. Nyaringo, who lives in New Jersey, said Kebabe believed his wife had been unfaithful to him and was also upset by the loss of his job. Nyaringo later contacted police, as did another relative.Investigators have not said how the victims died. Kebabe confessed to the murders in an interview with authorities, Fletcher said.Kebabe pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct last year after he was arrested for pushing his wife.

Kenyan man kills his wife and two children in Minnesota


October 14, 2010
Justus Ogendi Kebabe


A mother and her two children were found killed in a Vadnais Heights apartment late Wednesday, and the woman’s husband — and father of the children — has confessed, the Ramsey County sheriff said today.
The man has been identified as Justus Ogendi Kebabe, 43, Sheriff Bob Fletcher said today at a briefing. The couple’s 3-year-old child was found safe with Kebabe.
The names of the deceased have not been released but that information is expected this afternoon. The children were 9 and 12 years old, Fletcher said.
Public records show a 32-year-old woman, Bilha Omare, lived in the apartment.
Around 11:45 p.m. Wednesday, deputies were called to check on the welfare of a person at Willow Ridge Apartments on the 1200 block of County Road D, the sheriff’s office said.
“Unfortunately, when they arrived they discovered a terrible tragedy,” Fletcher said. “A mother and her two children had been murdered and the suspect at the time was not at the scene.”
The bodies of the woman and children were in separate rooms, with the doors closed. The woman was in the bathroom. Fletcher declined to comment on how the victims were killed.
Working with apartment management, deputies determined the woman had a husband, Kebabe, and a child who weren’t there, Fletcher said.
Investigators do not yet know how long the mother and children had been dead. The woman had not been to work this week. The children had been reported sick and were not in school thisweek, Fletcher said.
Photo: Kinley and Ivyn Ogendi who were murdered along with their mother Bilha Omare in MN


It’s possible the kids were killed earlier in the week, but the mother may have been dead before the children, Fletcher said.
Surveillance video showed Kebabe leaving the building at 4:51 p.m. Wednesday, Fletcher said, so “we know that the deaths occurred prior to that.”
“The scene is horrific because we don’t know for sure how long they’ve been dead,” Fletcher said. The children not being in school “lends credence to the fact that they were either murdered earlier in the week or that they were held in the room for the entire period of time while their mother was in the building, deceased,” the sheriff said.

A Minnesota State Patrol trooper arrested Kebabe about 10:30 p.m. along Interstate 35, just south of the Elko-New Market exit, said State Patrol spokesman Lt. Eric Roeske. The 3-year-old child was with him.

About 10 p.m., the Patrol took a report of a vehicle blocking a lane of I-35. Kebabe apparently had run out of gas, Roeske said, and before a trooper arrived, a woman helped push Kebabe car’s to the side of the highway.

Kebabe was gone when the trooper arrived. Soon after, the trooper spotted Kebabe and the man ran away. He was caught “pretty much immediately,” Roeske said. Kebabe was arrested and booked into the Rice County Jail on suspicion of impaired driving.

Troopers did not suspect alcohol and field sobriety tests were not given, Roeske said, adding, “His behavior was erratic enough they suspected something.”

While Kebabe was being processed at the jail, an alert went out that Ramsey County authorities were looking for Kebabe, he said.

A Ramsey County social services worker picked the child up about 4 a.m.The call that summoned deputies came from a relative of the family who had concerns about Kebabe’s “erratic behavior,” Fletcher said. The caller “was worried about whether he was a danger to himself or others,” Fletcher said.

Kebabe had been arrested for misdemeanor domestic assault against his wife in the same apartment in December 2008. The case involved “a physical pushing assault,” Fletcher said. Kebabe pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct in the case, Fletcher said.

“Of course, that makes the event even more disturbing, that the system wasn’t able to intervene during that two-year period,” Fletcher said. He said deputies hadn’t been called to the apartment since the 2008 assault.

Vadnais Heights Mayor Sue Banovetz said Fletcher called her about 3 a.m. and told her what had happened.

“I felt physically ill,” she said, crying at this morning’s press conference. “It’s a very sad day in our community for this family and for the loss of a mother and two of her children. It’s easy and trite to say, I suppose, it never happens in my community. I don’t remember ever a time that this has happened. But it points out that domestic violence can happen at any community.”

Banovetz, who later put flowers at the apartment building’s door, noted that this Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

“I would plead with anybody who is suffering, even a small bit in a home where there’s domestic violence, to please reach out for help,” she said.

Amanda Sjostrand, the apartment’s assistant manager, lives next door to the family. Her daughter usually goes to the bus stop with the children.

“I assumed they were sick because they weren’t out,” she said. “I heard nothing going on suspicious or anything. I just didn’t think anything of it at the time.”

Sjostrand said she didn’t know the adults well, but her children played with the children who were killed.

They were “just beautiful, beautiful caring children,” Sjostrand said. “… They were always taking care of my little one. They were always saying, ‘Hi how are you doing?’ in the hallways. They were just well raised children. They were beautiful, beautiful hearts and they’re going to be truly missed by a lot of people in the building.”

Kebabe was also friendly, Sjostrand said, adding that she “never really suspected anything.”

Kebabe came from Kenya about 10 years ago, Fletcher said. He and his wife both worked, though Fletcher declined to say where.

Marisa Vette, communications director at White Bear Lake Area Schools, would not confirm the two oldest children were enrolled the district’s schools, including Willow Lane Elementary. She said the apartment complex falls within the boundary of the school.

Because parent-teacher conferences were held today across the district, district staff, including Willow Lane Principal Barbara Kearn, spent most of the day at the apartment to “give support to students who live there and their parents,” Vette said.

Conferences also are scheduled for Friday, so students won’t be back to schools until Monday, Vette said.“We’ll have extra support for any students that need it,” she said.

Fletcher said that people at the sheriff’s office don’t remember “a tragedy of this magnitude. We can say definitively for the last 33 years that there has not been a triple homicide in the jurisdiction the sheriff patrols, in the seven contract cities.”

And, with young children slain, “It would be tough to imagine a tragedy as bad as this one,” Fletcher said.

Jambonewspot has been able to get more updates from a relative of the suspect. We spoke to Mr Joseph Lister Nyaringo and in addition to the above, we can report that Mr Kebabe had lamented the fact that he had brought his wife from Kenya to the US and she had started “disrespecting him.” He told Mr Onyango that he believed that his wife was involved with someone else.

Police had earlier last year been called to the couple’s home after a domestic disturbance was reported. Ms Omare claimed that Kebabe had been violent and this lead to the suspect being charged with domestic violence.
Kebabe who was a nurse had his license revoked due to the charges and he was out of work for almost a year. He could not work without his license and he blamed the wife for his woes. His wife was a nursing student in Minnesotta.

According to the Ramsey Sherriff’s department who described the scene as horrific, Ms Omare may have been dead much earlier because she had not gone to work for a while.

They also believe that the children may have had to live and stay in the apartment for a while with their dead mother. They may not have known she was dead and they may have been killed later.
Charges are expected to be filed on Monday.

Burial of Kenyan killed in US postponed

Justus Kebabe and his wife Bilha Omare in this file photo. PHOTO COURTSESY OF FAMILY

Sunday, November 14 2010 at 11:39

The burial of a Kenyan woman and her two children murdered last month in Minnesota, United States, has been postponed after their Kenyan relatives failed to secure travel visa to attend.

Bilha Omare and her two children, Kinsey and Ivyn, were scheduled to be laid to rest on Monday in a public cemetery in New Jersey.

However Bilha's mother, Hellena Chemunto Omare, could not travel for the funeral after the US embassy in Nairobi declined to approve her application for a travel visa, prompting the postponement of the burial.

According to the family spokesman in the US, Shem Onditi, Ms Omare’s relatives who had sought visas at the US embassy in Nairobi on Thursday were told they could not travel as “there is a dispute between the in-laws.”

Bilha Omare and her two kids were killed by her husband, Justus Kebabe, on October 11th at their Minnesota home after he accused her of having an extra-marital affair.

A dispute had arisen between the Kebabe family and the Omare family, both in the US, as to which side had the right to claim the bodies. The Omare family however prevailed on the matter.

The three bodies have since been transferred to New Jersey and are currently at the Watson funeral home.

The Omare family has sought audience with a New Jersey congressman Donald Payne and New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez requesting them to intervene on the visa hitches.

The Watson funeral home has also waived the extra days’ charges brought about by the postponement.

The funeral service will still be held on Sunday but the burial has now been tentatively be scheduled for Friday pending the approval of their kin's visas by the US embassy in Nairobi.

Justus Ogendi, a Kenyan in Minnesota, USA, appeared before an American court last week accused of murdering his wife and two children.

Ogendi recounted to the Ramsey County court how he hit wife Bilha Omare with a golf club, then strangled her with an electric cord inside their apartment.

His son Kinsey Isaboke and daughter Ivyn Bosibori were not lucky either. Ogendi spiked their drinks with pain and fever reliever pills before drowning Kinsey in the bathroom.

Ivyn was suffocated with a pillow case then strangled to death in her bedroom.

Ogendi then attempted suicide but was not successful, and now faces years in jail if convicted of the triple murders.

All this, sadly, for love. The couple had earlier quarrelled after Ogendi accused Bilha of infidelity, and it seems the answers he got from his wife were not satisfactory. To end the heart ache, he decided to wipe out his entire family.

bump

twinkletoe wrote:Justus Ogendi, a Kenyan in Minnesota, USA, appeared before an American court last week accused of murdering his wife and two children.

Ogendi recounted to the Ramsey County court how he hit wife Bilha Omare with a golf club, then strangled her with an electric cord inside their apartment.

His son Kinsey Isaboke and daughter Ivyn Bosibori were not lucky either. Ogendi spiked their drinks with pain and fever reliever pills before drowning Kinsey in the bathroom.

Ivyn was suffocated with a pillow case then strangled to death in her bedroom.

Ogendi then attempted suicide but was not successful, and now faces years in jail if convicted of the triple murders.

All this, sadly, for love. The couple had earlier quarrelled after Ogendi accused Bilha of infidelity, and it seems the answers he got from his wife were not satisfactory. To end the heart ache, he decided to wipe out his entire family.

This article sounds sympathetic to this murderer.

To end his heartache? How can slaughtering a woman and two children ease anyone's heartache? Dear God, think of the heartache this murderer brought on the family and people who loved this murdered woman and her two murdered children.

This was not done for love. This is an act of hatred, rage, and revenge. Perpetrated by an evil monster.

Justus Ogendi Kebabe admits killing wife and two kids
It was a gruesome scene: a mother and her two children, ages 8 and 10, dead in a Vadnais Heights apartment building late last night. Justus Ogendi Kebabe, 43, has already confessed to killing his wife and kids.

The mother hadn't shown up at work this week, and her children hadn't attended Willow Lane School, in White Bear Lake, since Monday. A family member called Ramsey County for a welfare check because Kebabe had apparently been behaving erratically.

When deputies paid a visit to the Willow Ridge Apartment building at 1255 County Road D at about 11:45 p.m. Wednesday, they found three bodies in three separate rooms. It looks as though the mom may have been dead longer than her children, and that the kids might have been living in the apartment with their dead mother for several days, Fox9 reports.

Minnesota State Patrol officers got a call of a motorist out of gas around 10:30 p.m., more than an hour before the report of the murders came in. Troopers came to Kebabe's assistance on I-35 near Faribault. But instead of being glad for the help, Kebabe ran from them, leaving a third child, a 4-year-old, behind in the car.

Troopers arrested him for driving with a suspended license, and booked him into Rice County Jail. Only later was the connection to the homicides made.


Kebabe has already confessed to the murders, the Strib reports.

Judge Gail Chang Bohr set Kebabe’s bail at $3 million, which prosecutors had requested. If convicted, Kebabe could face up to 40 years in prison for each count against him.

His next court appearance is scheduled for Oct. 29.

Kebabe gets life for killing wife, 2 children
Jan 14, 2011
ST. PAUL, Minn. -- A Kenyan immigrant was sentenced to life in prison after murdering his wife and 2 of their 3 children last October.

Justus Kebabe, age 43, said nothing as a Ramsey County Judge gave him 76 and 1/2 years for the 3 murders. He would be at least 94 years old before he is eligible for release.

The bodies of 32-year-old Bilha Omare, 12-year-old Kinley Ogendi and 9-year-old Ivyn Ogendi were discovered in their Vadnais Heights apartment by family members on October 14th.

Kebabe was arrested while trying to flee when his car ran out of gas on Interstate 35 near Faribault. The couple's then-3-year-old daughter Savannah was found in the car unharmed.

During victims impact statements, Bilha Omare's uncle Peter Masongo told the court "As a family, we are grateful and satisfied that today we saw justice take place. Here was a heinous crime and we could not have asked for more than what happened today."

Masongo continued "Our focus moves from here to Savannah the little girl that was left behind. We want to focus our energies to raising her."
http://www.kare11.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=900484