Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) Keriako Tobiko has directed the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) to investigate afresh a case in which former assistant minister Betty Tett was accused of conspiracy to murder.
The DCI had dropped murder charges against Tett.
Tobiko wants DCI director Ndegwa Muhoro to constitute a new team of sleuths to look into the case afresh and submit the file to his office within 21 days.
Tobiko took the decision after businessman Andrew John Laird White petitioned him to reinstate conspiracy murder charges against Tett.
Mr White hasd stated in his petition that he had obtained telephone data linking Bett with the main suspect in the case.
White wrote to Tobiko through his lawyer Paul Mwangi seeking the reinstatement of the case by reviewing his decision not to prefer charges of conspiracy to murder against Tett and one John Wachira.
“I have been instructed there is pending before you a request of the reopening of investigations and review of decision not to prefer charges of conspiracy to murder on one John Linus Wachira together with Betty Tett, respecting our client Andrew John Laird White. I wish to review the application and to restate it as follows,” the lawyer’s letter dated January 16 stated.
Yesterday, Tobiko stated : “In light of the contents of aforesaid and the accomapnying documents. I do therefore direct that this matter be re-investigated by a new team of investigators.”
Tobiko said that the petion contains details of new developments that the White’s advocate says have arisen in the matter which they think will support their request for review of ther earlier decision.
In the petition, White argued that the DCI’s recommendation to drop the conspiracy to murder charges was based on an incompetent investigation and perverted analysis of evidence and witnesses.
Tett’s son David William Tett, who is serving a life sentence at the Kamiti Maximum Security Prison, has recanted his earlier statement relied on by the DPP to terminate the murder charges against her and her alleged co-conspirator Wachira.
Wachira was arrested after allegedly trying to kill White in 2014 and is now in Kamiti. White claims to have obtained from private investigators records of Tett and Wachira, which show they were in contact in 2013.
The lawyer has presented the DPP with four box files of phone records together with a soft copy on disk.
He had wanted a reinvestigation of the phone records by a new and independent team.
In January 2015, David William Tett wrote a statement from the Kamiti Prison, discrediting the testimony of Wachira that implicated his mother.
Wachira was the hitman allegedly employed by Tett to kill White, who she considered a business rival. David’s testimony that Wachira was just a conman and not a killer caused the case against his mother to collapse.