It was Munga, the police inspector, who found Tirop’s body. The runner had missed an early morning training session the previous day and failed to answer her phone or respond to messages. Her family and friends reported her missing.
Police broke a padlock on the front gate and forced their way into her house. “As soon as I entered, I knew something was wrong,” says Koilel, who had been trying to reach his running partner and was with Munga that day. “Blood was creeping into the living room. I ran out of the house and cried.”
Tirop’s husband, Ibrahim Rotich, 44, was arrested a few days later in Mombasa, a 13-hour drive away near the Tanzanian border. He had fled Iten, covered in blood, in his brother’s Toyota Axio, according to the statement he gave police. Rotich’s lawyer didn’t reply to requests for comment.
Hundreds of pages of court documents, including witness statements, reports, affidavits, police logs and investigation files seen by Bloomberg, tell how Tirop went from being an impoverished teenager in a family of 10 to a star. Born in 1995 in a town west of Iten, Tirop started running in primary school. By age 17, she was participating in international cross-country races. She ran the 5,000 meters at the World Junior Championships in Spain. In 2016 she quit school to live with Rotich, who was 16 years older. Her father was concerned that Rotich had coerced his daughter into leaving school early and reported the matter to the police. But no action was taken because Tirop was an adult.
The couple bought a plot of land using Tirop’s prize money and built a home in Iten, where they lived with Tirop’s sister Eve. They also purchased several rental properties and land plots, court documents show. Rotich said in his statement that he and Tirop “had a good life since we married” and that they engaged in real estate development projects together.
Over the following years, Tirop won a race in Switzerland and finished on the podium at events in Qatar, Italy and the UK. In 2012 she signed with Adidas, which provided her with coaching help and equipment.
But as successes on the track were mounting, so were tensions in her personal life. In July 2021, when Tirop returned to Kenya from the Tokyo Olympics, where she finished fourth in the 5,000 meters, the couple began having “domestic wrangles,” according to a police report. On one occasion Rotich hit Tirop and threatened her with a rungu, a wooden baton used in Maasai culture, he admitted in the confession he gave to police after the murder. Rotich and Tirop’s family also told police that the couple had fought over access to Tirop’s bank accounts as well as ownership documents of a vehicle they had purchased.
Tirop didn’t file a complaint with the police, but after the beating she and her sister went to live with their parents. She told her sister about the incident, according to a statement Eve gave to police after the murder. Tirop also told Koilel.
Koilel said in his statement to police that Tirop told him Rotich had beaten her after she questioned his spending so much money in nightclubs. “She also told me that her husband had intentions of breaking her legs so she could not run again,” he reported. Koilel also says he advised Tirop not to go back to Rotich and regrets not counseling her to go to the police.
Sylvie Kibet, a medalist in the 5,000 meters at both the World Championships and the Olympics, traveled and trained with Tirop when she was younger. In the days leading up to her death, Tirop stayed at Kibet’s running camp in Iten. Kibet remembers how distraught Tirop had become. “I feel like this man was using her,” she says. “I know she felt she had no freedom anymore, like she was in custody. She could not talk to anyone, she could not make phone calls, she could not make friends, she could not go out.”
After weeks of trying to make contact with Tirop, Rotich persuaded her to return home, several witnesses told police. On the night of Oct. 11, 2021, Eve says, she heard her sister and Rotich arguing until the early hours of the morning. Soon afterward, Agnes was brutally murdered.
“This man pretended to be a coach and manipulated my daughter,” says Tirop’s father Vincent, still raw with grief. “That is the main problem that many athletes are facing.”