This happened to my friend! Her four daughters all got As and are successful and abroad now. The boys from the second wife ni drug addict and dwanzis.
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The case of Glady’s Ogola and her husband Boaz Ogola, who died in a fire incident at their home dominated news in 1975. Gladys and Boaz, who was a planning officer at the University of Nairobi, had been married for 10 years when the incident occurred.
For any random person, everything seemed to be going on well for the couple, especially judging from their lifestyle. However, behind the walls of their beautiful home on General Mathenge Rd in Westlands, tears of anguish flowed freely.
Gladys had given birth to girls only, a situation that resulted in a rift in the marriage. In a society where men with sons were held in awe, Boaz Ogola could not just fathom having a family without a son.
In 1971 , in search of a son, he started spending some nights away from their matrimonial home and returning in the morning to take children to school before heading to work. ( mpango wa kando).
The straw that broke the camel’s back was in 1974 when Gladys became pregnant and gave birth to a girl for the fourth time. After two weeks in maternity, she returned home with her baby only to discover that her husband had married a second wife.
She expressed her displeasure about her husband’s behaviour and threatened to leave the matrimonial home.
So one month later when the fire broke out in the house killing the husband, Gladys became the automatic suspect, with investigators stating that two bowls of petrol were found in the bedroom in which her husband was burnt to death.
After a short preliminary hearing, Magistrates GHT Pogon committed Gladys for murder trial, saying, " l find her responsible for her husband’s death. "
As she began her trial before High Court Judge Justice Derek Schofield, everyone knew his goose was already cooked, and the chances of her escaping the hangman’s noose looked very slim.
Among those who gave evidence were friends and relatives. Mr Ochieng Otieno claimed that she met Gladys outside the smouldering house and asked her where the husband was , and she simply told him, “He is away.” According to Otieno, it was only later that the police told him that a man had been burnt in the house.
Margaret Atieno, a cousin of Mr Boaz Ogola( who surprisingly and miraculously had escaped from the same burning house told the judge that she met Gladys standing outside with the children and asked her where the husband was and she told her that he was the first person to escape.
Another witness claimed that she heard Gladys saying self-incriminately, "l am finished. I have dipped my legs in the fire. I have killed myself, "while another one claimed that some months earlier, he had heard Gladys making violent threats, “One day l will do something big.”
In their evidence to the court police investigators told the judge that they found two plastic bowls of petrol in the bedroom where the husband’s body was found. But under intense cross examination by Gladys’s lawyer Mr Byron Georgiadis, the police changed their story this time, claiming that the deceased man’s relatives found the bowls of petrol and not them.
Lawyer Georgiadis pointed out to the judge that there was no way two plastic bowls full of petrol could survive intense fire, adding that definitely a “foolish” person planted them there.
So, was the fire caused by an electric fault? Giving his testimony, Wilfred Onyimbo, an electrician in the Ministry of Public Works, told the judge that he inspected the house and there was nothing at all to suggest that fire was caused by an electric fault.
But under the merciless grilling by lawyer Georgiadis representing Gladys, the electrician also changed his story and admitted that the fire could have been caused by an electric fault.
Georgiadis then turned to the judge, telling him that the whole prosecution case was “worthless,” lacked facts, and was purely based on circumstantial evidence.
In his ruling, Justice Schofield agreed with lawyers Georgiadis. He stated: " A first class system of justice requires first class police investigations. The standard of investigation in this case has fallen far short of the standard this court would expect."
The Judge went on, "A careful analysis of the prosecution case shows that no one item of evidence points to the guilt of the accused to the exclusion of any other reasonable hypothesis. "
Gladys was therefore found not guilty and set free by the court. Her lawyer’s arguments were that most probably, Boaz committed suicide.
