Crime & Investigations

Sex, violence and property were at the heart the divorce between Dutchman Tob Cohen and his wife Sarah Wairimu, papers obtained by the Star show.

The court papers, exclusively obtained by the Star, paint a picture of marriage with sky-high hostilities, one that was irretrievably ruptured and had become conjugally nonexistent.

The Dutch businessman appeared to make every effort to push Wairimu out of their Lower Kabete home, the papers indicate.

Cohen went missing in July and the police found his body in an empty water tank in his home compound on September 13. It was a brutal murder.

 Widow Wairimu, 52,  is being held at Lang’ata Women’s Prison and is to plead to a murder charge on Tuesday.

It was the 71-year-old Cohen who first filed for the annulment of the union on January 21 under a certificate of urgency. He claimed that Wairimu had been denying him sex since 2014.

He said they were sleeping in separate bedrooms and he was preparing his own meals.

On February 25, Cohen amended the grounds for dissolution of the marriage to include cruelty and violence from Wairimu.

The Dutchman said that on one occasion Wairimu had stormed into his office, thrown water on him and warned, “Do not think that this is all; this is not over.”

He also said that four days later, Wairimu assaulting him, causing “cut wounds and multiple bruises and as a result…[I] suffered pain and agony.”

“[After pushing him off a flight of stairs]..while the applicant was lying on the ground, bleeding, the respondent came on top of him and started punching him and kicking him,” the petition by lawyer Judy Thongori reads. 

Cohen urged the court to order the OCS of Spring Valley police station to evict Wairimu from their home pending the determination of the case.

In 2015, as their marriage continued to deteriorate, Wairimu put a caveat on the land to stop its sale, a copy of which the Star has obtained. Documents show that Cohen attempted to remove the caution via an application dated July 1, 2019.

Wairimu’s rejoinder

But in a rejoinder in a sworn counter-affidavit, Wairimu “admits that the marriage had irretrievably broken down but avers that the break down is on account of adultery and cruelty on the part of petitioner [Cohen].” 

Asserting that she also wanted a divorce, Wairimu dismissed the claim that she was violent, arguing that this was a ploy by Cohen to paint her as a bullying spouse. 

The particular attack started by Cohen was staged by him to build his divorce narrative, she said.

She also dismissed the claim of denial of conjugal rights, saying that they always shared the master bedroom except in sporadic occasions when she had been “forced to take refuge in our daughter [Renee] Gathoni’s bedroom during times when the applicant is excessively intoxicated and abusive.”

“It is only in December 2018 that the applicant started claiming that we have not been intimate for four years and I believe that the claim is intended to [be a] narrative that the marriage has broken down,” she wrote. 

Their 31-year-old daughter lives in the Netherlands with her husband, the papers read. 

Wairimu further said that though they would engage in sex, Cohen was highly ineffective some times failed to perform as he was an abuser of drugs and had secretly undergone a procedure that sabotaged him.

“The applicant underwent a prostrate operation which seems to have affected his ability to engage often or effectively in the manner that he did before the operation,” she claimed.

This situation made him increasingly “unreasonable, aggressive and rude and he would often come home in the early hours of the morning in an extremely intoxicated state,” Wairimu said.

She did not give the dates of the procedure or where it was performed.

The medical procedure, she claimed, resulted in Cohen engaging in an extremely erratic lifestyle with “disruptive sleeping patterns which involved kicking me at night on the claims that I snore and waking up numerous times all through the night to smoke”.

She also claimed that Cohen was a womaniser who would come home with makeup on his shirt.

Wairimu painted Cohen as a frustrated amorous old man out to evict her from their matrimonial home so he could entertain other women.

“The very intention of the petitioner is to ensure my removal from the matrimonial home so that he can have the home to himself to entertain other women of his choice as he pleases,” she writes.

She said that on one occasion while she was away, Cohen had brought another woman to their home, including the bedroom. When she asked, he responded that the woman was his future wife from Machakos, the papers read

The papers also show that Cohen was particularly angered by the reportedly secret construction of a property in Nyeri in By Wairimu.

However, the widow told the court that she never had any construction in Nyeri and that it was Cohen who had a secret construction going on in Murang’a, together with advocate Chege Kirundi. 

“…there has never been anything secret about the property in Nyeri. The applicant has all along known of my ownership of one-acre piece in Nyeri. Our daughter Gathoni expressed the desire to construct a house on the said plot and I asked the applicant if he was willing to partner with her on the project but he expressed no desire at all…citing that his funds were committed to an ongoing construction project in Murang’a county which he was doing in partnership with his friend and lawyer Mr Kirundi,” she swore in the her affidavit.

Kirundi was the lawyer who presided over the opening of the Dutchman’s will last week. He did not disclose its contents.

Staking claim to their home on Lower Kabete Road, Wairimu said they had been cohabiting as man and wife since 1998, bought the land and constructed the house together.

Hence, she said she owns it as much as Cohen did.

“Even as we stand here, many of the ones responsible for Tob’s death here in sheepskin, believe you me, your days are also numbered.”

These were the ominous words of Sarah Wairimu, the widow of the slain Dutchman Tob Cohen during his burial on Tuesday at the Jewish Cemetery in Nairobi.

Wearing black trousers, a flowered blouse, she clutched a bouquet of red and yellow roses close to her chest. The flowers were handed to her by her lawyer Philip Murgor.

She has been detained in connection with the murder but was allowed to attend after a court order.

The brief Jewish ceremony, presided over by a rabbi and Jewish priests, was conducted in a tense atmosphere. Barbs were traded between Cohen’s brother Bernard and Sarah.

 Bernard started the exchange when called to speak, suggesting the union between Cohen and Wairimu was a marriage of convenience. He said it was plotted single-handedly by Sarah as a scheme to save Cohen from getting kicked out of the country.

“Today we are gathered here to bury my brother for the second time, but this time with dignity,” Bernard said, a reference to the discovery of the body in a water tank.

He explained that the marriage was Sarah’s idea when his [Cohen]’s neighbours started fighting over his properties. 

“He got a piece of land so his neighbours started fighting over his premises. So he would have been kicked out of this country. According to Sarah, they had to marry for him to stay in Kenya,” he said. 

The brother also said that the relationship between the two started slowly as Cohen kept it under wraps, not wanting to let his family abroad to know.

“One thing I know about my husband is that he was a real simba, he was not scared of anybody. One thing Tob taught me is not to take no for an answer. So even in this, I’m going to fight.”

“He fell in love with Kenya, and later started a new life. In the meantime, a secret relationship started growing slowly by slowly with Sarah. He raised Sarah’s daughter and sponsored her education since she was three years old until she did her master’s degree at in a university in the Netherlands,” he said. 

Bernard created the impression that his brother was not proud of his relationship with Sarah and kept it hidden from his family.

“So unexpectedly, we learnt of the torturing and subsequent slaughtering of our brother…. For the three of us coming from a family of a Holocaust survivor, it was least expected.”

When she got her chance to speak,  Sarah rubbished the claim of her presence in Cohen’s life being a secret, asserting that she was “a Cohen”.

“There is nothing secret. I’m glad you’ve heard all my names and I’m glad you realise I’m Sarah Cohen. Know that very clear,” she said. 

“One thing I know about my husband is that he was a real simba [lion], he was not scared of anybody. One thing Tob taught me is not to take no for an answer. So even in this, I’m going to fight,” she said.

Sarah said the killers of her husband were at the gathering, pretending to be family, calling them wolves in sheepskin.

“It’s been painful but I’m glad…..the family members who are pretending as family….yours is another story,” she added.

Sarah said her relationship with Cohen was public and was widely known in their golf fraternity.

“Those responsible for Tob’s, death (are here) yet pretending to be sheep and purporting to be family…I will fight back,” she said.

Former politicians Peter Muiruri and Ngengi Muigai, who both spoke after the Bernard Cohen, said they knew Cohen was murdered immidiately he was reported missing.

“Even when people were saying he is missing, I knew he was murdered. I was the last person to speak to him and what he told me I have told the DCI,” Muiruri said. HIs statement appeared to upset Sarah and her lawyers. Their faces were grim.

Earlier on, there was tension between Philip Murgor and Muiruri. Others had to intervene to calm them.

“This is not his funeral. He must learn to act with civility,” Murgor was heard chiding Muiruri.

After the speeches, the presiding rabbi identified as Yacoub announced that a Jewish-only delegation would be allowed to proceed to the graveside for the last rites.

The rest would follow at a roughly one-metre distance. Then each of the Jewish clerics and the rabbi dropped a spade of soil in the grave

Sarah was allowed to do the same after Cohen’s lawyer Cliff Ombeta attempted to block her, saying no woman would be allowed at the graveside.