A murder case in which a wealthy Belgian woman was allegedly killed by her best friend to inherit her fortune has descended into chaos when one of the lawyers received a WhatsApp message saying “please help me, I am still alive”.
Mireille Dysseleer, 65, had moved to the Kenya capital Nairobi almost three decades ago after falling in love with a local dancer, where she purchased several properties and when she vanished, her best friend Lucy Waithera who had inherited her assets was accused of killing her.
She vanished in 2018 but has now allegedly sent several messages claiming that she is in fact alive and imprisoned by a new lover.
Brian Khaemba who is the lawyer for the missing woman’s best friend Lucy Waithera, who was arrested in February 2020, presented the WhatsApp messages to the court on Wednesday, 10th November, according to local media outlet Tuko.
One of the messages read: “Today is 10/11/2021, please help me. I am still alive.”
Dysseleer who apparently sent the messages moved to Nairobi from Belgium in 1993 after falling in love with a local dancer, Manuel Lesoipa.
The couple lived happily together and even built themselves a house in the city.
In 2004, Dysseleer’s husband decided that he wanted their relationship to be ‘polygamous’ and married a second woman.
Feeling betrayed, Dysseleer filed for divorce but by this point, the couple had purchased several properties and a drawn-out legal battle over their ownership began.
In 2017, Lesoipa died and Dysseleer assumed ownership of all the properties. She sold a number of houses and moved into an affluent neighbourhood of Nairobi.
But in 2018, she vanished and her body was never found, leading local authorities to conclude that she was dead with the body possibly cremated to hide the evidence.
Waithera became the prime suspect in the case and is accused of killing her best friend before forging a series of documents that declared that the victim had left the properties in Nairobi to her.
She was reportedly arrested at her home and was found to be in possession of various bank cards and a death certificate in the victim’s name according to Kenyan media outlet The Star.
Nearly three years after the victim was allegedly murdered, Khaemba stood up in the courtroom and claimed that she had sent him several WhatsApp messages.
One of them reportedly reads: “Please help my friends they are innocent and I’m alive. My lover is behind this.”
The message went on to claim that Dysseleer had sold all of her properties and that she was “scared” for Waithera as she was her best friend.
The message gives an unclear explanation as to why she cannot speak on the phone. It reads: “Am unable to speak as I use a machine that gives me a headache and am not used to it.”
The WhatsApp was accompanied by a haunting image of what appears to be a human-sized mannequin with hollow black eyes.
The court has serious doubts about the messages presented by Waithera’s lawyer and pointed out that the message did not include a picture of the woman, according to Belgian news outlet HLN.
After tracking the phone number, it was revealed that it was not registered to the victim, but to a person named Newton Muendia, the authorities said, according to The Star.
The owner of the phone has not yet been found but the authorities have reportedly tracked it to Nairobi.
Khaemba wants the court case thrown out because the victim’s body was never found while the court now suspects that the WhatsApp message could be an attempt to derail the trial.
The trial is set to continue as the police continue to track down the phone.
