A fresh twist emerged in the abrupt death of the Court of Appeal Judge, James Otieno Odek, following conflicting accounts between the Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) and the judge's caretaker about the existence of CCTV footage detailing his last moments.
According to a report by the Daily Nation on Wednesday, December 18, DCI detectives who were probing the matter concluded that there was no anomaly in the cameras suggesting that the final moments of the judge must have been captured.
The caretaker, identified as William Nyandara, however, differed with their account claiming that the CCTV cameras had stopped working a while back and that he had informed his manager to make the necessary repairs.
He added that when the detectives asked him to review the footage on Monday, he discovered that the cameras had not yet been repaired.
"I will have to take up the matter with the manager of the apartments (Groovehut where Odek lived)," Nyandara told detectives on Monday, December 16, when they asked him about the footage.
In a separate conflict documented by People Daily, a postmortem that was scheduled on the body was delayed after his family asked for time to deliberate on where the exercise should be carried out.
The publication noted that a section of the Judiciary had wanted that the body, which was at Aga Khan Hospital in Kisumu, to be airlifted to Nairobi for the exercise.
The family, however, objected to the plans to transfer the body to the Lee Funeral Home arguing that they needed to be sure about where the body would be stored.
The publication further indicated that the body had already been taken to Kisumu Airport ready to be airlifted before the family interrupted and had it returned to Aga Khan Hospital, Kisumu.
“We have to sit down as a family and discuss on a few things and that is where a place for preserving thee body will be agreed on.
“We realised that some judges and relatives wanted to view the body here in Kisumu. After consultations, it was decided that the body be returned to Aga Khan Hospital mortuary,” Odek's brother Yonnah told the press.
Odek's body was found in his house on Monday after an alarm was raised when he failed to show up at the Kisumu Law Courts.
