A British father-of-three has escaped a life sentence in an African jail after an month battle that started when he was accused of murdering a Kenyan woman. Businessman Richard Alden was incarcerated for 63 days in a block for alleged killers, but flew out of Nairobi yesterday after hiring one the world's most famous private investigators. After the married year-old proved his innocence, he told how he found himself at the centre of an investigation following the death of his alleged mistress, with whom he denied having an affair.
Richard Alden was held in a prison that is reserved for alleged murderers in Kenya after he was accused of shooting dead a woman in Nairobi. His situation was worsened by the country's outcry when white landowner Thomas Cholmondeley shot a game ranger and a poacher dead in two separate killings in and Cholmondeley was heir to the Delamere peerage and descended from the founder of the British settler group who came to Kenya.
Grace Wangchechi Kinyanjui was fatally shot at the suburban family home and later pronounced dead at hospital. Alden says the British Empire's legacy still has consequences for Kenyans today.
Such was Mr Alden's distrust of the Kenyan police that he called in private investigator Jeffrey Katz. Katz probed the death of Vatican banker Roberto Calvi, who was nicknamed 'God's banker' and whose body was found hanging from London's Blackfriars Bridge in After Katz secured Alden's freedom, the businessman also thanked wife Martine, who visited him daily in prison and ignored false reports in the press that her husband was having an affair with the victim, year-old Grace Wangechi Kinyanjui.
Alden's battle began on June 4 last year, when he was spending his Saturday clearing out the house he and his family rented in Karen, Nairobi. He was living in the suburb during a three-year term as chief executive of home entertainment company Wananchi. Because his contract had expired months before, Alden's wife and children had already left Kenya and he had asked Kinyanjui, a local woman, to help.
