A former Seventh Day Adventist (SDA) pastor in Kenya on Thursday surrendered to the police after it emerged that he had an hand in the killing of his wife.

Joel Mogaka, 38, allegedly hired goons who attacked his wife identified as Esther Nyambusi, 32, within her compound moments after she arrived home from work.

Ms Nyambusi was a Secondary School teacher.

Police’s Jebel Munene, told Mediamax Digital on phone that the pastor surrendered to the police on Thursday.

“He surrendered himself to the police and he is being detained at Ogembo Police Station where he is assisting detectives with investigations,” he said.

Preliminary investigations reveal that the two had quarreled over text messages that were found on Nyambusi’s phone.

A house girl identified as Sarah, a Tanzanian national, who was in the compound when the teacher was brutally murdered, told the police that the husband had arrived home earlier at about 4pm in the company of two men.

She told the police that the pastor directed them a dry grain store near the compound’s gate and then left, supposedly to his shop that is in Ogembo.

The house maid tried to raise the alarm but the two assailants ordered her to go back to the house and stay silent.

It is believed that the two men then strangled Nyambusi to death before leaving the compound on a motorbike.

Moments later, the pastor arrived home and started asking whether the deceased had arrived home.

He then went to the store and went back to the house informing the house help that he had found the lifeless body of his wife there.

Sarah sensed that something was amiss and opted to flee to Magena in Kisii County where Nyambusi’s relatives reside.

The pastor then picked the wife’s body, called his father-in-law, telling him that the deceased had poisoned herself and he was rushing her to ChristaMarriane Hospital in Kisii County.

On realising that many questions were being raised over the manner in which the his wife had died, he turned himself in.

Doctors at the hospital also established that Nyambusi had died of strangulation and not poison as the pastor had claimed.

She also had visible injuries on her hands and strangulation marks.

The pastor spent Thursday night at Kisii Police Station and was on Friday handed over to police officer at Ogembo station.

Ruth Nyakara, who is the eldest sister of the deceased, said that the family want answers on what had transpired.

“What we really want is justice. We also want the police to ensure that they arrest the person behind this murder,” she told Mediamax Digital.