‘HE CONTROLLED HER MPESA AND ABUSED HER PHYSICALLY’ TECRA MUIGAI’S FAMILY REVEAL CHILLING DETAILS ABOUT HEIRESS TRAGIC LOVE STORY

By Cheptoek Boyo | January 9, 2023

The billionaire family has for the first time opened up about her tragic love affair with Omar Lali, in the first episode of John Allan Namu’s, The Last Door Documentary.

It all started in 2017 when Tecra Muigai moved to Venice, Italy, to set up a coffee trading business. This she was to do with the help of her high school friend, Max Richiedei. The business did not take off as anticipated. Tecra would stay in Venice for a good two years before returning to Kenya in 2019.

She returned home to work in the family company Keroche Breweries, as the company’s head of strategy and innovation. She would ask Max to help her roll out the project, but first she needed to take a two-week break to cool her heels. “I suggested she goes to Lamu, but after landing there, the two weeks turned to five weeks,” said Max.

According to her sister Anerlisa, Tecra stayed away from the family for months. “She stayed away from us for three to four months, and when we tried calling her, we could not get her. Our messages went unanswered. Then on a random Saturday she dropped a picture of a guy on the family WhatsApp group, and said he is they guy she is with,” said Anerlisa.

She adds: “Everyone was shocked. So, we started side chatting each other, and that’s when she told us his name was Omar Lali.”

Her mother Tabitha Karanja dismissed the whole thing as a joke. “I was seated on the couch watching when I got the WhatsApp notification; a picture of a man. So, I asked, what is this? She told me that ‘this is the person that I love’. I asked if she was playing some joke on us, and she said she was not lying, she was not joking,” said the mother.

She goes on: “I could see she was serious, so I tried to call her, but she was not picking. I texted her, ‘I know this is a joke’. She replied back saying, ‘you know mum, you better know it is a serious thing. I told her, ‘Unless you want to kill me’’. She said, ‘I know you understand love has no boundaries.’ I decided not to share it with her dad, ‘the chairman’. I said if somebody sees something like this they will collapse.”

“I told her I was going to church that Sunday to pray for her. I dedicated that mass to her. I also told her I will visiting her on Monday, but she told me not to come over. The next day we went and found the gate locked. Security officers from G4S denied us entry, even when I said I was her parent,” she says.

A panicked Omar Lali fled. “I remember hiding in a nearby bush where I stayed until 6pm when I returned home. Tecra had panicked,” said Omar.

Tecra would later agree to meet her parents at Naivasha Hotel. “She told us she would meet us at the hotel, and she came. She told us she had left him (Omar),” added Tabitha.

The following day Tecra and Omar took a bus back to Lamu. Her best friend and workmate Max was among the first people to meet Omar.

“It had not occurred to me that this would different from other relationships she had had before. Obviously, I was taken back. There was a massive age difference. There was a look that was not typically her type,” said Max.

According to Anerlisa, her sister had always dated smart guys, but Lali was the opposite type. “Tecra always dated guys who were smarter that her. Even when some of the men she dated came to meet us, we used to tell her, ‘This guy is so smart, where did you get him?’ She always used to joke, ‘you know me, I’m smart so I have to date someone who is smart.’

Max says he noticed the first red-flag when he could not reach Tecra. “There was already an abnormal codependency that I could not fully understand. I was her friend, but suddenly I could not get time with her. The man and his community were taking every slot of time she had. Her own sense of self and willpower had disappeared and she was doing a lot of what he said. Someone was controlling her, she had completely changed,” noted Anerlisa.

The family decided to send her sibling to talk to her, but she refused to come home. “It was our worst moment as a family. The brothers went to Lamu to plead with her in vain,” said Tabitha.

“So, when we went to see her, she asked us if we wanted her to introduce us to the person. Of course, we could not decline, the person came, and he talked all the time,” said Tabitha.

The family agreed to tolerate the relationship and that’s when she came back to work at Keroche Breweries. Shortly after, Tecra and Lali jetted to Ethiopia for one month. “We flew to Addis Ababa and stayed for one month, she wanted us to get married at the Haile Selassie Church,” Lali said.

In February 2020, Anerlisa planned a get-together with Tecra and her friends. Arnelisa was shocked to see her sister was in a bad condition, physically. “I decided to go with my friends and have a party at her place. She suggested we get guys from Lamu to come and cook, but I told her we could get a caterer,” said Anerlisa.

“We got there at lunch time, and when she came downstairs, she was a totally different person. Omar followed her. I did not say hi to him. I immediately told her that I wanted to talk to her, and we went upstairs. She showed me a mark on her body. She said that Omar had rested a hot iron box on her because she had refused to give him money. I asked her why she was still with him and she said, ‘I’m the one feeding all of them.’Omar was controlling all the Mpesa coming in, it had to go to his phone. She was taking care of his baby mama.”

Her house manager also confirmed that Omar had often physically abused her. “When Omar first came, he was this nice person, but he completely changed after moving in with Tecra for a while. Omar’s Dutch ex-wife even came with their child to Kenya to visit, and she used to come to Tecra’s house with the child and stay the whole day. Tecra would come in the evening and the ex-would leave. They loved each other, and Tecra didn’t like that his relationship with the ex-wife was still going on.”

“There is a day she told me that Omar had physically abused her at night and she told him to leave her house, but Omar didn’t want to leave,” said the house manager.

Shortly after Omar and Tecra left for Lamu, but this time she did not tag along her house manager. The covid pandemic lockdown found the couple in Lamu and she stayed there for three months.

Her last day in Lamu was on April 22. “She invited her friends to come for a drink. She sent me to grab a box vodka but I only bought three bottles because I thought it was going to be too much. I was also not feeling well, I had a toothache, so I went and bought some antibiotics. She told me to make vodka cocktails we drink, but I told her I was on mediation. She said, ‘I can’t be with a man who does not drink’ so I drunk but not much that night,” added Omar.

That same evening Tecra spoke to her family for the last time. “I sent her a funny video on WhatsApp and she called me, and we laughed about it. We talked about life and we prayed on the phone. She said mum was calling when she finishes with her, she will call me back,” Anerlisa said.

Mother and daughter spoke on phone – at length. “She told me she was waiting for the curfew to be lifted, then she will come home. She told me to take care of daddy because of his age and the call ended,” said Tabitha as recounted the events of that last night.

According Omar, he went to sleep early that night and left Tecra drinking. He was however, woken up in the morning by Tecra’s screams. Alarmed, he called his brother who came and conducted fast aid on Tecra before she was taken to hospital.

Tecra was airlifted to Nairobi Hospital that the same day. She died nine days later. After her death, the family turned their home office into her memorial wall.