On 2 March 1975, the day after the bus blast, security officials including GSU commander Ben Gethi Publicly accosted J. M. Kariuki outside the Hilton hotel.
He had been followed by the police throughout the day, including European police reservist Patrick Shaw. Gethi asked Kariuki to accompany the Security officials into a convoy of cars and took him to an unknown destination. The next day, Maasai herdsmen discovered his tortured and mutilated corpse in the Ngong hills near Nairobi.
His fingers had been cut off his eyes gouged out before he was shot dead. The killers had burned his face with acid to prevent identification of the body, as his fingerprints were gone. However, the acid had deterred scavengers, and his body was still identifiable. Nonetheless, police sent the corpse to the mortuary as an unknown victim.
After Kariuki’s disappearance, there was a lull of five days while friends and family tried to discover his whereabouts, there were rumours that he had been detained. Finally, on 7th March, Assistant Minister Justus Ole Tipis admitted to the Assembly that Kariuki was missing and appealed for anyone knowing his whereabouts to cooperate with police. The same day Kenyatta, returning to Nairobi from a month-long stay in Nakuru, made a veiled speech that appealed for order, and warned ‘the government would have no mercy on any individual or group that attempted to disrupt peace and harmony in Kenya . Kenyatta knew what was to come.
On Saturday 8 March, the Daily Nation reported Kariuki was in Zambia, although the news desk already had sworn statements that the corpse in the mortuary was his; editor-in-chief George Githii ordered a reluctant news desk to print this misinformation. On 11 March, nine days after his abduction, Kariuki’s wife identified his body in the mortuary, after which armed GSU sealed off the building. At the same time Moi was making a statement, reporting that Kariuki’s whereabouts were still unknown. On 12 March, police commissioner Bernard Hinga finally confirmed that Kariuki was dead, killed by two bullet wounds. He claimed that the ‘partial decomposition’ of the body made identification impossible.
The result was a mass outbreak of popular anger. As soon as Kariuki’s death become public, angry students demonstrated, but were dispersed by the GSU large crowd gathered and police cordoned off roads into Nairobi. Most shops and schools closed. Several ministers removed the flags of office from their cars and fled in fear.
Kariuki’s death also roused the National Assembly into open hostility. MPs immediately demanded an investigation into the murder.
Moi publicly abased himself before Parliament, swearing that he had had no idea that Kariuki was dead, and was only repeating what officials had told him: ‘I did it in good faith. I am sorry, I am sorry.’ On 14March, parliament appointed a Select Committee to investigate the killings. Its chair was backbencher Elijah Mwangale from Bungoma, and it included Shikuku, Seroney and other friends of Kariuki.
The government appeared to have lost control of Parliament completely; there was talk of the murder as being Kenya’s Watergate, in the meantime, Kenyatta, furious at the ministers’ weakness had summoned an emergency Cabinet meeting, where, one by one, he forced each minister to declare continued loyalty.