The Story of Kevin Omwega

In the cramped alleyways of Nairobi’s Eastlands, the name Edward Maina Shimoli still echoed like a ghost… spoken in hushed tones, spat out in fear, or whispered in grudging respect. Born in Butere around 1969, no one would have guessed that he would one day become known as “Kenya’s Carlos the Jackal”… a man who haunted the city’s dark edges for more than a decade.

Carlos the Jackal… real name Ilich Ramírez Sánchez… was a Venezuelan revolutionary-turned-criminal who earned global notoriety in the 1970s and 80s. Ruthless and elusive, he masterminded bombings, kidnappings, and assassinations across Europe and the Middle East. For nearly twenty years, he outwitted law enforcement agencies from Paris to Damascus… slipping through international borders like a phantom in the night. When Nairobi’s criminal underworld saw Edward Shimoli’s uncanny ability to vanish, his audacious heists, and his fearless, bloody path… they gave him the same name. Shimoli wasn’t a political terrorist like Carlos… but in Nairobi’s backstreets and police corridors, he was just as feared… and just as untouchable.

Shimoli’s story began like that of any other boy… dusty roads, a quiet demeanor, and a gaze that always seemed to be measuring, calculating. By the early 1990s, that quiet boy had vanished into the smoky bars and neon-lit streets of Nairobi. He slipped into the criminal world like a shadow stretching under a streetlight… never loud, but impossible to ignore.

He was a master of deception. With aliases like Philip Opiyo Ouma and Osman Arap Songok, he could move through Nairobi unnoticed… a chameleon who knew the city’s every crack and shortcut. His gang, “The Dream Team,” was a name that mocked the city’s illusions of peace. They didn’t rob for survival… they robbed because they could. Banks, motorists, nightclubs… they took everything, leaving only questions and blood in their wake.

By the mid-90s, Shimoli had become a phantom of Nairobi’s underworld. He confessed to 14 murders and 88 rapes… each confession an indictment of a city that couldn’t keep him in chains. In 1996, his crew stormed the Bank of Baroda on Kenyatta Road, stealing five million shillings in a single night. The police cornered him near Safari Park on Thika Road, but he escaped… leaving his fallen accomplice behind as a bloodied marker of his passage.

Shimoli’s cunning became his legend. He once stopped in a stolen Mercedes, shot two policemen who dared to question him, and drove away like a man late for a dinner reservation. The city called him “Kenya’s Carlos the Jackal”… a man who slipped through the cracks of law and memory. And slip he did… four times he broke free from the cold iron of maximum security. Once, the hangman’s rope was almost around his neck when he slipped away… bribing or tricking the warders whose eyes could never hold his. Another time, he walked out of a Nairobi courtroom ringed with armed police… like a man stepping off a bus at his stop.

The police were humiliated… terrified. They put bounties on his head… the same way they did for Bernard “Rasta” Matheri, Gerald Munyeria Wambugu, and Antony Ngugi Kanagi. Those three were all shot dead by 1997… betrayed by friends who wanted the money. But Shimoli kept moving… wearing new faces, spinning new names, and staying alive.

He was a ghost, and the city both loved and hated him for it. In interviews with police, he spoke of how he used to strip his stolen getaway cars for parts… selling them off rather than letting them be found. He was frugal even in his crimes… always thinking of the next move, always staying two steps ahead of the law.

Eventually, though, even ghosts grow tired. He was finally captured and imprisoned for eight years… not for murder or rape… there was never enough evidence… but for possession of a single illegal firearm. On March 15, 2007, they told him he was free. He told them he wasn’t. “The city will kill me,” he warned. But they shoved him out anyway… saying they needed the space for new criminals.

He stepped into freedom with a new name… Mohamed Shaban Maina. He converted to Islam… prayed five times a day, and told anyone who would listen that he would reveal the secrets of the police… how they worked, who they protected, and who they silenced. He was no longer running… but he was still hunted. Everyone knew that when you start to talk… you’ve already signed your own death warrant.

On the night of August 26, 2007, Shimoli walked the cracked pavement of Kangundo Road. The Nairobi night was thick and close… the air damp with the promise of rain. He wore a black leather jacket… his revolver a cold weight in his waistband. He was leaner now… a man who had spent too long in the shadows. In the distance, headlights flared and died as matatus prowled for fares. But Shimoli knew… tonight was not about the street’s ordinary dangers.

Three plainclothes officers waited in an unmarked Toyota Corolla… their breath fogging the glass as they watched him. They had his face on a grainy photo… red marker circling the eyes that had seen too much. They spoke in low voices… of loot he might still have hidden… of the chance to finally silence the man who had made them all look like fools.

As he moved past the neon flicker of a shanty bar, Shimoli felt it… the weight of the night pressing in. He quickened his pace… the glint of his revolver catching the light as he turned into a narrow alley. The Corolla roared to life… tires biting into the dirt. Doors flew open… and three guns rose in the night air.

“Edward Shimoli! Hands up! Now!” one of them shouted… their voices cracking like gunfire.

He turned, his eyes bright with defiance. He didn’t raise his hands. Instead… he ran, vaulting over low fences, weaving through the alleys he had once ruled. Bullets split the night… ricocheting off corrugated iron and vanishing into darkness. But even The Jackal could not outrun death forever.

They cornered him at the end of the alley… their flashlights cutting through the shadows. His breath came in ragged gasps… sweat running down his temples. For a moment, he stood there… just a man again… the legend stripped away by the cold inevitability of a city that was done with him.

“You want the money?” he spat… his voice a low snarl. “You’ll never find it.”

“We don’t want your money, Carlos,” the officer said. “Drop the gun.”

Shimoli’s lip curled into the faintest of smiles. In the space of a single heartbeat… he raised his revolver. The night erupted in flashes of light and thunder. Bullets tore through his jacket… his body twisting with each impact. He fell to the ground… the revolver clattering from his hand. The silence that followed was deeper than the grave.

They bound his hands with zip ties… though he was already slipping away. His blood pooled in the dirt… ten bullets marking the final price of a life spent running. They loaded his body into a van as dawn crept over the city… the sirens wailing like a lament.

At the City Mortuary, his family claimed him… and the rumors began to swirl. Some said he’d been tortured… that the police wanted his hidden loot. Others said it was just the end he had always been running towards. In the alleys of Nairobi… his name would be spoken in hushed voices for years to come… the story of a man who was both hunter and hunted… and who died the way he lived… defiant to the last breath.

But even in death, Shimoli’s name did not fade. In 2018, the police announced they had killed his son… Shimoli Junior, known in the streets as Leone Messi. They said he was a menace… that he terrorized the sportsmen and fans around Camp Toyoyo in Jericho. The newspapers ran the headline… “The Jackal’s Cub Dead.”

But the truth was uglier. The boy they killed wasn’t his son… it was Arnold Okongo, a young man with no record, no crime, and no connection to Shimoli. The real Shimoli Junior, they said, slipped away in the chaos… another ghost in a city that breeds them. The police called it a mistake… but the whispers said otherwise. They said the city learned nothing from the father… and nothing from the son.

In the dark of Nairobi’s alleys, there are always new shadows. The Jackal may be gone… but his echo remains… soft as a rumor, sharp as a bullet in the night. And this… was another chapter of

#VCDigest

(Welcome to my series of

#VCDigest

… where I give you the stories you’ve heard… but never really knew the intricate webs within them.)

All reactions:

What a narration! You just have a way with the words man!

Do you have any published books.

I would read your tales, articles etc all night long

Looks like yesterday

Down the spines , I have known Nairobi was hell in 1985-2000

Thank you…. You really do a good narration.

Can same one take the story to Hollywood to make true Kenyan cinema pls.gv

So where is the Cub nowadays.

the jackal himself