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Unanswered Questions: The Mysterious Case of Two Deaths in Tabora—What Lies Behind the Curtain?

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One man in Tabora went to Urambo district and stayed there for three days, allegedly attending a business trip, but when he came back, he was greeted with terrible news: his wife was missing

After a careful search, his wife and the neighbour’s remains were found on the same bed two days after they had died. 

The deceased’s daughter had tried to make a call closer to the neighbour’s house, and then, to her surprise, the call pinged! Was it an intuition or prior knowledge that led her to call in that area? What was going on?

The daughter and two other women who were her mother’s friends reported the matter to the husband of a woman who alerted cell leaders. 

The cell leaders and the husband stormed the neighbour’s house only to find two naked adults they knew were dead on the same bed. The wife had foams in her mouth. Was it foul play or natural death? 

This article investigates the mysterious deaths of two people who were presumably having an illicit relationship and draws up its findings along the way. 

It looks like foul play at the outset, but maybe it is not. This discussion is based on an interview between a reporter and an inconsolable husband.

Some of the reportage is hearsay, but I will treat them as allegations. As usual, I will add my thoughts on what I suspect happened. 

When the husband was on his way back from Urambo, he said he tried calling his wife but didn’t get a response.

He tried reaching her many times, but she didn’t answer his calls. Their phones rang, but nothing happened.

Upon arriving home, he enquired about his wife and was informed she had been missing for two days. 

He asked for money to cover his search expenses and visited the mortuary, the police station, and other locations but was unsuccessful. Back home, he instructed his children to go to the cemetery to see whether she was there.

On her way back from the cemetery, her daughter had met a couple of women nervously staring at a nearby house. 

Since the daughter knew they were friends, her mom enquired whether they had seen her mom. 

They said they were also looking for her. Since they were looking in that house, the daughter instinctively took her phone and beeped her mom’s number. 

She was surprised to hear her mom’s phone was ringing closer to the window of that house! 

One of the many loose ends was why those women were transfixed to this house. Were they aware she was there? 

Did she inform them she would have a rendezvous there? Why were they gaping at that house? 

This angle, our lazy police, never gave it a second thought. That latch could be a missing piece that could solve this jigsaw. 

Immediately, she knew her mom’s phone was in the house, so she peered through the window to see where the beeping was coming from.

It was dark, and two sleeping figures appeared to be in one bed. She feared the worst and returned home, where she met her father and described everything she had encountered.

The father went to the cell leader’s office to report the episode and asked them to escort him to the house for an official investigation. 

Once inside the building, they found the room door unlocked, adding more intrigue.

Could two people sleep or make love without locking the door for their safety, or was there more than meets the eye? 

Were they not afraid of unwelcome intrusion into their alleged affair? It was dark inside the room, so they opened windows to get more light and a better view. They found two inactive people sleeping in the same bed.

The husband quickly identified his wife, who was face down with her head buried in the sheets. The man sleeping beside her was facing her. Both of them were naked. 

A quick pulse check and the rigor mortises suggested the two had died a long time ago. 

According to the daughter, her mom was missing for at least two days, meaning she might have died in the night, counting to at least 48 hrs from when she was missing, and she was either dead or inside that room. 

It is important to note nothing was reported about where their clothing was. Were the attire inside the room or not? If the clothing were in a room, where were they located? Such trivial information is often ignored and may not cushion missing links. 

For example, if their clothes were not in the room, it could raise questions: how did the deceased end up naked? 

And where were those clothes? The positioning of clothes in a room can tell whether they’re placed in a hurry or not and why.

In a one-night stand, as this one seemed, clothes are expected to be neatly arranged, indicating no hurry. 

That may fit with a cheating wife who knew her husband was unlikely to return very soon, so there was no hurrying up. 

However, if clothes were scattered, it could mean time was of the essence and may not fit with a hubby on a safari. 

Little is known of the man who was with the deceased woman. He is said to be a retiree and a landlord of the house where the remains were found. 

It looks like other residents were in that house, making the outside jobs easy to rule out. It is said his wife had left him after he began his illicit relationship with the deceased woman. 

The whereabouts of his estranged wife are unknown, nor is it where she had moved to. 

Still, the deceased wife was found with a bag carrying over Tshs 100,000/=, indicating whoever was involved in her death, if any, was not motivated by money. It could have been a crime of passion. 

Could this Be a Crime of Passion? 

The hubby of the deceased woman claimed he was away in Urambo when his wife died, but the police were yet to establish his alibi beyond reasonable doubt.

That does not mean he was involved in any way, but it does show how careless, casual, and irresponsible our criminal investigations are.

When it was reported the deceased woman had foams in her mouth, there should have been toxicological reports automatically conducted without seeking permission from the husband. 

Ironically, the police had cleared the husband from being a “person of interest” and were asked whether he needed toxicological reports from samples on her liver and kidneys. 

He politely declined. That does not mean much in any way. 

It could be that he does not understand the importance of those toxicological reports to determine what had occurred to his deceased wife. 

Or he could have a motive to suppress the implicating evidence. According to the hubby, the doctor had concluded that his wife’s death was asphyxia, meaning she died for lack of oxygen. 

There were no bruises on her neck to suggest she was either hanged or strangulated. She has facial bruises, which the doctor attributed to fighting to overcome breathing difficulties. 

What caused breathing difficulties was never established. The man who was with his wife shared how he died. 

The police never tried to investigate whether the husband had a watertight alibi. The husband was never asked to produce evidence of boarding a bus and returning. 

Receipts of where he had boarded and whom he had met in Urambo. What that business was all about. 

The police could have checked his alibi before clearing him. It was an act of dereliction of duty of the highest order! 

The post-mortem was also important to establish what foods and drinks the deceased had ingested and who prepared them.

Did they prepare the food and drinks, or were they brought from elsewhere? 

This matter is riddled with too many unknowns; strangely, nothing useful came out of it. 

The husband denies any role in her death. He claimed he loved her, and the two lived together for 30 years before they married last year. 

He said she frequently nagged him to tie the knot, and he was reluctant until she shared his phone with their Catholic priest. The police did not check this part of the story. 

Following concerted pressure from the now-deceased wife, peers, relatives and the Church, he succumbed, and the two swore them “for the better or the worse” vows. 

He said he was still smarting up from the infidelity and was disappointed the Church refused to conduct a burial mass for his wife due to her infidelity! 

A judgemental Church defies God’s commandments! Churches rarely practice what they preach. In Matthew 7: 1-5. 

God commanded us not to judge others, lest the same yardstick judges us. 

In John 5:14 and John 8:11, God commanded a woman caught in the very act of infidelity to “sin no more” after refusing to judge her. Yet, Churches never obey the clear commandments of God and condemn those they deem unrighteous. 

According to Romans 2:1, Paul the Apostle made it abundantly clear that those who judge others have condemned themselves. 

The Roman Catholic and other conventional denominations are resilient in judging the dead who have already been judged. 

While they pray for the dead in the same breath, they refuse to issue final blessings to the dead whom they perceive to have been sinful. 

In this case, it is to conclude that she was unfaithful to her husband, but who knows the real story? 

She could have been murdered elsewhere for different reasons, and her body moved to a crime scene to give an impression of the forbidden fruit to distract investigators from the real issues. 

Even if we refuse to give her the benefit of the doubt, who are we to judge her? Do we know what she was going through and how Satan conned her based on her trials and tribulations? 

Are we not all sinners, for the scripture says whoever says has no sin makes God a liar, and the truth is not in him. The Church always misses the point about the New Testament, the ministry of reconciling with God. 

Shockingly, people vested with the calling of bringing people to God are the ones who have self-appointed themselves as gatekeepers to stop people from reaching God. 

That the word of God may be fulfilled, which says preachers will cross oceans to win one proselyte whom, after winning him, they would convert to a bondservant of Satan. 

By refusing to accept everybody, irrespective of our carnal views about that person, we encourage all to appreciate God’s enduring mercies, which transcends human understanding. 

The grieving husband was inconsolable when he recited how the Roman Catholic had ostracised his wife for dying in vain. 

He wished the Church would have taken that opportunity to forgive her of her sins posthumously. 

This is important to take to heart, for in the Book of Maccabees, we learn of a certain Israelite king who had found out some of his killed soldiers were found in death wearing amulets. 

The king prayed for their souls but refused to judge them. It is this story that informed the Catholic Church to pray for the dead, sadly those they deem righteous! 

In real life, the Church knows nothing about the lives of the people it deems righteous, yet it sits in the seat of the Prophet Moses, corrupting and soiling it.

We may not know what happened to the two deceased, but it is sad the police did not order toxicological reports to rule out poison as a source of their death. 

The police should learn that sluggishness and ineptitude are no longer an excuse. They are just unacceptable, period! 

I suspect, without any evidence to support my murder theory, this was foul play. I allege it was a crime of passion, without toxicological reports that remains a hunch, and nothing more. 

When a hubby intentionally is not near a crime scene and refuses to have toxicological reports prepared must send shivers to investigators. 

It could be a callous way of suppressing incriminating evidence that I have amounted to an “epiphany vision” that the deceased woman took liquors to her cheat house. 

Those drinks could have been laced with poison, which explains why the wife foamed on her mouth. 

If this is true, bottles containing or suspected of possessing liquor should be tested for poison.

The doctor allegedly said the wife died of lacking air, but nothing is said of the husband. Could both have died of the same cause of death? 

It is possible but implausible. Again, it is a murder theory that might not have happened. 

The police should open a criminal investigation and pursue all the clues this article raises to their conclusions.

Read more articles from Rutashubanyuma here.

The author is a Development Administration specialist in Tanzania with over 30 years of practical experience, and has been penning down a number of articles in local printing and digital newspapers for some time now.

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