Little is known of Joyce Wairimu Kariuki, the 62-year-old granny who was sentenced to 35 years in jail over robbery with violence by a Loitoktok court early this week.
But, it has turned out that the granny who was arrested last year over several offences among them forcefully stealing a lorry in Kibwezi had a good start in life but drifted away.
According to the Standard, she had a lustrous career as a secretary in one of the government ministries.
She worked at the Ministry of Cooperatives where she climbed the ladder fast and soon became a senior secretary.
She went to Pangani Girls High School and later Kenyatta University.
Her family says she resigned and walked out on them in 2000 never to return leaving her then, teenage daughters under the care of her now-deceased husband.
Her children say that it has was a rough ride growing without their mother who was jailed for 14 years – from 2005 to 2016 – over robbery, theft and forgery.
Wairimu spent her years at the Shimo La Tewa Prison and was only released in 2016 through presidential pardon but went back to her old ways.
Her three children say that though their father passed on, they were happy that their mother walked out of prison and hoped that she would rebuild her life around them.
Wairimu has been described as a loving and protective mother who would do anything to see her family happy.
“Those who know my mother know she is a very kind person who loves her family,” her daughter Muthoni Wanjau told The Standard.
Muthoni said that out of curiosity, she once asked her “secretive” mother why she was involving herself in crime and she said that it was the work of the devil.
The granny still faces two more charges which she is likely to get additional time for.
For her, there is no end in sight; her family may never see her outside the prison gates as she serves time for her atrocities.
