Before his execution on November 8, 1969, three months after killing Labour and Economic Planning Minister Tom Mboya, Nahashon Njenga was a popular man for the wrong reasons.
This was as a result of the national unrest that followed the murder of Mboya who was leaving Channi's Chemist along government road on July 5, 1969, when he met Njenga's bullets.
The killer, apparently having been assured of his safety by some top state officials, reportedly dropped off the briefcase in which he carried the killer weapon at home and went to party.
Evidence later showed that so assured and casual was he that he dropped the briefcase with the Smith and Wesson revolver and seven live bullets at his house in Ofafa Jericho and went back to town.
In town, he bought his friends drinks and celebrated and danced for the whole night only to be arrested four days later and later arraigned and found guilty of murder.
It's said that during his arrest at his office, just across where he had shot Mboya, he whispered to his secretary to rush home and tell his wife to throw away the briefcase.
This he did in his vernacular Kikuyu language, apparently to avoid alarming the arresting police squad led by Superintendent Sokhi Sing.
He then lied to the police that he lived in Muchatha in Kiambu to buy some time.
The arresting officers were later notified that they had been fooled just as they drove past Gigiri, along Limuru Road and turned back and were just in time to confiscate the briefcase.
Asked in court, he said that he had bought the gun from a friend, but later changed the story to he had been given the briefcase by a friend without knowing that it contained the weapon.
According to Kirungumi Wa Njuki, a warder at the Kamiti National Prison and the last person he spoke to before his hanging, Njenga admitted that he indeed killed Mboya.
Funnily, Njuki told Nation reporter Kamau Ngotho that instead of being worried about his hanging, Njenga was angry that his companions in the crime had abandoned him.
He had also told the police to also arrest 'the big man' who sent him during his arrest.