Before his assassination on March 2, 1975, then Nyandarua North MP Josiah Mwangi Kariuki was openly a marked man whose death was already guaranteed.
In conversations with Nakuru Town MP Mark Mwithaga and Assistant Minister GG Kariuki, he had revealed that plans were in place to eliminate him the soonest possible.
The leader had told the two; at the Stags-Head and Norfolk Hotel respectively of a plot to murder him, hatched by people close to the administration who were unhappy with him.
It happened that 48 hours before his disappearance, after which he would be found dead, the scared JM was advised by his doctor to disappear from the public eye and take a rest.
He decided to take public transport to Mombasa, and using a friend named Elizabeth Koinange, secretly managed to buy two bus tickets for the purpose, they were to both travel.
On the day of the travel, a Friday night, a friend alerted him that his assailants had been tracking his phone and were most likely to strike that night, which he heeded, aborting his journey.
In what then turned out to be a close shave for him, the OTC bus which he was to board went up in a blast just minutes before its departure time, killing the 27 passengers on board.
However, he had not escaped death but had only postponed it, as he was reported missing two days later, and his partially decomposed body found at the City Mortuary ten days later.
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