Irene Gakwa’s most recent WhatsApp video call with her parents was full of gentle sarcasm. But there were hints that something was wrong beneath the banter.
Her father teased her when her face appeared on the phone screen, saying she looked hungry and tired. He noticed her smile was more subdued. Her short, usually braided hair was rumpled.
“Drink some hot milk and relax,” her father advised from his living room in Nairobi, Kenya’s capital.
That was the last time anyone in her family saw her on February 24.
Gakwa’s family reported her missing a month later, less than three years after she left Kenya for the United States.
Gakwa’s parents were unaware she was living in Gillette, Wyoming, with a man she met on a Craigslist dating forum at the time of the February video call.
They had no idea that the man would later be accused of withdrawing money from her checking account, maxing out her credit card, and deleting her email account. And they had no idea that six months would pass without hearing from her.
“She’s always been a daddy’s girl,” her father, Francis Kambo, said over the phone from Nairobi. He inhaled deeply as he remembered his last video call with his only daughter, the youngest of his three children.
“This year, she was supposed to come home for Christmas. “I was planning on buying that ticket myself for her if she couldn’t afford it,” he added, his voice shaking.
“I’m not sure if I’ll ever see her again.”
Her worried family members span two continents
Gakwa’s worried family spans two continents separated by 9,000 miles.
Her parents reside in Nairobi, while her two older brothers, Chris Munga and Kennedy Wainaina, reside in Meridian, Idaho, a Boise suburb.
Her father became concerned when she did not respond to repeated video calls in late February. This was unusual for the 32-year-old, who spoke to her parents on a daily basis.
Her written messages also sounded strange, according to her family. Instead of her usual mix of Swahili and Kenyan slang, the messages were in stilted English, as if someone had used Google Translate to send them, according to Wainaina, her oldest brother.
Chris Munga and his wife, Gyoice Abatey, attend a vigil for his missing sister in Gillette, Wyoming. The couple makes the 12-hour drive from their home in Meridian, Idaho, to take part in local searches.
“The texts would be out of place,” her father said.
In early March – between the last video call and the day she was reported missing – her parents received some short WhatsApp messages from her account. Some made excuses for why she wasn’t doing video calls.
“Dad, I dropped my phone in the water and now the microphone doesn’t work,” one message said.
Another said, “I just want you to know I love and miss you and mom.”
“We miss you … we want to see you, not just chat on WhatsApp,” her father responded. “We love you always. You will … be my daughter forever.”
Her boyfriend told police she packed her bags and left
Her father stated that the last WhatsApp message she received was on March 9.
A cell phone family plan is shared by the three siblings. When Gakwa’s brothers couldn’t reach her, they checked her phone records and called a close friend she’d spoken to several times.
That’s how they discovered she was living in a modest three-bedroom house in Gillette with her boyfriend, Nathan Hightman, 39. Wainaina revealed that the couple had been dating since 2020 but had broken up several times.
Her brothers assumed they’d split up and had no idea they’d rekindled their romance and moved in together.
According to an affidavit of probable cause in a separate criminal case against her boyfriend, her brothers reported her missing to the Gillette Police Department on March 20, and an officer spoke with Hightman the same day.
Hightman told the officer that he last saw Gakwa in late February, when she came home one night, packed her clothing in two plastic bags, and left in a dark-colored SUV.
Nathan Hightman is accused of financial crimes against Irene Gakwa. Before her disappearance, the couple lived together in Gillette, Wyoming
He told police he hadn’t heard from her in a long time. According to the affidavit, he also stated that he withdrew money from her bank account so that she would be forced to contact him if she needed money.
Hightman did not respond to the brothers’ request to hand over her belongings in their home, according to Wainaina.
They begged him to hand over her documents, including her Kenyan passport, but Hightman refused, according to Wainaina.
Hightman is a person of interest in her disappearance and has “not made himself available to detectives looking to resolve questions that exist in the investigation,” according to a statement from Gillette police.
“We believe he has information about Irene’s disappearance, but he has chosen not to share that information with law enforcement at this time,” Gillette police detective Dan Stroup told CNN.
CNN attempted to contact Hightman several times by phone, text, and email, but he did not respond. CNN left messages for his public defender, Dallas Lamb, but did not receive a response.
Hightman has not been charged in Gakwa’s disappearance, but she is a suspect in financial crimes committed in her absence. Gillette police arrested him in May and charged him with two counts of theft, one count of unauthorised use of a credit card, and two counts of crimes against intellectual property for allegedly changing her banking account password and deleting her email account after she vanished.
According to court documents, Hightman transferred nearly $3,700 from Gakwa’s bank account to his own and spent an additional $3,230 on her credit card between February and March.
According to court documents, he also changed her banking passwords and deleted her Gmail account. According to the probable cause affidavit, all of the changes were made from an IP address associated with Hightman after the date he told police Gakwa had moved out.
“This would indicate that Nathan Hightman accessed Irene’s account, removed money, and changed the password to deny Irene access,” the affidavit said. “These transactions began on February 25, 2022, and will last until March 20, 2022.”
Hightman has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges and has been released on a $10,000 bond. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for November.
Her adopted community is pushing for answers
Meanwhile, Gakwa’s two brothers and sister-in-law have been driving from Meridian to Gillette several weekends a month to organise search parties. On most days, they don’t know where to begin.
They have been to morgues and hospitals. They searched shelters for homeless people. They’ve created a website called whereisirene.com. They’ve asked local authorities to look into whether she joined the US military, which she briefly considered.
A group formed to help find Irene Gakwa prepares to post signs seeking information about the missing woman in Gillette, Wyoming.
Some residents of Gillette, a 32,000-person city in northeastern Wyoming, have grouped together to find her. Wearing “Where’s Irene?” T-shirts, they’ve held weekend search parties and canvassed neighbourhoods for permission to post missing person signs. Images of Gakwa are frequently posted in the neighbourhood where she lived with her boyfriend.
“No family should ever have to go to bed at night wondering where their loved one is,” said Stacy Koester, a Gillette resident who has been organising searches with a group of local women since April.
Lacey Ayers talks to Stacy Koester, left, and Melissa Bloxom as they place signs with an image of Irene Gakwa in a yard in Gillette, Wyoming. Gakwa lived with her boyfriend next door.
They’ve mapped out areas to search and marked off where they’ve already looked so they don’t go over the same place twice, Koester said.
“We promised her father and her brothers that we will never stop searching until we bring her home or they have answers,” she added. “That’s our goal. We are their family here in Gillette.”
Koester and other neighbors also have gathered outside Hightman’s home, holding signs and chanting, “Nate, where’s Irene?”
Sometimes, her father watches the demonstrations via video from Kenya.
But with every passing day, hope fades a little.
Her parents had mixed feelings about her move to the US
Born and raised in Kenya, Gakwa emigrated to the United States in May 2019, hoping to launch a career in health care. A petite woman, she stood just over 5 feet tall and weighed about 90 pounds.
At first, her parents resisted their introverted daughter’s plans to move to a faraway country. They worried about how she’d adjust – she was so shy, she barely left her room in their suburban Nairobi home to go outside, her father said.
“We sometimes had to remind her to get out of the house and get some sunlight,” her father said. “But we decided since her brothers are there, why not?”
Gakwa settled first in Idaho to be near her brothers, with dreams of attending nursing school and working in a hospital. She lived with the younger of her brothers, Chris Munga, and his wife, Gyoice Abatey, in Meridian.
There, she developed a close bond with her sister-in-law. Both women took a girls’ trip to Los Angeles in 2020, and in between shopping, eating out and visits to the beach, Gakwa confided to Abatey that she was dating Hightman. Gakwa spent a lot of time with him on the phone, Abatey said, but did not share many details about their relationship.
Abatey described her sister-in-law as a sweet, fun-loving person who started her mornings with a cup of tea and enjoyed cooking, shopping and watching Nigerian movies.
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“She’s such a free spirit, so caring, goofy, she just goes with the flow,” Abatey said.
Gakwa and Hightman eventually moved in together in Meridian, and she started nursing school at College of Western Idaho. In the summer of 2021, they relocated to Gillette, where she transferred to Gillette Community College.
At times, her father would ask Gakwa if she wanted to return to Kenya.
“She’d tell me, ‘Dad, I’m good. I have my own life now,’” Kambo said.
In the months before she vanished, Gakwa returned to Meridian several times to visit her family.
Last Thanksgiving, they gathered at the house of Munga, her brother. There, she and her siblings made their favorite African delicacies, including goat barbecue, jollof rice and ugali, a form of corn meal popular in Kenya.
Gakwa cooked a side of cabbage with lots of tomatoes – just like their mother used to make while they were growing up. She taught Abatey how to make it for her brother.
They ate and talked late into the night.
That was the last time her siblings saw her in person.
Her boyfriend allegedly bought boots and a shovel using her bank card
The Gillette Police Department said it has executed approximately 24 search warrants in the case, including at Hightman’s home and at several banks to track activity on Gakwa’s accounts.
During one of the searches, investigators recovered a shovel and boots Hightman bought at a Walmart in late February using Gakwa’s Visa card, according to court documents.
In April, Gillette police issued a statement naming Hightman “a person of interest” in the case and saying, “he has not made himself available to detectives looking to resolve questions that exist in the investigation.”
The police added, “Irene went missing under suspicious circumstances. … digital evidence, including location data, is also being analyzed and has provided positive leads.”
Stroup, the detective, said the investigation is ongoing.
“In the event, probable cause is established, appropriate action will be taken,” he said.
Her family is struggling between hope and grief
Irene’s family is still holding out hope that somehow, she’ll contact them or come back home. The alternative is too hard to bear.
Abatey wishes she’d held Gakwa a little tighter the last time they hugged. Her children ask over and over where their aunt is.
Gakwa’s 33rd birthday was in July, and her nephews thought if they threw a party, maybe she’d show up. Instead, they held a Zoom vigil. Her friends and family shed tears and shared memories and photos of her, struggling between using past or present tense.
“Whether we meet in this life or the next, know that you’re absolutely loved,” one friend said. At the end, they played a video of a beaming Gakwa dancing and singing along to “Drogba (Joanna),” a song by UK artist Afro B.
“My children don’t understand why auntie is not calling them, how she just disappeared,” Abatey said. “Sometimes I just imagine her walking through the door, and saying, ‘Why are you looking for a grown woman like me?’ As the days go by and nothing happens, we don’t know what to do.”
A young Irene Gakwa with her father, Francis Kambo, in Nairobi, Kenya. “She’s always been a daddy’s girl,” her father said.
Thousands of miles away, Gakwa’s parents pray for her every night. Her mother is too distraught to talk to reporters, but Kambo, her father, said sharing memories of his daughter helps him cope.
He chuckles when he remembers their close relationship.
“She was my only daughter. I spoiled her and she took advantage of that,” he said. “She had not introduced Nathan to me – that’s what kills me.”
Some days, he’s optimistic she’ll make it home for Christmas. But most days, not so much.
“I just want to know the truth. I’m still hopeful, but my hope is dwindling. She knows my number,” he added.
“The fact that she has not called …”
His voice trailed off.
Source: CNN
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