55-year-old man from Apeldoorn murdered in Kenya during alleged kidnapping
Herman Rouwenhorst, a 55-year-old, businessman from Apeldoorn was found murdered in his apartment in Mombasa on Friday morning after an alleged kidnapping.
The victim had moved to Kenya six years ago to be with his girlfriend. He had owned multiple nightclubs in the Mombasa and Kilifi region, the AD reported.
Rouewenhorst was found dead in his bed with his hands and feet tied and his mouth gagged. Kenyan authorities are still working on establishing a cause of death. An injured bodyguard was also found at the residence. The bodyguard later succumbed to his wounds at the hospital.
Rouwenhorst’s girlfriend was the one who alerted police to the kidnapping. The girlfriend was found by passers-by in a vehicle with her hands tied to the wheel. “At around 7 a.m., officers from the Bamburi Police Station received a distress call to go rescue a kidnapped woman around the Serena area. They found the woman’s hands tied to a steering wheel”, a police report stated, according to the Kenyan news outlet Nation.
Authorities extensively questioned Rouwenhorst’s girlfriend the AD reported. She claimed six hooded men stormed the apartment in the suburb of Shanzu on Thursday evening. Three of them allegedly dragged her outside and forced her to get into her boyfriend’s car. The kidnappers then drove her to the Serena Beach Hotel around 300 meters away and left her with her hands tied to the wheel.
“I was driven in my car by kidnappers who had assaulted my husband from our apartment to this place”, she said according to Nation.
Rouwenhorst had run a timber company with his brother for 30 years in the Netherlands. He emigrated to Kenya six years ago after falling in love with this girlfriend during a holiday. The couple had two children together. The entrepreneur also had three children in the Netherlands from a previous relationship.
The 55-year-old gave up his part of the company when he left for Kenya. “He had a good life in Kenya and didn’t work there. Herman was winding down. A normal man who loved a beer. My brother was not involved in a crime circuit. He was not the man for that”, Rouwenhorst’s brother said to the AD.
The case evoked memories of the Dutch businessman, Tob Cohen, whose remains were found in a septic tank in 2019. His body showed signs that he had been tortured prior to his death.
The regional police commissioner calls the death of Rouwenhorst an “isolated incident” and should not be a reason for foreigners in Kenya to panic.
