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The Death of Father Kaiser

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The church began to worry about Kaiser's safety. Bishop Colin Davies reassigned him to Lolgorien, a remote parish in the hilly green Maasai territory near the Tanzania border, and warned him to "go easy." But easy wasn't Kaiser's style. Though he had great respect for Pope John Paul II, he was impatient with the church bureaucracy and believed his first loyalty was to his parishioners.

"John could be quite stubborn when he wanted to be," says his niece Mary Mahoney Weaver. "He was disappointed that people could be so absolutely cruel and disrespectful of life."

So in 1998, when Moi organized a tribunal called the Akiwumi Commission to look into the causes of ethnic violence, Kaiser was determined to testify. He assembled documents and traveled to Nairobi, where he spent several weeks sitting outside the courtroom waiting to be called. When he finally did take the stand in February 1999, his testimony caused a sensation. He claimed the government had instigated the tribal clashes, and he named names: Minister of Defense Julius Sunkuli, Cabinet member Nicholas Biwott and President Moi himself.

"In the constitution of Kenya, it's written that you cannot defame the president," Father Bill Vos explains. "John publicly said Moi should be indicted in the world court at The Hague for crimes against humanity, and he volunteered to testify. It was not the best way to ensure his future."

Kaiser knew what he was getting into, says Bishop Cornelius Schilders, who was then the Regional Superior of Mill Hill. "He said, 'they may well kill me for this, but I am prepared to die for the truth, because God's people are being trampled on and we have to speak,'" Schilders writes in an e-mail. "He was particular in mentioning names, including the president's. He did so because if one remains general, nobody will take it to heart and nothing will change."

The Akiwumi Commission struck Kaiser's testimony from the record — not that it mattered. The commission never bothered to release a report. Meanwhile, Kaiser had found another crusade. Two girls in his parish claimed they had been raped and impregnated by Sunkuli. Kaiser encouraged them to take legal action against the minister, the second most powerful man in Kenya.

By now, Kaiser knew his life was in real danger. A sympathetic government security agent warned him that plans had been made for his assassination. "He was more and more stressed," Vos says. "He was on guard more and he kept his gun with him when he slept."

In the autumn of 1999 the Kenyan government found a perfect excuse to expel Kaiser from the country: he had neglected to renew his work visa. But Kaiser went into hiding, moving from place to place — including a convent, where Vos says the nuns lied to protect him. The church and the U.S. State Department intervened, and the Kenyan government issued Kaiser another visa.

But why didn't he take the opportunity to leave Kenya while he still could and save his own life? "He was afraid to come home," Dasteel says. "He was afraid he wouldn't be able to get back into the country." Besides, he had spent more than half his life in Kenya; he was more African now than American. "He was happiest in Kenya," says Weaver.

Dasteel believes that Kaiser martyred himself to save Kenya. Although the two girls succumbed to government pressure and dropped the rape charges against Sunkuli, the case damaged Sunkuli's reputation enough that he lost the 2002 presidential election.

"If Johnny hadn't done what he did," Dasteel says, "Sunkuli would have succeeded Moi and the corruption would still be going on. He didn't want to die. He loved life. But I think he thought that maybe he could make a difference."

Three days before he died, Father Kaiser traveled to Nairobi at the summons of the Papal Nuncio, or representative of the Pope. Kaiser was afraid that the church was about to order him to leave Kenya, and he wept as he recited his last Mass in Lolgorien. To the other priests who saw him in Nairobi, Kaiser appeared to be on edge. His moods changed abruptly and he wasn't sleeping.

"They said he was paranoid," says Weaver. "Well, he was beaten and attacked and his house was ransacked. They said he wasn't sleeping. Well, yeah. He had rocks thrown through his window. Of course he was paranoid. He knew he was skating on thin ice. In that report, there was not one comment or statement by anyone who remotely knew him."

Mahoney says Kaiser's mood swings could be easily explained: "John thought the Nuncio was going to send him home because he was going to get himself killed. Instead the Nuncio asked him for advice about who should be the next bishop in the Ngong diocese. He wanted advice from someone the people respected. John was delighted."

Kaiser left Nairobi for Lolgorien the evening of August 23, 2000. Only a few hours of daylight remained. The Nakuru police commander Andrew Kimetto described Kaiser's final hours to The Nation, based on crime-scene evidence. Kaiser's truck was hijacked and driven off the main road into the forest. He was pulled from the truck and forced to kneel and say his final prayers. An assassin then shot him in the back of the head. The killers drove the truck back to the Naivasha-Nakuru Highway, dumped his body in the ditch and disappeared.

A month after Kaiser's death, FBI agents traveled to Kenya to interview the Naivasha police and the coroner who performed the autopsy. Their final report relied most heavily on the opinion of Dr. Vincent Di Maio, a gunshot expert in Texas. Yet Di Maio did not examine the body, and of the many photographs available, none showed a clear view of the head wound. Also, the FBI's "behavioral analysis unit," which deemed Kaiser suicidal, had never met him and only reviewed his medical history, which they conceded was incomplete.

"I'm not severely critical of the FBI," Mahoney says, "but I wouldn't recommend those investigators for anything."

Kaiser's family and friends are convinced the investigation was a sham. "Someone else was calling the shots," Durenberger says. That someone else, he believes, was the U.S. State Department.

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