After his acquittal Anguka fled to the United States where he was granted asylum. There he completed work on a book, Absolute Power, his account of the Ouko murder story, in which he pleaded his innocence and pointed a finger at Oyugi and Biwott and President Moi.
Anguka’s account was in turn examined in 2004 in a book The Risks of Knowledge, written jointly by Professors’ David Cohen and Otieno Odhiambo.
They noted that Anguka was “here, there and everywhere from virtually the first hours of Ouko’s disappearance”.
He was at Koru when his wife Susan rang to say Ouko’s body had been found.
He was at the scene when Dr Kaviti examined Ouko’s body.
And Anguka escorted Troon to Koru where he showed the Scotland Yard team around both the murder site and Ouko’s Koru farm home. [Press cuttings
But for Odhiambo and Cohen what they called Anguka’s “range of fertile silences” and his “partial and selective presence” in Absolute Power, were revealing.
Anguka did not mention that he met Troon at the airport and took him to see Hezekiah Oyugi saying he would oversee the investigation.
He didn’t mention that he attended the autopsy conducted by Dr Iain West and in the evening took Troon and West to Oyugi’s house to report on their findings.
Nor did he mention he acted as translator for Troon at Koru even though an official translator was at hand.
And when it came to his close relationship with Hezekiah Oyugi, Anguka’s “silence”, they wrote, “… was almost deafening”.
On Anguka’s story in Absolute Power Professors Odhiambo and Cohen concluded:
‘These may be the moves of an innocent person… But they were not the moves of an innocent author.’
They ended with a question: ‘But what did Jonah Anguka know, and what did he hide?’
