![notifier-image-Katanga and 20-year disappearance of two American teens]()
Katanga and 20-year disappearance of two American teens
Yet these questions are ones we cannot avoid or run away from. The widow's injury aside, the prosecution appeared to try to prove that Henry was shot from the left side, with the bullet entering through the left ear.
Something is intriguing about the Henry Katanga murder trial. Many have spoken about it and even in the trial of his widow Molly Katanga, it is the biggest silent noise in the courtroom.
The prosecution has a narrative that Molly shot Henry dead. And for it, they will prove beyond doubt that she did - with evidence.
There is the alleged murder weapon and there are lots of DNA samples recovered from the crime scene and several pieces of evidence and paraphernalia.
But there is the biggest lingering question: Could Molly be a victim being kicked again and again while down?
Dr Richard Ambayo, the pathologist who performed the autopsy on Henry Katanga’s body, told Judge Isaac Muwata's court last month that he had been told to consider the possibility of suicide.
That is a blase thing in every murder case such as Henry Katanga's. What is crucial, however, is whether the suicide issue was not simply floated in passing and left off without a comprehensive line of investigation.
To understand the issue resting right under the gavel of Judge Muwata, you could look at the peculiar yet simple case in the US in 2000 that was resolved so simply in 2021.
On April 3, 2000, two American teenagers named Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster vanished, seemingly into thin air.
Bechtel, 18, and Foster, 17, were childhood friends. The night of April 3, the two teenagers were attending a party together, probably one of many in their last few weeks of school.
Sometime in the evening, the two left the Monday night party for Foster’s house. Bechtel gave his father what would become his last ever ring.
He asked for permission to stay out the night and that he be picked up the next day.
Later, near 10pm, the two teens loaded back into Foster’s black 1988 Pontiac Grand Am. Foster was driving with Bechtel in the passenger seat.
They were never seen alive again, for an awful 21 years.
Police had scoured through every possible place the two could have vanished to, in vain.
But then in 2021, White County Sheriff Steve Page took over the long-cold case of vanished teenagers.
He wanted to see if there was anything that may have been missed in the initial investigation.
The first searches were conducted near the party that Bechtel and Foster had attended, but that was not the last place they were seen.
Instead, the files on the case stated that the friends had returned to Foster’s house to ask permission to stay out later.
They had even driven her younger brother home - a witness to this visit after the party.
Investigators had focused all their energy near the party, which was on the other side of town from Foster’s house – the completely wrong place for them to have searched.
Sheriff Page was familiar with a form of search and recovery that had become popular on YouTube, where divers would use SONAR to scan waterways for lost vehicles.
One such diver was Jeremy Beau Sides, who ran the YouTube Channel Exploring With Nug.
Page contacted Sides to search across from the party place banking on the possibility that the two had left Erin's home and driven off in the opposite direction from the party place.
Sides discovered Erin's car submerged in the Calfkiller River, with the remains of Erin and Jeremy inside.
Misled by wild rumours, the detectives could not look beyond the narrative available. Had there been a black suspect in the party, he would have probably spent 20 years in jail before Sides' recovery.
It comes back to the Criminal Division of the High Court in Kampala where on Tuesday, Judge Muwata will resume the murder trial of Ms Molly Katanga.
The defence insisted it had to have access to several key documents, including a detailed report on the forensic evidence, the names of those involved in the collection and analysis of that evidence, and certificates from the laboratories where the analysis was conducted.
It has been a peculiar one since March with hostling over full disclosure of crucial evidence between the prosecution and the defence teams.
But at least the trial has reached a point where questions must be asked and whoever it is, the country is really waiting to hear who inflicted the grave injuries on the widow and - more importantly - how she pulled that trigger in that state.
Unfortunately, the sub judice rule always hangs loosely like a pregnant cloud and while social media can discuss freely, the legacy media is constrained by it.
Yet these questions are ones we cannot avoid or run away from. The widow's injury aside, the prosecution appeared to try to prove that Henry was shot from the left side, with the bullet entering through the left ear.
This trajectory of the bullet issue has laid on the table a key point of contention.
The defence had pictures of Katanga's body showing visible lacerations on the right side of the head, which the defence argued could indicate suicide, especially since Katanga was right-handed.
But that is where the problem is. How is it that even with a post-mortem, something that should be obvious at face value is a subject of contention in court?
In such gunshot-to-head cases, the most irrefutable evidence of murder is a bullet through the eye or tongue.
In case of gunshot wounds to the head, the entrance wound in the bone may be recognised on postmortem CT by its sharp beveled edges directed inwards. The wound would be almost the same size as the bullet if the barrel was perpendicular to the bone.
In gunshots to the head, the exit wounds are generally larger than the entrance wounds. But the opposite is also possible in suicide if the entrance wound is in the mouth or below the chin - which is not the case before Judge Muwata.
Why would Molly go to the side of the head to shoot? A coup de grâce? It would make the whole world of sense if the bullet entered through the eye or nose or temple!
But then again, did the detectives comprehensively investigate the suicide angle they asked the pathologists to look into? or do we have another case like that of Jeremy Bechtel and Erin Foster in the form of a killing?
