“I want all to know that if I disappear from the scene, because the bush is vast and hyenas many, that I am not planning any accident, nor, God forbid, any self-destruction,” said the Rev. John Anthony Kaiser in his book If I Die, which described his experiences among the Maela camp in Kenya. Only a short time after it was written, Kaiser was found dead between two acacia trees, on Aug. 23, 2000, and determined to have been shot in the head with a shotgun at close range, sparking worldwide speculation about whether or not the death was self-inflicted.
Kaiser, who graduated from the College of Arts and Sciences at Saint Louis University in 1960, was in Kenya on behalf of Mill Hill Missionaries, a Roman Catholic society in the United Kingdom where he studied after SLU and was later ordained in 1964. Shortly thereafter, he was sent to Kenya on their behalf and worked there until his mission was brought to a halt by his untimely death in 2000.
As a missionary, Kaiser worked to evangelize areas in Kenya previously unexposed to Christianity. In many cases, he took a stand at great personal risk for Kenyans in his parish and surrounding areas, whom he felt were being mistreated by the government in power at the time. When many refugees were forcibly evicted from their camp on Dec. 24, 1994, Kaiser protested, leading to his arrest and beating. He later testified on behalf of the refugees at the Akiwumi Commission, pointing the finger toward the then-Kenyan president and other powerful members of the government. When two girls came forward and accused a powerful cabinet member of rape, Kaiser put them in touch with the Kenyan Federation of Women Lawyers to help file charges against the offending government offical.
“Government troops pillaged and murdered and blamed it on tribal clashes,” said his niece Mary Mahoney, in a speech at the Fr. John Kaiser Memorial Symposium in 2001. “John had spoken out against the corrupt and powerful, and his days were numbered.”
FBI agents who examined only pictures of the crime scene decided it was suicide, despite it being both a demise Kaiser had blatantly rejected in his book’s manuscript and a sin within the beliefs of the church that Kaiser was so passionate about.
“It cast a shadow over the end that came to Fr. Kaiser,” said Peter Nicastro, a SLU alumnus and a member of the SLU Knights of Columbus, a Catholic organization of which Kaiser had also been a member. “The only people who believed that he had killed himself were the FBI investigators.”
At the request of the Kenyan Episcopal Conference, an inquest into the investigation began in 2003, during which more than 100 witnesses were called forward to testify. On August 1, the presiding magistrate Maureen Odero ruled that his death was, in fact, murder, staged to look like a suicide.
Many are calling Kaiser a martyr, with Nicastro among them.
“I don’t know too many people who went off in to the world to do all these great things, and ended up dead for it. Particularly modern stories of that,” he said.
Two years after his death, family members worked together to formally publish the manuscript he had been working on during his time in Kenya. If I Die is now available to the general public.
Kaiser was laid to rest in Kenya, to which he had dedicated so much of his life.
