This is a tale of three families bound by love and good neighbourliness but shattered by a murder incident that completely changed their relationship.
It is one week after a Kisumu court sentenced 30-year-old Joseph Ayomo to 40 years in prison for the murder of a Kenyatta University student, Beverly Akinyi.
The 21-year-old Akinyi was the girlfriend of Evans Aloyo Otieno, Ayomos stepbrother.
Before last weeks sentencing,Ayomo was already serving a 20-year jail term after a court found him guilty of attempted murder.
Ayomo stabbed his stepbrother, Aloyo, 21 times before slitting his throat. Miraculously, Aloyo survived the deadly attack.
But the July 24, 2018 incident and the six-year-long court process turned out to be a nightmare for the two stepfamilies and that of the deceased.
During the entire period that the case dragged on in court, the families of Ayomo and Aloyo kept away from each other. A strong bond that had held the two families together for two decades had suddenly been broken after the murder of Beverly.
Nation.Africa has established that the families first met in the early 1990s as neighbours in Makogilo Estate in the sprawling informal settlements of Manyatta in Kisumu.
Aloyo had not even joined primary school then.
The convict, Ayomo, is the fourth born in a family of six, while Aloyo is an only child of his mother, the first wife of the late James Otieno. Otieno died in 1996 and left behind a united polygamous family.
As Aloyo explained, even though Ayomo was his stepbrother, he still supported him with his two siblings in Nairobi.
The two wives of the late Otieno, Dolly Achieng and her co-wife, Mary Otieno, also lived in harmony.
After the death of their husband, Dolly - a shrewd businesswoman - started a hardware shop for Mary in Wangarot, Seme Sub-County.
But interviews with members of the two families, including Mary, revealed simmering tensions and animosity due to competition for property.
During the court proceedings, Dolly and her son, Aloyo, kept off their rural home until December last year.
Each time the two factions met at the High Court in Kisumu, they did not exchange pleasantries or eye contact as one would have expected.
Inside the courtroom, they chose to sit on opposite sides of the aisle. At the end of a session, one camp would wait for the other party to leave the courtroom to avoid running into each other in the corridors.
When Judge Roselyn Aburili delivered the 40-year-imprisonment sentence toAyomo, son of Mary, she looked down at the courtroom floor while her daughter Violet covered her face as she shed tears.
The curse of a deadly family feud had sent her son to prison, so she believed.
Aloyo confirmed the murder incident had changed his relationship with his stepbrother and the rest of the family. For him, it was betrayal, ungratefulness and many unanswered questions.
This is a person I helped when he was young, bought him shoes and brought him back to Kisumu in 2009. I took him in and to date I do not understand why he did what he did, said Aloyo.
The businessman said the incident changed everything in the family, and efforts to handle the matter out of court failed over suspicion.
We explored the possibility of handling this matter differently as a family, but some of my siblings insisted that we proceed to court. Definitely there was and there is still some tension between us as a family since many questions have remained unanswered, said Aloyo.
The late Otieno was a wealthy man with interests in real estate. He owned property across the country, which included rental houses in Manyatta, Nyalenda, Sky Way, Siaya and Ringa in Homa Bay.
After the judgment, Mary attributed the court case to a protracted property row between the two families.
She maintained that Ayomo did not kill Beverly or attack his stepbrother.
My son was sentenced unfairly. This is pure witch-hunt and a case of a family feud fueled property row. My children and I have been denied control over my late husbands property. Evidence presented before the court showed clearly that my son was nowhere near the murder scene. We are going to appeal this decision, said Ms Otieno.
When Nation.Africa asked if there was an element of a fight over property control, which could have led to his attack and the killing of Beverly, Aloyo questioned why his stepmother had never brought that up during the proceedings.
But while the two protagonists continue their tirade of accusations and counterattacks, one woman has even more questions than answers.
Caren Anyona is yet to understand how her only daughter could lose her
