Nairobi — The head believed to be that of slain university student Rita Waeni has been recovered in a dam Kiambaa.

According to police, this will help them piece together the movement of her killers following her murder at an apartment in Roysambu.

Officers also recovered her mobile phone which had been missing.

The motive of the murder is yet to be known so far but the police believe the killers were professional.

Her body was found in a dustbin hours after she had been killed in cold blood and a postmortem showed she had missing nails.

Four suspects are in custody over the murder even though they were not directly linked to the same.

"This person who did all these also tried to clip off the fingernails for reasons which I might not be able to know but for us scientists when we see fingernails clipped off, we think probably the person was trying to hide evidence so that we are unable to get his DNA from the victim," government pathologist Johansen Oduor said after the exercise.

The finding has left detectives puzzled with the motive of the killing still not yet established.

"I don't know why but in investigations, such nails help in gathering evidence. People fight when dying and DNA evidence can be hidden there," Oduor said.

Oduor however said there were remnants of some fingernails and that samples were taken for further analysis to help police in their investigations.

The autopsy confirmed that the body was dismembered with the head chopped off and the legs also cut away from the trunk.

"The skin looks like it was cut with a sharp object but the bone was sawed off with what looks like a hacksaw. This is the first time I'm seeing something like this. In my forensic life, I have never come across such an incident," Oduor said.