July 20, 1998. Copyright, 1998, Graphic News. All rights reserved

FatherÕs 10-year quest for justice

LONDON, July 20, Graphic News: A HIGH-RANKING OFFICIAL in KenyaÕs Wildlife service is appearing before a court in the capital Nairobi charged with the murder of UK tourist Julie Ward a decade ago.
Simon Ole Makallah, who was arrested on Friday night, was a senior warden at the Masai Mara game reserve where Julie, 28, disappeared in September 1988, days before she was due to fly home after a six-month safari.
After a ten-year search for his daughterÕs killers, John Ward is convinced Kenyan police have found the man who murdered Ôsafari girlÕ Julie Ward.
Ward, who has spent more than £500,000 and made over 60 trips to Kenya campaigning for his daughterÕs death to be properly investigated, became suspicious of Makallah following the ease at which he traced JulieÓs remains.
Makallah said he had been led the seven miles from JulieÕs jeep to her remains by vultures circling overhead. But his claim to have seen the birds from such a distance is widely disputed.
Julie WardÕs mutilated remains were found in a remote corner of the Masai Mara game reserve, 200 kms (125 miles) south of the capital Nairobi in September 1988.
 Fearing murder would be bad for tourism, the Kenyan authorities initially maintained that Julie had committed suicide, then that she had been eaten by wild animals and later suggested she had been struck by lightning. Her father's dogged campaign finally led to a fresh series of investigations in which a pathologist in England proved that her body had been dismembered with a machete and doused in petrol.
Two game rangers were charged with the murder but acquitted in 1992 by a Kenyan high court judge.
Following the latest investigation Ward believes that Julie was sexually assaulted or raped by a police officer and ranger at the Sand River camp. Julie either died during the attack or was murdered afterwards.
The two suspected killers, helped by another ranger, then devised an elaborate plan to dispose of her body and belongings by driving her Suzuki jeep over the border to make it look as if she had been attacked by Tanzanian bandits.
Their plans went wrong when the jeep got stuck in a gully. Ward believes that the killers wrote SOS in mud on the roof and dismembered her body to make it look as if she had been killed by animals.
Their critical mistake Ð to use petrol in an attempt to burn her remains Ð almost certainly meant that animals would not eat them, thus preserving evidence of the crime. 
Ward says: ÔI now want the men who murdered my daughter tried and convicted. That is what it has all been about for ten years, nothing more, nothing less.Õ

/ENDS

Sources: Reuters, The Animals Are Innocent by John Ward