Julie Ward, who was murdered in the Masai Mara game reserve in Kenya in September 1988 while on safari. Photograph: PA
By Maev Kennedy-Guardian.co.uk
A team from the Metropolitan police has spent 10 days in Kenya reinvestigating the brutal unsolved murder of Julie Ward, whose mutilated body was found in 1988 at a campsite in the Masai Mara game reserve.
Ward, from Bury St Edmunds, who worked as a publishing assistant but was also a passionate wildlife photographer, was last seen alive on 6 September, 1988.
A week later when scattered and charred remains were first found, the Kenyan authorities initially insisted she had been killed by wild animals.
When prosecutions were eventually brought, two murder trials of game reserve rangers ended in the acquittal of all those accused.
John Ward, Julie’s father and a retired hotelier, has never allowed the case to be dropped. He has travelled repeatedly to Kenya to investigate himself, applied relentless pressure on the Kenya and British authorities, gave evidence at the murder trials and the inquest in Britain.
In 2008 he persuaded John Yates, assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard, to reopen the investigation. The Kenyan authorities initially refused to co-operate, but after the appointment of a new justice minister, Mutula Kilonzo, and a change in police chief, the government agreed to allow the British officers to visit.
“People at the Yard are committed to solving this case, and there’s a much more positive attitude coming out of Kenya,” Ward said today. “It’s looking good at the moment.”
He said the Met team was starting its investigation from scratch, and had used the trip to Kenya to examine the original casework. A number of DNA samples held by the police in Nairobi were also taken back to London for analysis, he said.
“Advances in DNA technology could mean that some of old evidence will now yield results for the first time.”
A Metropolitan police spokesman confirmed that “a small team” was working in Kenya for 10 days from 6 March, adding “Metropolitan police service officers continue to work closely with, and receive positive co-operation from, the Kenyan authorities in this investigation.”
Julie’s father has always insisted that there was a cover up of the truth of her murder by the Kenyan authorities to protect the lucrative tourist trade.
The inquest in Britain in 2004 heard that the original postmortem report in Kenya was altered, changing the statement that her body showed “clean sharp cuts” to the more ambiguous “breaks and tears”. It found that she was murdered.
A separate report by Jon Stoddart, now chief constable of Durham, criticised both the initial Scotland Yard investigation, and the actions of the Kenyan police who were accused of “brazen, deceitful and dishonest behaviour”.
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