Police in kenya over 1988 killing
- Select a language for the TTS:
- UK English Female
- UK English Male
- US English Female
- US English Male
- Australian Female
- Australian Male
- Language selected: (auto detect) - EN

Play all audios:

Scotland Yard detectives have again travelled to Kenya to investigate the unsolved murder of a British tourist more than 20 years ago. Julie Ward, 28, from Brockley, Suffolk, was brutally
killed in 1988 while on a trip to the Masai Mara game reserve to photograph animals. A team of six detectives and a crime scene manager from the Metropolitan Police arrived in the Kenyan
capital Nairobi on Thursday night. They plan to spend about 11 days working with local officers to interview witnesses and take DNA samples and fingerprints with the aim of eliminating
suspects. Miss Ward vanished on September 7, 1988. Six days later the burned remains of her leg and part of her jaw were found close to a tree in the bush. Her skull and spine were found
nearby. The local authorities at first insisted that she committed suicide or was killed by wild animals, although these theories were later discredited. An initial investigation by Scotland
Yard and Kenyan police led to two park rangers standing trial for her murder, but both were acquitted in 1992 because of lack of evidence. A second inquiry in 1997 led to the Masai
Mara's chief game warden, Simon Makallah, being charged with the killing, but he too was cleared in 1999. An inquest in Ipswich, Suffolk, in 2004 resulted in a verdict of unlawful
killing after the coroner heard evidence from a pathologist that Miss Ward's body was dismembered with a sharp instrument before being scattered around the bush. Scotland Yard officers
then launched a review of the forensics material in the case which resulted in Kenyan police reopening the investigation in 2009. Thirteen people have been interviewed in connection with the
murder since the launch of the latest inquiry. No arrests have been made.