Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Photograph
- Timeline
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Versions of Truth
- 2 Portrait of an Assassin State
- 3 Sex, Gender and the ‘Criminal’ State
- 4 Julie Ward’s Death and the Kenyan Grapevine
- 5 Wildebeest, ‘Noble Savages’ and Moi’s Kenya: Cultural Illiteracies in the Search for Julie Ward’s Killers
- 6 Farms in Africa: Wildlife Tourism, Conservation and Whiteness in Postcolonial Africa
- 7 Fault Lines in the Official British Response to the Julie Ward Murder
- 8 Engaging Modernity
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
4 - Julie Ward’s Death and the Kenyan Grapevine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 April 2021
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Photograph
- Timeline
- Maps
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction: Versions of Truth
- 2 Portrait of an Assassin State
- 3 Sex, Gender and the ‘Criminal’ State
- 4 Julie Ward’s Death and the Kenyan Grapevine
- 5 Wildebeest, ‘Noble Savages’ and Moi’s Kenya: Cultural Illiteracies in the Search for Julie Ward’s Killers
- 6 Farms in Africa: Wildlife Tourism, Conservation and Whiteness in Postcolonial Africa
- 7 Fault Lines in the Official British Response to the Julie Ward Murder
- 8 Engaging Modernity
- Afterword
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
As early as 1991, Ward describes the rumours and allegations about a powerful man behind his daughter's murder:
Throughout the two-and-a-half-year investigation, two other accusations have constantly surfaced, always anonymously. One concerns the son of a very highly placed government official. Rumours of his alleged previous record of rape continue to reach my ears, as do his frequent releases from custody once the police realise who they have picked up. His association with the Masai Mara and Keekorok are constantly mentioned. I have received more than a dozen unsigned messages and anonymous telephone calls naming the man who, the informants claim, is responsible for Julie's murder. During his short time in Nairobi, [Scotland Yard detective] Graham received a couple of these calls too. No one has presented a shred of hard evidence to support these allegations and, more meaningfully for Kenya, none of the informants has sought to claim the reward. Possibly the information comes from people with a political axe to grind. Like Graham, I must dismiss such accusations – until provided with some proof [1991: 386].
This early in the case, Ward concedes that the involvement of such a figure would explain why the Kenyan authorities went to such trouble and expense to orchestrate the cover-up. As he ponders ‘would they really do all that just to save a couple of murdering park rangers who they would obviously be better rid of? This kind of protection is only afforded to someone with great influence’ (ibid.). Despite this line of thought, Ward seems to have stuck to his resolve to ‘dismiss such accusations until provided with some proof ‘. It would be another twenty years, before he publicly acknowledged these rumours and took them seriously, in a 2012 publication.
Although on the surface the rumours and allegations on Julie Ward's death appeared to be primarily interested in incriminating what was perceived to be criminal political elite, as discussed in Chapter 3, at another level, these rumours were also a commentary on the limits of privileging legal truths produced in modern state institutions, especially in a context such as Kenya in the 1980s, where these institutions were largely compromised.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Death Retold in Truth and RumourKenya, Britain and the Julie Ward Murder, pp. 91 - 118Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2015