Did Brits Stop Kenya Murder Probe?

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Andrew Parsons / pa / ap

John Ward, the father of murdered British tourist Julie Ward.

In September 1988, British tourist Julie Ward, 28, went missing during a trip to Kenya's Masai Mara game reserve. Days later her father, British businessman John Ward, came across her severed leg in the dusty grass of the Kenyan savannah, confirming his worst fears about her fate.

Her case remains officially unsolved. But Ward, a self-made businessman, has been on a mission ever since to keep the investigation into Julie's murder alive. He has visited the crime scene more than 100 times, and spent nearly $4 million of his own money searching for clues. Ward has always maintained that British authorities have actively thwarted his investigations because they placed smooth relations with the Kenyan government above the search for justice. Beyond a few sympathetic newspaper profiles, however, his allegations have been largely dismissed as the obsessions of a grief-stricken father.

But this week the Sunday Telegraph newspaper revealed that an independent police report — completed secretly in 2004 — has found that Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and the British High Commission in Kenya had made mistakes and engaged in cover-ups in the investigation into Julie's murder.

The report, undertaken by the Lincolnshire Police on behalf of Scotland Yard and obtained by TIME, accuses the FCO and High Commission of "inconsistency and contradictions, falsehoods and downright lies," and concludes that "it is this that has not surprisingly led to John Ward believing that there was an active conspiracy to prevent him from identifying his daughter's killers."

The physical evidence in the case suggests that after Julie Ward was hacked to death, her remains were set on fire. She was probably raped before her murder. Yet in the immediate aftermath of the crime, the Kenyan authorities refused to declare the death a murder, insisting that Julie either killed herself or was torn apart by wild animals. When Ward presented evidence to the contrary, pointing out that animals or dead women cannot start fires, a British Foreign Office official told him that his daughter was probably struck by lightning (This has also since been ruled out.)

Nearly a year after her death, Kenyan police, with the help of investigators from Britain's Scotland Yard, undertook a murder inquiry that let to the trial and acquittal of two men. The report criticizes that investigation as "inadequately resourced, completed with unseemly haste and superficial." (Another investigation in 1998 led to the trial of a third Kenyan, who was also acquitted.)

In an interview with the BBC, Ward suggested that the obstruction of the investigation had been motivated by the desire not to anger Kenya's then president, Daniel arap Moi, a key Cold War ally at the time. An open acknowledgment that Ward had been brutally murdered might have raised uncomfortable questions, and perhaps put a serious damper on the country's tourism industry.

"[Britain] had many interests in Kenya, and Moi was a very volatile man. A snap of his fingers and he could have kicked people out of there very quickly," Ward said. "I think there were people in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who looked at the big board and thought 'look, we can't bring this girl back, sad as it is, she's dead. Moi doesn't want this to be a murder. Let's support Moi.' And that's what they did," he said.

In a prepared statement this week, the FCO refuted the report's allegation of a cover-up and said portions of the report contained "statements that are unfair and unfounded." But in a concession to Ward, it also added: "While we refute any allegations of collusion with the Kenyan Government, we could and should have handled this case better."

Having just returned from another trip to Kenya to follow up two clues that turned out to be hoaxes, Ward told TIME that he hopes new DNA collection technology will help solve the case. He said that Scotland Yard was prepared to continue investigations, and that several new leads have yet to be explored. But he's been through this before. Sometimes, he says, he feels as if his search for justice faces insurmountable obstacles; now 74, he says he often vows to let the case rest. But then some new tip will arrive in the mail, or a piece of evidence will emerge, and he will feel that familiar sensation pulling him back again, aching in a way he can't escape, like a phantom limb.