Unfortunately the news of former President Daniel Arap Moi’s son’s death has woken up the case story of female tourist raped and murdered with justice disappearing in the wind.
It was alleged that it was Jonathan Moi who raped and killed British tourist Julie Ward in 1988. But his father together with Biwot did all they could to silence anyone who talked about it, including threatening Julie Ward’s family.
A week before her return home, she took one last trip to the Maasai Mara for the wildebeest migration but went missing on September 6, 1988.
Apparently the dictator’s son along with his bodyguards was on his way to inspect another of his farms when he saw Julie Ward and got an itch. He decided to do what he used to do with any woman he fancied: rape. He left her nursing her bruises
Sensing that something was wrong, Julie’s father John Ward, now 85, took a plane and went searching for her in the Mara.
Mr Ward revealed that his struggle begun shortly after the discovery of Julie’s remains in September 1988. A screen was used to show a picture of the body parts found at the scene – a lower jaw bone cut in two with a sharp implement thought to be a machete and Julie’s badly burnt left leg showing a deep slash to the thigh.
A post-mortem examination of the remains was carried out by Dr Shaker on 15 September. But within days of telling British diplomats and friends of Mr Ward that the clean fractures to Julie’s remains had been made by a sharp instrument, his boss, Dr Jason Kaviti, a health advisor to the Kenyan government, had paid a visit to his office demanding to see his report.
In his statement, which was given to Lincolnshire Police, who are investigating Mr Ward’s 2001 complaint, Dr Shaker said: “He took the report … I heard him saying ‘no, no, no’ and saw him underline through some words. I saw him underline through the words ‘cleanly cut’. He said it was only my opinion. I wasn’t happy about this but Dr Kaviti was my boss.”
When a copy of the autopsy report was eventually seen by Mr Ward it was crudely altered, with words crossed out or typed over. The hotelier said: “Where [Dr Shaker] had typed ‘cleanly cut’ as far as the leg and jaw were concerned, these words had been changed to ‘torn’ and ‘cracked’. You are starting to talk about an attack by animals and not human beings.”