When a young British photojournalist vanishes in a well-known Kenyan reserve, questions swirl around what happened to her. After her remains are found at a grisly crime scene, her father sets out on a decades-long hunt to bring her killer to justice but is faced with bizarre roadblocks from two nations on different continents.View source material and photos for this episode at: parkpredators.com/the-reserve Park Predators is an audiochuck production. Connect with us on social media:Instagram: @parkpredators | @audiochuckTwitter: @ParkPredators | @audiochuckFacebook: /ParkPredators | /audiochuckllcTikTok: @audiochuck
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Hi, park enthusiasts. I'm your host, Delia D'Ambra, and the case I'm going to tell you about today is a story some of you might be familiar with. It took place in Masai Mara National Reserve in Kenya in 1988. According to a travel website from Asemara, the reserve borders Tanzania's Serengeti National Park and sits in the southwest part of Kenya.
It's more than 370,000 acres in size and features some of the most unique wildlife in the world. Zebras, wildebeest, rhinos, lions, giraffes, elephants, and other species roam freely in this stretch of Africa's savanna. Which is why the area attracts so many people to go on safari there.
The word Maasai in the reserve's name refers to the Maasai tribe that lived in the area long before British colonization started at the turn of the 20th century. The tribe was known for its semi-nomadic lifestyle, herding livestock, and bright red robes known as shuka that male warriors donned.
Today, Maasai is spelled the way British settlers spelled it, with two A's instead of three, but the proper way of spelling it is actually M-A-A-S-A-I. Back in the day when soldiers from Great Britain forced many tribe members off their native land, bloodshed ensued. The hand weapons the Maasai warriors carried were outmatched by their invaders' firearms.
And in the early 1900s, some members of the tribe signed agreements with white settlers to hand over two-thirds of their most fertile land. They were then relocated to less desirable parts of Kenya and Tanzania to live. Despite this dark history, the tribe has still clung to its deeply rooted cultural traditions and practices.
The people take pride in their land and all of the things that make it attractive to international tourists. Visitors to the reserve can even visit the tribe's village and learn about their rich culture. The word Mara in the reserve's name is the tribe's word for spotted or spotted land and refers to the patches of acacia trees and shrubbery that are scattered throughout it.
And similar to that aspect of the landscape was the patchwork investigation into the death of a young British wildlife photographer in September 1988. Information about what happened to Julie Ward while visiting Kenya seems to be dotted over the pages of time. Little lies and little truths just sprinkled between various sources.
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On Friday, September 9th, 1988, a man named Doug Morey was at his home in Nairobi, Kenya, when he noticed that Julie Ward, a 28-year-old woman he'd been renting a cottage to on his property, wasn't around. His next door neighbors, an older couple named Natasha and Paul Weld Dixon, had also observed the same thing. Julie was nowhere to be found.
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