Bombshell new evidence in the murder of Julie Ward in Kenya was locked in a safe by Scotland Yard – allowing her suspected killer to escape justice, her family allege today.
The then Kenyan President’s playboy son Jonathan Moi should have been arrested after the explosive new testimony against him. But thanks to an alleged cover-up involving the Yard, the Foreign Office and the Kenyan authorities, he lived as a free man for the rest of his life.
Julie’s father John Ward spent 35 years – the rest of his days – on a relentless quest to establish the truth about the brutal death of his beloved only daughter in 1988.
The businessman dedicated his life, as perhaps only a father could, to finding her killer and bringing them to justice.
He spent £2million and made almost 200 trips to Africa, with the evidence he doggedly amassed pointing to one sinister conclusion – that she had been kidnapped, raped and then murdered on the orders of Jonathan Moi, the dissolute son of the then Kenyan president.
Instead of justice, over the years Mr Ward faced lies, obfuscation, cover-ups, corruption, tampering of statements and destruction of evidence.
Moi was never properly investigated, let alone brought to trial.
Perhaps most shocking of all is the alleged collusion of the British government and Scotland Yard in the international cover-up.
The riddle of Julie’s death remains unresolved. Yet today the Mail can reveal perhaps the most significant development in the mystery so far: a bombshell witness statement that places Moi near the scene of the crime, suggesting he had blatantly lied about his location at the time of Julie’s disappearance.
According to the police officer who obtained it, it would ‘blow the case wide open’.
Julie Ward’s brutal murder in Kenya in 1988 led her father John Ward to spend the rest of his days, the next 35 years, tirelessly searching for his 28-year-old daughter’s killer
The evidence pointed to one sinister conclusion – Julie was kidnapped, raped and murdered on the orders of Jonathan Moi, the dissolute playboy son of the then Kenyan president
Revealed: the explosive witness statement stating categorically that prime suspect Jonathan Moi was near the scene – contradicting his flat denial of ever being in the Masai Mara
Yet while the damning statement was obtained in 2011, inexplicably the dramatic breakthrough was never pursued and the prime suspect lived as a free man until he died of cancer just six years ago.
Meanwhile this key piece of evidence was left to rot, not in Kenya but locked up in a Metropolitan Police safe in Lewisham, south London for nine years.
Inevitably, this reinforces the Ward family’s well-grounded suspicions that the circumstances of Julie’s murder were shamefully suppressed in order to maintain good diplomatic relations between Britain and Kenya.
And even today, nearly 40 years after the murder that shocked the nation, Julie’s family believe Scotland Yard is still – at the behest of the Foreign Office – trying to hush up the truth. They have lodged a formal complaint with the Met seeking answers.
As Bob Ward, Julie’s younger brother, asks: ‘Why was this vital piece of evidence left under lock and key for so long? Their failure to act on it – and indeed to bury it – conveniently until after the prime suspect had died is as scandalous as it is upsetting. It’s a real betrayal of justice.’
John, I think we’ve blown the case wide open
Scotland Yard detective to John Ward
It is Bob, 61, who is now spearheading the quest for truth. John Ward died in 2023 shortly before turning 90 – just two weeks after Julie’s mother Janette passed away at the same age – with their mission incomplete.
But it did not die with them, as Bob and Julie’s other brother Tim have taken up the mantle. ‘Julie was a really gentle, sweet, softly spoken, kind, generous, loving soul. And she deserves justice, as do Mum and Dad,’ Bob says. ‘It’s indisputable there have been lies. We are as determined as ever to get to the truth.’
Animal lover Julie had been on a six-month safari trip-of-a-lifetime to photograph wildlife when she disappeared in 1988. The last reported sighting of the beautiful 28-year-old was at the Sand River Campsite in the Masai Mara game reserve on September 6.
Four days later, Mr and Mrs Ward endured the phonecall every parent dreads. Julie, who had been due to fly home to Britain within days, had gone missing. Within hours John, then 55 and who had never been to Africa, had booked a plane to Kenya to set up his own search for his missing daughter.
Julie’s father John and mother Jan. Julie shared his dimpled smile and her adoration for animals. The couple died just two weeks apart in 2023 shortly before their 90th birthdays
Bob Ward, Julie’s younger brother, is continuing their late father’s quest for justice – and wants to know why the Met ‘hid’ a bombshell new statement until after the chief suspect had died
Jonathan Moi’s police statement in 1997 denying ever being in the Masai Mara
The new testimony from a highly-credible witness placing Moi near the scene of Julie’s murder
He organised five aircraft, with spotters, to conduct a grid search of the area where Julie was last seen and found her jeep in a gully, away from any tracks. Her remains were later discovered in a remote spot, some 10 miles from her abandoned vehicle.
It was Mr Ward who had the devastating experience of picking up all that was left of his daughter, a jaw and lower left leg, both burned.
In the early days, overwhelmed by waves of grief yet determined to hunt down the perpetrator, Mr Ward was perplexed by the authorities’ bizarre theories.
A police pathologist originally said Julie had been murdered, but then his report was blatantly doctored by Kenya’s chief pathologist. The conclusion ‘sharp clean cuts’ with a heavy blade was changed to blunt ‘torn’ injuries that could have been caused by wild animals.
Mr Ward was told variously by Kenyan police that his daughter had been: mauled by lions, struck by lightning or even taken her own life. Refusing to accept these preposterous theories, over the months that followed, he commissioned 10 forensic reports, including two from Home Office-approved pathologists in Britain.
These found that his daughter had been murdered, hacked up, soaked in petrol and set on fire. The sheer weight of his dossier of evidence presented to Julie’s inquest in Kenya in 1989 gave the judge no option but to conclude she was murdered rather than eaten.
Bob recalls that his father had his suspicions about how the investigation was being conducted right from the start. ‘Dad realised early on that something sinister was going on with the Kenyan police investigation,’ he says. ‘It was obvious that someone very senior in the Kenyan regime had been taking a very close interest, and there was interference being orchestrated from a high level. They had thrown everything at proving she had committed suicide or been eaten by animals. But he could not understand why.’
Only later, after being tipped off about Jonathan Moi, son of Kenyan president Daniel arap Moi, did this this baffling interference begin to make sense. Nor did it stop there.
For today the Mail can also reveal mystery still surrounds what happened to Julie’s Suzuki ‘jeep’. It could have been a treasure trove of forensic evidence, having possibly been driven by her murderer.
But that will never be known because after John Ward made arrangements for it to be shipped to the UK for forensic testing in 1990, he disclosed his plans to a Scotland Yard detective in confidence. Bob says: ‘That jeep would have given us answers. But when the Met detective informed the Kenyan police of its whereabouts, they seized it.
The next time it was seen, the vehicle had been broken up into parts and cleaned, so it was not possible to get any forensics from it.’
Bob Ward pictured in his ‘shed’ office which is packed floor to ceiling with files of evidence gathered mainly by his father John during almost 200 trips he made to Africa
Julie Ward during her six-month trip-of-a-lifetime to explore Africa before her father endured the phonecall every parent dreads in September 1988 when he were told she was missing
Tim, Julie and Bob Ward in their younger days: now the two brothers are continuing their father’s mission to force answers from Scotland Yard, the Foreign Office and the Kenyan police
Three months after the inquest, which had garnered worldwide headlines, the British foreign secretary, Douglas Hurd, asked Scotland Yard to assist the UK’s ally with their investigation.
‘Dad was thrilled to get the Yard on the case,’ says Bob. ‘But while we trusted the Met at first, there is now clear evidence that, right from the start, the last thing the British government really wanted was for them to actually solve the case – because it would have caused no end of diplomatic tension.’
Indeed, John Ward recorded a conversation soon after Julie’s murder in which he was advised by a civil servant from the Foreign Office ‘not to rock the boat’ and to ‘leave it to the Kenyans’.
And many years later, an investigation carried out by an independent police force vindicated many of his fears when it found the Met and the Foreign Office guilty of ‘inconsistency, falsehoods and downright lies’ – more of which later.
It was in the early 1990s that suspicion turned to Jonathan Moi. Bob says: ‘Rumours were growing. Over the years, all sorts of people came up to Dad in confidence and whispered Moi’s name.’
The evidence eventually pointed to the gruesome explanation that Moi and his drunken bodyguards had come across Julie when she stopped to photograph wildlife; that they kidnapped and repeatedly raped her over a few days – and that once her disappearance became national news, Moi ordered his henchmen to murder her and dispose of her body.
Yet the Kenyans – and Scotland Yard – seemed keen to pin the murder on others, with two junior park rangers put on trial for Julie’s murder in 1991. John Ward’s own inquiries had already convinced him that they were not responsible: his evidence helped to secure their acquittal.
John Ward spent 35 years – the rest of his days – travelling to Kenya and around the world as he tracked down evidence to find his beloved daughter’s killer
Julie Ward as a schoolgirl: she was ‘a really gentle, sweet, softly spoken, kind, generous, loving soul’ says her brother Bob. ‘And she deserves justice, as do Mum and Dad’
The young woman wanted to ‘see something of the world’ before it was too late, recalled her father John. But her mother Jan always worried about her travelling in Africa on her own
Julie was the eldest sibling who always looked after her cherubic younger brothers in a family home filled with love
Almost every family photograph of Julie features her with a dog or other animal. She was besotted with wildlife, a trait she shared with her mother Jan
The Ward family had pet dogs which were never far from Julie’s side throughout her childhood in Suffolk
Julie Ward’s brother Bob says: ‘There was a chance to interview the chief suspect, and instead the key evidence was hidden away’
Simon Ole Makallah, who was chief warden in the Masai Mara, at his murder trial in 1998, when he was acquitted. The Ward family hope one day he might talk about whatever he knows
Suspicion then fell on chief warden Simon Ole Makallah, who had found Julie’s remains in a far-flung spot in the Mara just minutes after starting to ‘search’. But at his trial in 1999 he was found not guilty of her murder.
All the while, gap-toothed Moi – whose father’s 24-year presidency was marred by claims of human rights abuses and corruption – was never even arrested. Yet rumours about his involvement persisted, and in 1997, Moi issued a statement in which he claimed: ‘Throughout the month of September 1988 I was at my farm at Eldama Ravine’ – over 110 miles away from where Julie had died – adding: ‘I would also state that I have never been at the Masai Mara game reserve.’
Bob says: ‘It was incredibly frustrating for Dad. He instinctively knew Moi was lying, but there was no way to prove it.’
Today, however, the Mail can reveal that in fact there was.
For Moi’s claims were flatly contradicted by a highly credible witness. This person’s testimony was obtained in 2011 by a Scotland Yard detective sent to Kenya after the Met launched a fresh investigation into Julie’s death in response to Mr Ward’s tireless campaigning.
The witness was a trusted official at a tourist camp, not far from where Julie vanished. Their identity is known to Bob, and to the Mail, but is not being made public to protect them.
While Jonathan Moi and his father are dead, there are many fanatical supporters, including potential accomplices, who are not.
Written in neat handwriting on a Metropolitan Police Witness Statement form, the testimony states unequivocally: ‘I remember that Jonathan Moi and his party arrived [at the camp] very late… I definitely know that Jonathan Moi arrived at the site that night as I greeted him and spoke with him.’
The next day, Moi’s party mysteriously ‘did not return to the camp’ despite being expected to, and one of them returned days later with a ‘very odd’ story about getting lost, the witness stated.
Bob Ward says: ‘Why was this vital piece of evidence left under lock and key? Their failure to act on it – indeed to bury it – is as scandalous as it is upsetting. It’s a real betrayal of justice’
Bob Ward, on the left, and his brother Tim vowed to continue their father’s determination to resolve the case, after he died in 2023
Julie inherited her love of animals from her mother Jan, who kept a menagerie, and went to Africa to photograph wildlife…making friends with a baby chimp on this occasion
A further piece of evidence, a handwritten letter from the witness to a colleague, corroborates the date as being around the time when Julie disappeared. The statement should have been the breakthrough the Wards had long craved.
Of the Met officer, Detective Superintendent Phil Adams, who tracked down the witness and arranged their statement, Bob says: ‘Phil was a very good police officer. He and his team did genuinely good police work. His exact words to my dad afterwards were: “John, I think we’ve blown the case wide open”. The statement named four people who also met Moi on that night.’
At the very least, the family believe, Moi should have been cautioned and quizzed by police about the glaring discrepancies in his claims. And yet once again the investigation went cold. As Bob says: ‘Nothing ever happened and we could never get any answers about why.’
It all begs the question: why was such an important piece of evidence, discovered by Scotland Yard itself, whose detective believed would crack the case, locked away in a safe in London for nine years?
Bob Ward believes this is one of many pieces of a jigsaw that, when pieced together, presents a vivid picture of an orchestrated cover-up at the behest of a Foreign Office keen to preserve diplomatic good relations.
Some 150,000 British tourists visit Kenya every year and the countries have both benefited from deep economic, political and military ties since the former colony gained independence in 1963. It would be hard to overstate the diplomatic fallout, had the president’s son been charged with murdering a young British woman.
Some 150,000 British tourists visit Kenya every year and the countries have deep diplomatic and economic ties – which the Wards believe explains the desire to cover up Julie’s murder
John Ward at the gully where Julie’s jeep was found, on a trip in 2018. Her remains were discovered in a remote spot 10 miles away
Bob Ward in 2018 in the Masai Mara during a trip with his father to search for more evidence in Julie’s murder
Were the Kenyan authorities even informed about the Yard’s game-changing new witness statement? Bob says: ‘We were told by someone very trustworthy that they were not.’ And in 2018, when Bob and his father met with senior Kenyan officials, ‘they sat up in surprise when we said we knew of evidence Moi was there – staring at each other without saying a word. We never heard from them again.’ Moi died a year later.
Bob shrugs: ‘The whole thing stinks. There was a chance to interview the chief suspect, and instead the key evidence was hidden away – and it looks deliberate and planned. ‘Potentially, the man who had Julie killed was allowed to spend the last years of his life in complete freedom, thanks to being protected by the British police on the instruction of the British government.’
The suggestion of collusion between the Met, the Foreign Office and the Kenyans is an intrinsic part of this case. By the time of the British inquest, in 2004, the Moi regime had been replaced and a statement from a diplomat with the new government admitted there had been ‘evidence of deliberate obstruction of [John Ward’s] inquiries by some officials in the previous regime’.
This confession was particularly stinging for the Met because it spectacularly undermined a report written by one of the Yard’s senior officers in 1990, which had concluded there was no cover-up. The coroner himself remarked that Mr Ward had faced ‘a mounting wall of official obstruction and ludicrous misinformation’.
Then there was the independent inquiry into the handling of the case that was conducted by Lincolnshire Police in the early 2000s which contained damning criticisms of Scotland Yard and the Foreign Office. It concluded: ‘There is clear evidence of inconsistency and contradictions, falsehoods and downright lies, and it is this that has, not surprisingly, inexorably led to John Ward believing there was an active conspiracy to prevent him identifying his daughter’s killers.’
The Lincolnshire report itself was not made public until 2008, when Mr Ward obtained it under freedom of information laws. Even then large sections were swathed in a censor’s black ink.
But it was through the Lincolnshire Police report they discovered a statement which John Ward had made to his local police force had been altered by Scotland Yard to water-down criticism of Kenyan police. ‘And 10 pages were missing,’ Bob adds, claiming that a Met reference number added to the statement ‘proves it was altered by the Metropolitan Police’.
After Moi died in 2019, the Wards made renewed efforts to obtain the statement exposing his lies. Bob says: ‘Finally, after years of negotiating with the Met, they gave us access. It was in 2020, during Covid. We were really stunned when they finally handed over the statement and we read it. Here was all the evidence they had needed to haul in Moi and challenge him, but they had just left it in this safe in London all that time.’
Not only this but a register signed by guests at the Masai Mara camp – including Moi’s signature, according to one witness – that was also supposedly held in the Lewisham safe had gone missing. Bob says wearily: ‘We are very used to things “disappearing”.’
This is ‘The Place’, the name Julie’s family have given to the grim and remote location where her father made the devastating discovery of all that remained of her: a jaw and lower left leg
On the 30th anniversary of her death in 2018, Julie’s father John and brother Bob paid a poignant visit to the spot where she was found and pinned a group family photo to a tree
Bob Ward, 61, accuses Scotland Yard of colluding with the Foreign Office and the Kenyan authorities to keep the circumstances of his sister’s death hushed up
John Ward in happier times. After Julie’s disappearance in 1988, when he was 55, the businessman devoted the rest of his life to hunting her killer
In 2022, the family lodged a formal complaint with the Metropolitan Police alleging corruption, collusion and perverting the course of justice by officers of the Met ‘to avoid bringing the main suspect for Julie’s murder to justice’.
The complaint process rumbled on for more than two years. Since John Ward’s death, everything has been overseen by Bob. HQ is now an office he calls ‘The Shed’ near his home in Suffolk. Today he holds up one of the letters he received just a few weeks ago from a DCI at the Yard’s Directorate of Professional Standards.
The Met’s perfunctory response to the family’s complaint was to claim there was ‘no new evidence’ and it would be wrong to ‘divert officers’ to re-investigate such an old case. It acknowledged the Met’s early investigations were ‘completed with haste’ but claimed the Lincolnshire Police report had found ‘no evidence of conspiracy’.
And what of the Wards’ complaint about the bombshell statement being left in a safe? On this crucial question, the Yard was silent. Bob says: ‘We replied that the horse had long since bolted on the actual investigation – this was a complaint about the Met’s shameful conduct, because Moi was a free man when he died in 2019. They told us to appeal to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC), which we have.’
Despite the passage of time, and the death of the prime suspect, Bob says there are still plenty of people alive in Kenya today who know the truth. In particular, he’d like to talk to former head ranger Simon Ole Makallah.
While he was cleared of Julie’s murder, the Wards have always believed he might know what really happened. For the moment he remains silent – but Bob still hopes that, as with the British authorities, he’ll talk one day. Like his father, he won’t give up.
Scotland Yard said: ‘In 2018 we exhausted all lines of inquiry and suspended the investigation into the murder of Julie Ward. This decision was not taken lightly and our thoughts remain with Julie’s family, who were updated accordingly. ‘We have been clear that detectives would consider any new information provided to them to determine whether it represented a new and significant line of inquiry.’
The Foreign Office said: ‘We reaffirm our sympathy for Julie Ward’s family and will continue to offer them any help and advice we can. We deeply regret that nobody has been brought to justice. The Foreign Office has always absolutely refuted any allegations of a cover-up in this historic case.’
