Delia D'Ambra

But it was speculated that Kenyan officials didn't necessarily want word of those incidents to circulate in the press because the tourism industry was such an economic driver for the country.

By January and February of 1990, John's personal efforts to keep the spotlight on his daughter's case paid off.

Scotland Yard launched an official investigation into the murder and actually sent three inspectors to Kenya to poke around and gather police files.

Within weeks of that happening, two gay wardens in their 20s who worked in the reserve during the time frame Julie was killed were arrested on suspicion of being connected to the crime.

An article by Michael Horsnell stated that forensic tests were being done by British investigators at that time as part of the investigation into the men, but the article didn't specify what specific items of evidence were being tested.

Later reporting by Sam Kiley mentioned that several Caucasian hares had been found in huts that the defendants and another ranger lived in at the reserve.

An article by Richard Caseby said what had gotten the whole ball rolling and resulted in the game wardens being arrested in the first place was that someone had sent John Ward an anonymous letter in England claiming to know where some of Julie's personal belongings ended up in Kenya after her murder.

I have to presume that tip pointed toward the two park rangers, or else investigators wouldn't have been so heavily focused on them.

Anyway, Scotland Yard's theory at that point was entirely circumstantial, but it went like this.

Julie willingly sought help from the two park rangers while they were patrolling on foot on September 6th, 1988.

But then something went south and she was held for a few days at their ranger outpost where they sexually assaulted her and killed her.

To cover up their crime, the men dismembered her body and burned her remains in the Savannah in a different location than where her Jeep was found.

John Ward mostly agreed with this theory, but he was also convinced that Kenyan officials higher up in the government had played a role in the seemingly corrupt and questionable events that followed the murder.

Kenya's attorney general took a look at Scotland Yard's theory and reviewed evidence that allegedly supported it.

Something he noted as interesting was that a button-sized solar-powered battery that had been discovered at the ranger's outpost after the crime was the type of battery that Julie's missing Olympus camera would have taken.

When it was found, it was resting on a coin in the sun.

That position was one way to build up a charge, a fact that seemingly its owner would have known.

And because Scotland Yard determined that none of the rangers owned an Olympus camera or knew how to charge a battery like that, it almost seemed as if Julie had left it at the outpost herself, perhaps with the intention of coming back to get it.

However, there was other evidence that suggested the battery may have belonged to a wristwatch, which some of the rangers who lived at the outpost wore.

So in the end, the battery being there wasn't necessarily a smoking gun clue.