Delia D'Ambra

Simon Olimakola and the two game wardens who were also acquitted of Julie's murder were all reported to be members of the Maasai tribe.

Now, I don't know if these men truly were guilty or not.

I don't think anyone can know that except them.

But it's clear from reading a lot of quotes from John Ward that at one point he was convinced they were responsible for what happened to his daughter.

However, on the flip side, there were also many native Kenyans who felt like the accusations being made against the defendants by Julie's British family members and supporters were a result of blind prejudice.

Kenyan author Grace Masilla discusses in her book that one of the big reasons Maasai tribe members weren't necessarily forthcoming with information to Scotland Yard investigators or John Ward was because culturally the tribe is a very close-knit group and their members always support their own.

They've also historically been at odds with British influences and the norms of modern legal procedures.

I think dynamics like this and other wild spinoff theories as to who might be responsible for Julie's death just made this case a lot more difficult to try and solve as the years dragged on.

For example, one theory that cropped up speculated that Julie might not have been the innocent, wildlife-loving photographer she presented herself as.

Some people believed she might have been a British spy who'd come across damning information about the activities of powerful Kenyan political figures in the reserve.

It's unclear, though, if anyone with any authority ever really pursued that theory beyond just it was possible.

And naturally, John Ward and the Scotland Yard denounced it as completely unfounded, which at this point in the story isn't a huge surprise to me.

By 2004, a formal inquest in the UK had been held to help snuff out rumors like this, and that proceeding concluded with the same ruling.

Julie was murdered, period.

But another wild theory that surfaced as a result of that inquest had to do with Julie being struck by lightning.

I know, we're back to that scenario again.

Articles by Michael Horsnell and Patrick Barkham reported that way back in the fall of 1988, John Ward and some of his supporters had been told by a former MI6 officer that British intelligence agents had covertly inquired about Julie's murder shortly after news of her death broke.

One agent had allegedly determined that she'd gotten her Jeep stuck in the mud, walked to find help, become lost, and started a fire beneath a tree.

She'd then climbed that tree to possibly be safe from threats on the ground, but then lightning struck her and it was so powerful it had severed her body, causing her to fall into the fire where animals later scavenged her remains.

To say this theory feels like a stretch is an understatement, and it's worth noting it wasn't really something that the press reported on until many years after the crime.