Delia D'Ambra

Little lies and little truths just sprinkled between various sources.

What I hope to do is wade through all of that, but come out the other side with something to hold on to.

This is Park Predators.

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.

The Weld Dixons knew that was kind of odd because they'd made plans with Julie to have her over for dinner that night and then make sure she made it to the airport the following day to catch a flight home to England.

You see, Julie had been on a long trip to and in Africa, traveling to different areas to take photos of wildlife, but especially herds of wildebeests as they made their annual migration from Tanzania's Serengeti National Park into Kenya's Masai Mara Reserve.

But Doug, Natasha, and Paul knew that Julie was supposed to be back in the city by September 9th.

They'd all been expecting her to arrive earlier in the week, but she hadn't.

At one point, the Well Dixons even called several hospitals and police stations to see if maybe Julie had gotten into a car accident or something.

But there were no reports that she had.

Doug had also utilized some of his resources, too.

He'd asked some pilot friends of his to keep an eye out for her and her used Suzuki Jeep whenever they flew over the 150 miles or so of Savannah between the reserve and the city of Nairobi.

But after a few trips back and forth throughout that week, the pilots told Doug that they hadn't seen any sign of Julie or her vehicle.

He then did the one thing that made the most logical sense in the moment.

He checked inside the cottage he'd been renting to Julie, to, I imagine, figure out if maybe she had actually returned, but everyone just missed seeing her.

But after scoping it out, it became clear that Julie had not come back to her cottage.

Doug looked through her things and found the plane ticket with her name on it that was scheduled to depart for London the next day, Saturday, September 10th.

Unsure of what else to do, the Weld Dixons and Doug just continued to wait.