Delia D'Ambra

However, I did read another source that reported it was two park rangers who saw her leave around 3 p.m.

But I wonder if that reporting just assumed the constable and clerk were the rangers, not what their actual titles were.

It's hard to tell.

There's a lot of things like that in the source material about this case, where it's difficult to decipher if factually different information is being reported or if authors just misreported titles and small details.

Anyway, by the time the search for her was fully underway on Tuesday, September 13th, her dad, John Ward, and a pilot he'd hired to take him over the reserve were flying over an area about six miles away from Sand River Camp when he spotted Julie's Suzuki Jeep mired in deep mud inside a gully.

Once he got on the ground, he was joined by local police and park rangers.

Together, the group examined the vehicle and found that it was locked.

They smashed out one of the windows and discovered that some food and water were missing, along with a 20-liter plastic can of fuel that was supposed to have lasted up to five days.

There were also several large scratches dug into the roof that spelled out the letters SOS, though some other sources reported that the letters were spelled out in mud on the roof.

Around the Jeep were several spots where it appeared someone had tried to start a fire or had maybe gotten a few fires going, but none of them had ever grown very big.

This evidence, combined with the missing can of fuel, was a clue to John Ward that his daughter may have attempted to get help by starting signal fires, but when no one came to assist her, she left the Jeep and walked to find help.

Something that seemed odd to everyone, though, was that a pair of binoculars and two maps, one of which was of the game reserve, were still inside the Jeep.

meaning Julie had not taken them with her.

After assessing the abandoned vehicle, John and the rest of the search crew fanned out to continue looking for Julie.

A few hours later, around 4 p.m., about five miles from where the Jeep was found, and roughly four miles before a known hunting camp, the chief game warden of the reserve, a guy named Simon Olimakala, and other searchers discovered what looked like burned human remains and personal belongings scattered beneath and around a tree.

Some of the items included burnt camera film, coins, cutlery, pieces of glass, a saucepan, and a small cooking stove.

When members of the search party and John Ward took a closer look at the charred scene, they were able to find a pair of flip-flops, remains of a handbag, a passport, credit cards, and a few body parts in the ashes that hadn't been destroyed by the fire.

The human remains included a jawbone, a left leg, and a lock of hair.

John personally collected the remains and ashes in a makeshift bag he'd fashioned from a helicopter seat cover and handed them over to a Kenyan police officer, who then gave them to a pathologist who worked for the police force named Dr. Adel Shaker.

Shaker conducted a post-mortem exam in Nairobi shortly after the remains were discovered, but his findings weren't released to officials and John until a few days later on September 15th.