Delia D'Ambra

No amount of money, though, could buy him patience when it came to dealing with the Kenyan government.

He wrote in his book, The Animals Are Innocent, A Search for Julie's Killers, that the methods the country's police force employed were both unprofessional and outright bizarre.

For example, about a month after finding Julie's remains in the reserve, two Kenyan police investigators showed up to John's hotel room in Nairobi and handed him a plastic grocery bag with a skull inside.

They said it was Julie's and had been found during an additional search of the reserve.

About six months after that, in early April 1989, the first Kenyan police officer who was in charge of the investigation filed a formal report in which he concluded Julie had died by suicide, full stop.

A few months later, in August of that year, an official inquest into the matter took place in Kenya, and John was hopeful he and his family would get some clarity and be able to present their own findings.

By that point, he'd traveled to and from Africa multiple times since September of 1988, and he'd spent countless hours gathering interviews and evidence as part of his own investigation.

He and his lawyer planned to present what they'd found to the magistrate overseeing the inquest, or at a minimum, just publicly raise doubts about the police's version of events.

Andrew Hogg reported for the Sunday Times that John himself wasn't allowed into the courtroom for most of the proceeding, only his lawyer was.

And very little of what his investigation had uncovered could be presented outside of his own testimony when he eventually was called as a witness.

However, I will say that John did use his time in the witness box to push back and question the validity of the police's investigation, as well as a lot of the inconsistencies in the entire case.

Regarding his doggedness to see justice served for his daughter, John told reporter Andrew Hogg that his entire family was unified when it came to holding Kenyan investigators accountable.

He said, quote,

They are not at home saying, crazy dad is off halfway around the world again.

They are as determined as I am to catch the bastard that did this.

From my point of view, it's probably 70% revenge and 30% a combination of factors, including my fear that if the murderer has done it once, he could do it again.

It's not an obsession.

It's more cold and calculating than that.

It comes down to the fact that I don't like being buggered about."

End quote.