12/26/1985 - After years of growing tensions between gorilla poachers and primatologist researcher and conservationist, Dian Fossey, tragedy strikes in the mountains of Rwanda's Virunga National Park with the discovery of the 53-year-old scientist's machete bludgeoned body.
Fossey
The daughter of a fashion model (mother Hazel Kidd) and a real estate agent and businessman (George Edward Fossey III), Dian is born in Fairfax, California (a suburb of the city of San Francisco) on January 16, 1932 (she will be an "only" child). Not brought up in a stable household, when Dian is still a youngster of only three her parents separate and then divorce due to George having drinking problems and troubles with the law. When she is only six, her mother marries a wealthy local builder, Richard Price, and contact with her father, George, is discouraged by her mother and soon ends completely (though not by George's choosing). Never accepted as her step-father's daughter, her upbringing in the Price household is vacant of love, but full of rules to follow that create a lonely and very insecure little girl ... she can not eat dinner with her mother or step-father (her companion for supper is either no-one, or the family's housekeeper until she is ten), there are rigorous schedules that need to adhered to, grades and friendships are closely monitored, and after her goldfish passes away when she is six, there are to be no more pets in her life with the Prices (even when a school pal offers the youngster a free pet hamster). It is a childhood that leaves deep scars of insecurity. Her overwhelming love of all types of animals though can't remain thwarted forever, and at six, as a means of getting her out from under foot, the Prices allow her to take riding lessons at the St. Francis Riding Academy, and as her love for horses grows (she becomes an excellent rider and will receive a equestrian letter from Lowell High School for being on the riding team and placing in a number of local and regional shows), she starts dreaming of becoming a veterinarian.
Young Fossey
Fossey And Friend
Supporting herself by working as a clerk at a White Front department store, doing laboratory work, and working as a machinist at a local factory, Fossey's vet dreams are done in by lack of aptitude for chemistry and physics, and in her second year at the University of California, Davis, she fails out of the school's pre-veterinary program. Changing course, she transfers to San Jose State, becomes a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, and changes her major to the study of occupational therapy, earning her bachelor's degree in 1954. Following graduation, Fossey interns at various California hospitals working with tuberculosis patients. Her love of horses draws her to Kentucky in 1955, and there, she takes a job as an occupational therapist working at the Kosair Crippled Children's Hospital of Louisville, while living on the farm (and doing daily chores) of her new co-workers and friends, Mary White Henry and her husband, Dr. Michael J. Henry. Money still extremely tight, she passes on joining her buddies for a trip to Africa, but seed planted, in 1963, she borrows $8,000 from a local bank, pulls her life savings out of her account, and signs up for a seven week visit of the continent. Arriving in Nairobi, Kenya, where she stays at actor William Holden's Treetops Hotel, she is introduced by the actor to man who will serve as her guide adventuring through Kenya, Tanzania, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), John Alexander. Alexander's safari takes Fossey to Africa's largest national park, Tsavo, the flamingo viewing paradise of saltwater Lake Manyara, Ngorongoro Crater (and it's vast abundance of wildlife), Olduvai Gorge, where the Louis and Mary Leakey are beginning to find early hominid fossils capable of giving scientists a new look at the ancient ancestors of man (her first meeting with the man who will change her life does not go well ... touring Leakey's dig site for fourteen shillings, Fossey becomes so excited to see the scientist's latest find, that she slips on a steep slope and falls into the giraffe fossil excavation, breaks the valuable find and her ankle, and from pain and embarrassment, vomits all over the place) and Mt. Mikeno in the Congo (where she will see wild mountain gorillas in their habitat for the first time). Seven weeks in Africa over too quickly for Fossey's liking, she returns to her job in Louisville, where she writes three articles for the local Courier-Journal newspaper about her recent adventures.
Treetops Hotel, Kenya
The Leakeys
Mount Mikeno
Back in Louisville, three years after her African safari, Fossey takes in a local lecture by Leakey and reintroduces herself to the scientist. Discussing her trip, Leakey hits on the idea of Fossey studying mountain gorillas like Jane Goodall is working in the wilds of Tanzania with chimpanzees, funded by money Leakey will set up from various benefactors, the chief of which is National Geographic Magazine. Green light for a total change in her life, Fossey quits her job, studies Swahili and primatology for the eight months it takes to get her visa and the funding approved (including having her appendix removed after Leakey suggests the surgery to determine how much the young woman wants the job, never dreaming she will actually have the surgery he was only kidding about). Returning to Africa in December of 1966, Fossey sets off from Nairobi for the Congo in a old canvas-topped Land Rover loaded with supplies she names "Lily" (first visiting Jane Goodall at her Gombe Stream Research Centre to observe her techniques studying chimps). Setting up her first gorilla studying camp (with the help of photographer Alan Root, who will also teach Fossey how to track and identify the gorillas in the wild) at Kabara, in the shadow of Mount Mikeno. Basically alone in a camp of tents (Fossey's abode is a 7-by-10 foot tent that serves as her bedroom, bathroom, clothes drying area, and office, with meals prepared out of a run-down nearby wooden building) and eating canned supplies (two locals are hired to help around the camp and she is also joined from time-to-time by Root's native guide, Senwekwe ... once a month she hikes down the mountain to where "Lily" is parked and then makes a two-hour drive to the village of Kikumba to restock her supplies), two days after Root leaves Fossey to her studies, ten minutes into hiking through the jungle, Fossey comes across a male gorilla sunning itself and her research begins in earnest (the various gorillas, living in three different groups, will be identified by the nose prints Fossey first sketches and then photographs).
Root & Hippo Pal
Setting Up Camp
Senwekwe
Fossey's study though barely starts before turmoil in the region (Lt. General Joseph-Desire Mobutu, commander-in-chief of the Congo army revolts against the national government and declares himself President) shuts it down. In July of 1967, returning to camp from one of her jungle treks with Sanwekwe, Fossey finds herself the unwelcome guest of armed soldiers that escort her off the mountain and down to the military base of Rumangabo (2.2 miles north of the headquarters for Virunga National Park). Captive for two weeks, Fossey gets out of her predicament by bribing her guards to take her to Kisoro, Uganda so she can properly register her Land Rover. Greed the key to her escape, arriving in Kisoro she immediately goes to the town's Travellers Rest Hotel and calls the Ugandan military, who arrest Fossey's escorts (though she only discusses the matter reluctantly, during her captivity she is sexually abused by her guards). Interrogated in Kisoro and then at Kigali, the capital of Rawanda, Fossey meets with Leakey in Nairobi, and despite warnings by the U.S. Embassy not to return to the mountains, the decide to set up operations on the Rawanda side of the Virunga's. Helped by American expatriate Rosamund Carr and Belgian transplant Alyette DeMunck, Fossey establishes the Karisoke ("Kari" for the first four letters of 14,787 foot Mt. Karisimbi <the 11th highest mountain in Africa>, which overlooks the camp from the south, and, "soke" for the last four letters of 12,175 foot Mt. Bisoke, which overlooks the site from the north) Research Center in a meadow saddle between two volcanos at and elevation of 9,800 feet (the study area will cover 9.7 square miles) in the Rawandan province of Ruhengeri. Soon she is known to the locals as Nyiramacibiri, "the woman who lives alone on the mountain."
Mount Karisimbi
Mount Bisoke
And So It Begins!
Using techniques she developed working with autistic children in Kentucky and imitating the behaviors of the mountain gorillas. Fossey over time is allowed by the animals to observe them up close and personnel. Thought at one time to be savage, man-killing beasts, Fossey discovers the gorillas are anything but that unless put upon and having their families threatened, observing the animals daily interactions, she makes discoveries about how female gorillas transfer from group to group over decades of time (with breaks for fund raising lectures and academic studies, Fossey will be among the gorillas for the next 18 years), some of the many meanings of gorilla vocalizations, the hierarchies and social relationships gorillas develop within their groups, the infanticide the gorillas sometimes resort to, the daily diets of the creatures and how they recycle the nutrients of the area. Research and observations that are brought to the attention of the public through lectures (she will become an associate professor at Cornell University from 1981 to 1983) and public appearances, Fossey articles in National Geographic (Nat. Geo. photographer Bob Campbell will begin documenting her work for the magazine in 1968, the pair will have a romance, but it fails to be long lasting, as is the case with other relationships Fossey has with the men in her life), and Fossey's bestselling memoir of her time among the animals, "Gorillas in the Mist" (and the book's subsequent transformation into an Academy Award nominated movie starring Sigourney Weaver as Fossey). Brought back from the edge of extinction by Fossey's efforts (from a population of about 250 gorillas when Fossey arrives, the gorilla population in the Virunga area is now in the neighborhood of 1,000, while the research center Fossey began grows from two tents into a million dollar destination for primate students, scientists, and interested tourists), by 1980, when she earns a PhD in zoology from Great Britain's Cambridge University (she studies under the direction of Dr. Robert Hinde, the same man who was Jane Goodall's advanced studies supervisor while she matriculated at the university), she will be recognized as the world's leading authority on the physiology and behavior of the mountain gorilla.
Campbell
Fossey & Friends
Cover Story
There is a price to pay however for the closeness she is able to gain studying the mountain gorillas and keeping them from becoming extinct (thanks to Fossey's efforts, Rwanda remains the only country in the world where its population of mountain gorillas is actually increasing instead of declining). Use to bonding with the primates, she has more trouble dealing with the human needs and personalities of the students and scientists that come and go over the years, retreating before her gruff personality (her flaring temper is legendary and she does not suffer those she believes are fools lightly, traits fueled by her alcohol intake). And there are even worse problems dealing with the local natives, some of which, to make ends meet, are also animal poachers (hunting is not allowed in the national park, but takes place anyway, sometimes carried out by the same personnel that is suppose to be preventing it). Practicing a type of tit-for-tat, fire-with-fire approach against her enemies that Fossey calls "active conservation," she and her small staff will set up poacher patrols, chase cattle away (or kill them) that are trespassing on the range of the mountain gorillas (cattle will also be held for ransom and sometimes decorated with spray paint), destroy traps (in one four-month period during 1979, Fossey's four-man patrols l979 will do away with 987 traps, while during the same period, their counterparts with the national park fail to destroy even one, and in a part of the park that Fossey doesn't patrol, several gorillas are killed and the elephant population is virtually eradicated for their ivory), burn hunting camps to the ground, capture, beat, and humiliate poachers (she will even write of torturing one captured poacher by whipping the man with nettles), and keep census counts of the animals in the region, all the while as she lobbies for expanded protected habitat for her gorillas and the Rwandan government enforcing its poacher laws better. In one incident, when a baby gorilla is kidnapped for sale to a zoo, Fossey ends the upcoming transaction by luring away the young child of the Watusi tribesman responsible (and she will also stoke the fears of the locals by pretending to be a witch doctor ... wearing face masks during treks through the jungle and unnerving the locals with firecrackers, small toys, and magic tricks she buys in England and the United States.
The Banyarwanda Of Rwanda
Fossey And Friends
By 1977, Fossey is spending more time protecting the regions gorillas, rather than studying them, a situation which garners even more tension in the area with the death of 12-year-old Digit (a damaged finger on his right hand leads to his name), who dies defending his group (he is a member of Study Group Four) when a team of poachers stumbles on the primates while clearing their antelope trap lines in the region. Fossey's favorite gorilla since their introduction to each other in 1967 when Digit is only five, the heroic gorilla dies from multiple spear stab wounds, but keeps the poachers and their dogs at bay (he will kill one dog before going down from his wounds) long enough to let the other thirteen members of his group to escape the area (the poachers show their disdain for Digit's defense of his fellow gorillas by cutting off his head (a trophy worth twenty United States dollars) and turning his dismembered hands into ashtrays, Fossey will say of the death as the, "saddest event in all my years of sharing the daily lives of mountain gorilla." (Famous by this time, Digit's death is reported by Walter Cronkite on the CBS Nightly News). One of the poachers caught, with nettles at the ready he gives up the names of his associates and eventually three of the men will serve jail time for the killing. Trying to create the semblance of a silver lining out of the death, Fossey uses Digit's death to create the Digit Fund (now the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International) in 1978, a charity organization for the prevention of further poaching of the Virunga gorillas and a source for monies to fund anti-poaching patrols. Distraught at the death of Digit and other gorillas she is studying (two young gorillas named Coco and Pucker are grabbed by poachers working for Cologne, Germany's zoo, where they die nine months after going into captivity, the silverback leader of one group of gorillas, named Uncle Bert for Fossey's uncle is shot through the heart trying to protect his young son Kweli from capture, as is Kweli's mother Macho, and grazed by a bullet, Kweli dies a slow and painful death from gangrene caused by his wounding), in 1980, Fossey leaves Rawanda and moves to Ithaca, New York to teach at Cornell University (where she also spends time finishing her book, Gorillas In The Mist). The highlands of Rwanda and her beloved gorillas though are calling out to her soul during the length of her absence, and in 1983, she returns to her research center ... and her wars start up all over again.
Digit And A Friend
Pushing Her Book
Confined to a quiet Christmas in camp due to health issues involving emphysema brought on by years of chain smoking and her continued drinking, Fossey is looking forward to being out with her gorillas in 1986 when she will turn 54, but 54 never comes for Nyiramacibiri. In the early morning of December 27th, Fossey's longtime cook and houseman, a middle-aged Rwandan named Kanyaragana walks up the short trail to his boss' cabin to she if she would like breakfast. Finding the front door surprisingly open, he pokes his head inside and discovers the area in disarray of disheveled floor matting, tipped over furniture, and open drawers everywhere. Looking into the bedroom he discovers something even worse, the panga (the African version of a machete with a two-foot long blade) mutilated body of Fossey (still wearing her typical bedroom attire of long johns, a sweater, and slippers, the primatologist is face up on the floor next to double bed, dead from multiple blade strikes that have split her skull in two), with a pistol and an ammunition cartridge near her right hand and the murder weapon under the bed (because of the gruesomeness of the scene, no autopsy is performed by the doctor at Ruhengari's young French doctor, a friend of Fossey's, Dr. Philippe Bertrand). Robbery ruled out as a motive for the crime almost immediately, within Fossey's cabin, which the killer has gained access to by cutting a hole through a wall, there are still unopened Christmas packages under a small tree, Fossey's two pet parrots, Dot and Dash, are unharmed in their birdcage, thirteen hundred dollars in U.S. currency is in a desk drawer, cameras, bottles of liquor, camping equipment, and valuable electronic equipment are undisturbed, as are a collection of masks and weapons. The only thing that can be found missing is Fossey's passport. Word of the killing relayed to the outside world over a camp radio by 34-year-old University of Oklahoma graduate student, American scientist Wayne McGuire, when the authorities arrive hours later in the form of two dozen armed Rwandan police, they arrest everyone in camp and do a marvelous job of trampling over the crime scene to the extent that no one will ever know what happened the night after Christmas.
Murder Site
Crime Scene
.
An unsolved mystery now decades old, McGuire will be tried in absentia for the killing of his mentor, found guilty (for lack of a better suspect, his motive is said to be wanting to steal Fossey's latest book) and sentenced to death by firing squad, but avoids being executed by flying back to the United States as Rwanda has no extradition treaty with the African nation (McGuire's mother provides the funds for his airline ticket home). Back in America, McGuire will protest his innocence before vanishing from the public spotlight (though he resurfaces briefly in 2005, when a job with the Health and Human Services division of the state of Nebraska is rescinded because of his association with the death of Fossey). The man that is suppose to do the actual killing on orders from McGuire, Emmanuel Rwelekana, a Rwandan tracker that has worked for Fossey for years, hangs himself in his cell before going on trial. So take your pick as to what happened, the killing was the result of greed over a potential bestseller, because Fossey had been mean to her staff, as payback for her treatment of the local natives, as payback from angry poachers, a robbery to acquire her valuable gorilla research, performed by a local witchdoctor attempting to reclaim a magic pouch Fossey had confiscated days before, to silence Fossey from exposing members of the Rwandan government involved in trafficking gorillas to foreign zoos, to keep Fossey from exposing a local gold smuggling organization, the government looking to open up the area for the lucrative tourist trade, and from orders given by government official, Protais Zigiranyirazo, known to his countrymen as Mr. Z (he is also the brother-in-law of former Rwandan president, Juvenal Habyarimana), the architect of the Rwandan geocide that will take the lives of over 800,000 members of the Tutsi and Hutu tribes in 1995, and a foe of Fossey's for years. And if those theories of what is behind Fossey's death don't float your boat, feel free to Sherlock up a solution to the crime of your own.
McGuire
Mr. Z
Rwelekana
A few short days later, Fossey goes to her rest in a simple wooden casket, buried in a makeshift cemetery the scientist has created for the deceased gorillas of her study (there will also be services held in her honor in New York City, Washington D.C., and California). She resides beside her forever friend Digit, hopefully content in knowing her efforts have kept the mountain gorillas of Rwandan from becoming extinct. The scientist's final entry in her diary states simply, "When you realize the value of all life, you dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the preservation of the future." Amen to that Dr. Fossey, amen!
Fossey, Poacher Patrol, And Destroyed Trap Lines
Into The Ground
Final Rest
Legacy - 2022 - Part Of The Ellen DeGeneres Campus
Of The Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund - Karisoke, Rwanda
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