Man Sought in Murder of Gorilla Expert

NAIROBI, Kenya —  Rwanda’s Justice Ministry confirmed Friday that it has issued an international arrest warrant for an American researcher suspected in the murder of gorilla expert Dian Fossey.

Fossey, 53, was found hacked to death last Dec. 27 in her remote camp on the slopes of Rwanda’s Mt. Visoke, where she lived among the endangered mountain gorillas.

Jean Damscene Nkezabo, Rwanda’s director general for the administration of justice, said in a telephone interview that a warrant was issued last month for the arrest of Wayne Richard McGuire, 34, of Hazlet, N.J.

“We think that McGuire is the principal author of the murder, and he has left our country. We don’t know where he is,” Nkezabo said.

First news that McGuire was wanted came Thursday in a daily newsletter published by the Rwandan Information Ministry.

McGuire, a doctoral candidate from the University of Oklahoma at Norman, was Fossey’s research assistant at the time of her death and the only other foreigner at her Karisoke Research Center.

Fossey, who had worked in Rwanda for 18 years, was found slashed to death with a machete in the bedroom of her two-room tin-sided cabin on the 12,175-foot dormant volcano.

Nkezabo said that the warrant was issued in late July.

McGuire left Rwanda July 27, and his whereabouts is not known. A U.S. consular officer in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, said the U.S. Embassy believed McGuire had gone on leave and planned to return.

In Washington, State Department spokesman James Callahan said the United States has no extradition treaty with Rwanda. “In a situation like this, people generally can’t be extradited,” he said, adding that Rwanda has not asked for help in locating McGuire.

Nkezabo said his government has asked Interpol, the international police information network, to help in the search.

He said the state prosecutor’s office believes McGuire wanted to acquire the manuscript of a book Fossey was writing. He said the book was to have been a sequel to her 1983 work, “Gorillas in the Mist,” which made her famous for her work among the animals.

“The prosecutor has completed his investigations and we believe that he (McGuire) wanted that document,” Nkezabo said.

Nkezabo said his office suspects that McGuire paid four Rwandans, who worked at Fossey’s camp, to help obtain the manuscript.

“We think that they . . . helped him (McGuire) to commit the murder,” he said.

Just after Fossey’s murder, McGuire told visitors he wanted to stay to run the camp and complete research for his doctoral thesis on the parental behavior of male gorillas.

“I’d chain myself to a tree if they tried to take me out of here,” he told the visitors.

He told investigators he learned of the murder when a cook found Fossey’s body.