Rwandan Official Confirms N.J. Man Sought in Fossey Murder

By MICHELLE FAUL

Rwanda's Justice Ministry confirmed Friday it has issued an international arrest warrant for an American researcher suspected in the murder of gorilla expert Dian Fossey. Ms. Fossey, 53, was found hacked to death last Dec. 27 in her remote camp on the slopes of Rwanda's Mount Visoke, where she lived among the endangered mountain gorillas.

Jean Damscene Nkezabo, Rwanda's director-general for the administration of justice, told The Associated Press 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 Ms. Fossey's research assistant at the time of her death and the only other foreigner at her Karisoke Research Center.

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

Nkezabo said that the warrant was issued in the last week of July, but that he could not remember the exact date.

McGuire left Rwanda July 27, and his whereabouts are not known. Karl Hoffman, an American 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. McGuire's last known address is a home owned by his mother, Mary McGuire, in Hazlet.

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

He said the state prosecutor's office believed McGuire wanted to acquire the manuscript of a book Ms. 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 gorillas. "The prosecutor has completed his investigations and we believe that he (McGuire) wanted that document," Nkezabo said. "It was the only thing missing from Miss Fossey's home. Everything else, the
clothes, money, cameras, was left." Also missing was Ms. Fossey's American passport.

Nkezabo said his office suspected that McGuire paid four imprisoned Rwandans, who worked at Ms. Fossey's camp, to help obtain the manuscript. "We think that they ... helped him (McGuire) to commit the murder," he said.

Just after Ms. 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 Ms. Fossey's body and called him to the scene.

Police and friends of Ms. Fossey believe she must have been killed by someone who knew her and the layout of her cabin. The killer or killers broke in by removing the only sheet of corrugated tin wall that was not blocked by furniture in her bedroom. Ms. Fossey's body was found lying face-up beside her bed, with her pistol and an ammunition clip within reach of her right hand.

She was credited with habituating the mountain gorillas to the presence of humans. This allowed Rwanda to establish a lucrative tourist industry centered on close-up viewing of the gorillas in the wild.

August 22, 1986