American convicted of killing African researcher

KIGALI, Rwanda - An American researcher who fled Rwanda to escape charges in the machete slaying of anthropologist Dian Fossey was convicted and sentenced to death in absentia for the murder of the world-renowned gorilla expert, a U.S. Embassy spokesman said Friday.

Wayne McGuire, 34, was convicted Thursday in the northern city of Ruhengeri after a trial that he did not attend and was sentenced to death by hanging, the spokesman said. McGuire, a Hoboken, N.J. native, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Oklahoma, but is said to be living in Los Angeles. He has said he will not return to Rwanda, apparently making his death sentence meaningless. There is no extradition treaty between the United States and the central African nation.

McGuire, who served as Fossey's research assistant for more than a year, fled to the United States in August when it became clear authorities planned to charge him with Fossey's murder. Fossey, an American who had spent years in African camps studying and befriending the shy gorillas, was found dead in her cabin at a remote jungle camp in northern Rwanda. Authorities said she had sustained a massive head wound inflicted with a machete.

At a one-day trial Dec. 11, the Rwandan state prosecutor charged McGuire was jealous of the world-acclaimed research on mountain gorillas that Fossey, 53, had spent a lifetime compiling. The prosecutor said McGuire had written a letter complaining that Fossey refused to share her research with him. Authorities claimed strands of McGuire's hair were found in Fossey's fist. McGuire, who found the body, contends he was framed by Rwandan police.

Police initially suspected that Fossey was slain by Rwandan tribesmen because of arguments she had with them over their hunting of gorillas. There was also suspicion she might have been killed by a former employee.

Five Rwandans were initially charged with the crime, but none was ever tried. Fosse was buried in her jungle compound next to the grave of her favorite gorilla, Digit, who had been speared to death by poachers.  

December 19, 1986