<i> REPORTER (over TV):
Dian Fossey gained
international fame</i> <i> saving the last
of the mountain gorillas...</i> <i> In connection with the death
of naturalist Dian Fossey...</i> <i> Fossey has been found dead in
the central African state...</i> <i> Fossey was found in her cabin
in the African rainforest...</i> <i> Brutally murdered,
hacked to death.</i> DIAN: I came here
essentially for research. I wanted to know all there
was to be known about them. <i> REPORTER (over TV): Dian
knows their personalities,
their habits and is learning</i> <i> how they communicate.</i> <i> Many who knew her saw a
darker side, and felt she</i> <i> had become obsessed
with saving the gorillas.</i> DIAN: It was something I
just felt compelled to do. I had to do it, I
can't explain it. <i> REPORTER (over TV):
Even if the police
do solve her murder,</i> <i> another mystery will remain,
the mystery of her life.</i> ♪ ♪ WAYNE: I always dreamed
of perhaps going
to Africa some day. I definitely wanted
to see scenery, I
wanted to see trees. I wanted the excitement. <i> CARSON (over TV): I think
you're gonna find this
discussion fascinating...</i> <i> I'm anxious to
meet Dian Fossey...</i> WAYNE: Anybody who wanted
to study mountain gorillas, Dian Fossey was the
person you wanted to contact. She was famous. CARSON: Welcome please,
Dian Fossey. What prompted
you to go and choose this
particular area of animals? -It was something I just felt
compelled to do, I had to
do it I can't explain it very dramatically it was
something I knew, there were
animals to be learned about and there weren't very many
gorillas left in the world. -Yeah. -There's certainly
a very few now. WAYNE: The only place
you could go if you wanted
to study gorillas was Karisoke Research
Centre in Rwanda. I was probably about
4 or 5 when I first
saw the gorillas at the Museum of Natural History
in New York City I felt
like the exhibit was alive, and I felt like I was stepping
into a world of nature
and it just, it fascinated me, it just overwhelmed
me with excitement. At that point I, I realized that
I want to see them some day. And then 30 years later
here I was studying mountain
gorillas with Dian Fossey. It was going to be
a dream come true. However, my dream come true
also became a nightmare. ♪ ♪ It's so hard for me to talk
about this story, because
of the emotional pain. When I went into the room
it had tables knocked
over, papers everywhere. There was blood behind
her head, in her hair and a
gash going across her face over her nose,
on to her cheek. There was hair in her hand. I couldn't believe
what I was looking at. I couldn't believe that
she's lying there like that. Here's this woman that
always portrayed herself as
being strong and everything. Totally helpless
and totally gone. ♪ ♪ SIGOURNEY: "There are
only 200 mountain gorillas
left in the world, which is why I
fight so hard for them. The man who kills
the animals today is the man
who kills the people who get in his way tomorrow." JOSEPH: I saw her body myself. She had been hacked to death
with a machete you know,
on her face on her head. Her eyes were open and
I kept thinking she's
alive but she was not. Uh it was really, um
it was very difficult. WATTS: Her last few moments
must have been really awful. She would not have
died immediately. I'm sure she experienced
a lot of pain. -The clear implication
is these are the men
who got into her house. I never heard anything about
anyone trying to record
solid evidence of this trail of footprints. -I thought to myself
well you know, is that
her hair or is that maybe hair from the person or
persons that attacked her? I took hair out of her
right and left hand and put
them in separate envelopes. I cut hair off her head and
put that in an envelope so
it could be sent to the FBI. And the police did
see me doing that. <i> REPORTER (over TV): A world
renowned naturalist has
been discovered murdered</i> <i> at her home in Africa.</i> <i> Friends speculated
that Dian Fossey, may have
been murdered by poachers she</i> <i> had fought for
the past 18 years.</i> IAN: For the outside world,
knowing, having read about
Dian's struggle against the poachers, well it was
obvious, it was the
poachers what did it. But I don't think the
evidence stacks up. -I think it was
much more planned and
sophisticated than a thief or a poacher going in. WAYNE: Something
didn't feel right. Everything that could
possibly be broken was broken,
like someone was in a rage, you know. Or someone was
looking for something. -Drawers were pulled open,
things had been pulled out. It looked like somebody
was looking for something. Money was not taken. There was a couple of
hand guns down there. When you don't take the money,
when you don't take the gun,
when you don't take anything visible, to me that
automatically excludes
poachers being the people. It looks like a set up,
it looked like it was done
to just make believe that poachers have done that. JOHN: Whoever came here
that night cut a hole through
this corrugated iron with a machete like this, called
a panga, then crawled inside
and slashed her to death. -Someone cut a small piece,
3 by 3 feet hole in the bedroom. -That's gonna make noise. So why wouldn't she flee? How did she end up being
killed right there by her bed? -The official story was,
whoever did that did it from
the outside and got into the house by doing that. But I think it's probably
a lot more likely
that whoever did it, did it from the inside to
make it look like that's
how they had gotten in. -It almost seemed
like it was staged. The amazing thing about
it was there wasn't a
heck of a lot of blood. You know, I'm wondering,
'What's going on here? If you got slashed
with a machete you should be
bleeding all over the place'. -Was she killed someplace
else and brought
back into the room? -From what I saw
nothing comes together
in to a coherent story. -It may have been a killing
that was ordered by someone. ♪ ♪ SIGOURNEY:
"When contemplating the vast
expanse of uninhabited, rugged, mountainous land
surrounding me I consider
myself one of the world's most fortunate people." There are no words to
describe the joy and complete
satisfaction one feels, after sitting in their
midst for several hours in
mutual trust and confidence. At times the rapport
simply overwhelms me. It is the only
place that I belong. <i> REPORTER (over TV): High
on the hills of Rwanda
in Central Africa,</i> <i> Dian Fossey was buried today.</i> <i> She was buried according to
her wishes, among the animals
that never harmed her.</i> IAN: She was buried
8 years to the day
since Digit's death. -Whatever happened
to her she didn't deserve
being brutally killed and stowed away in the ground. WAYNE: It was almost
like it was surreal. I will never talk
to this woman again. I will never see
her alive again. ♪ ♪ -She was a prominent person,
and she had been murdered,
in a brutal fashion. The Rwandan's obviously were
embarrassed that this crime
had occurred and probably worried that it was gonna
bring negative publicity. -I was now in
a situation where I was
in charge of this camp. Soon after the funeral,
a day or two later I got
someone knocking on my door, looked like he might be
police or military and he said
"I'm taking these guys down, I hope you understand." -They took away several of
the most important trackers
to be interrogated. -It clearly, as far as
we could tell was not
staff who killed Dian. IAN: If you've had a job
for nearly 20 years do
you kill your boss and, and be out of work? I was asked to go and
deal with her belongings and
assess the future of the camp. And I went up to Karisoke
with the American Consul. -The embassy had taken
possession of the property
pending an inventory of her effects -For me the most
significant thing was looking
through a letter file, I found a letter, a carbon
copy of a letter, to me,
that I'd never received. SIGOURNEY: "Dear Ian... The latest poacher captured
is also a gold smuggler
between Zaire and Rwanda. I examined his clothing to
find a letter between him
and his dealer setting up appointment places
for gold deliveries." -It might have got lost in the
post, but it's odd that all
the other carbon copies of the letters were letters
that I'd received but
this one, was missing. Gold smuggling... that's serious people. People with money and if their
names are on a piece of paper
that's evidence against them. -Reading that with Ian felt
very much like we were the,
that we were understanding exactly what had happened
there at that moment. -There was always smuggling
going on through the park
that was a well-known fact. -Dian quite often made it
known to people that she
had information on them, so they better watch
their "Ps and Qs". -The carbon copy of the
letter seemed to me to
be important evidence, so I photocopied it and gave
a copy to the authorities. -The day after I got back
there was a knock on the
Embassy door and the police were there and they said they
would like the hair samples. So I divided them up. So they got half the
hair samples and I kept
half the hair samples. WATTS: We were all suspects. Anybody, any outsider or
any foreigner they can
connect with Karisoke, so we thought it's all
kind of absurd, but it's
not impossible that something bad could happen -One day I had
found a skeleton of a gorilla
and I brought the pieces back to camp and put them
on the picnic table that
was near Dian's house and so I was examining it. I noticed as I looked up
there was somebody in there. I could see them,
just kind of a shadow. I got concerned, so my
first response feeling I'm
responsible for the camp, was to go over to
the window and to look in,
and actually probably wasn't the smartest thing to do
but I went into the cabin. -When I did, no sooner did
I do that, I turned around
there was a guard coming up. WAYNE: I didn't have boxes.
I wasn't stealing anything. -The event kind of
got out of hand. I went back to my house. There was a hot head there
with a gun and he started
yelling and screaming at me and he took a rifle
like to aim at me. -There was nothing
for me to gain by
going into the house. What did I need? It's a mistake I made. -Breaking into the
house of Dian Fossey,
stealing some of Dian's, manuscripts or something. If it's true, and he did that
and they have evidence then
I would be suspicious of Wayne. WAYNE: The next thing you know
I was accused of murder. WAYNE: I received a
letter that I needed to go
down to the police station for a questioning. The Prosecutor came in after
everybody else was there. He came in and he would
pace back and forth like
this and look at me. 'Why didn't you hear all the
noise when she was murdered?' 'I was sleeping sound asleep,
I was the other side of camp'. 'Who would have
killed Dian Fossey?' 'Who would have
killed Dian Fossey?' I said 'poachers' and
he kept turning around and
saying, 'No you killed her. You broke in and you stole
her precious documents,
you killed her for her precious documents'. 'What? I didn't kill her, we were
friends' and every once in a
while the guy behind me would push my shoulder like
this, pushing me forward. So I've got a prosecutor here,
I've got an interpreter over
here and someone behind me and so I was boxed in. I'm by myself and I'm trapped. He would make
an accusation and push,
make an accusation, push, he kept raising his voice,
kept raising his voice, over
and over and over again, louder and louder
and push, push. I kept saying 'I didn't
do it, I didn't do this'. He pushed this paper
towards me with a
pen 'sign the paper'. 'I didn't kill anybody',
'Sign it, sign it.' 'I don't want
to sign any paper, I didn't do anything'. 'You just need to calm down,
relax and sign that paper'. And the way he said
it, it seemed like I
was in a bad situation, that if I didn't do
it, something else
was gonna happen. There's nobody else here,
just me, the prosecutor and
these other two gentlemen. There's no witnesses,
there's nothing. I feared for my life. So I signed it
and that was it. Then I went back to camp. Months go by and everything
seemed to go back to normal. WATTS: During the murder
investigation everyone who
worked at Karisoke had been interrogated but then they
were released with the
exception of Rwelekana. JOSEPH: He used
to be one of the best
tracker of Dian Fossey. AMY: He had quit
Karisoke several times. IAN: Dian's relationship
with her employees
was often very volatile. -She would mistreat
people who displeased her. She'd tell someone summarily
you're fired get out of camp,
then whatever was usually would blow over, she'd forget
about it and the next time
they were due to come up for their shift they were
allowed to come back to work. -She was the kind
of boss that everyone
hopes they don't get. -Rwelekana was more
prideful than others and
sometimes would counter Dian with what she said. And he would say 'Okay I'm
not taking this, I, you know
I'm leaving' and then he'd get re-hired cos he was great. -The day Dian died
he was not there. -He left and it was
his decision and
that got distorted into, 'No he wanted to go on working
there, she didn't want him, she fired him
that made him angry' -Our understanding was,
at that time in the country,
the way illegal acts were investigated was
through interrogation, not
through physical evidence. KARL: The Rwandan's were out
of their investigative depth. It was escalating in anxiety
as a, irritant between us. -The camp staff said
two sets of footprints
came up to the cabin. -Those were two men who were
in camp that night who were
not supposed to be there. -We began to get word
in the embassy that um, that
the investigation was coming to a conclusion. -'Good news we've found the
culprit, we've found the
guilty party in the case of the Dian Fossey murder
and it is Wayne McGuire'. -The Embassy just said they
were charging me with the
murder of Dian Fossey, and I have to admit at that
point I kind of went blank. -The authorities said
that Wayne and Rwelekana,
had conspired together to cook up a murder plot. It doesn't make sense. -Wayne couldn't speak French
Kinyarwandan or Ki-Swahili. Rwelekana couldn't
speak English. WAYNE: The gentleman
that was arrested? I never met him
in my entire life, so
I have no clue who he is -The best thing we could do
for his safety and security was to get him
out of the country. -All of a sudden the
adrenaline started pumping
and my only concern was, how am I going to get
out of this situation? I remember getting on the
plane and was terrified. And I, and I was in First
Class, that's all my
mother could get for me, and I was in there with the,
the World Bank people and they
had a champagne bottle about four feet high and popping
it, drinking champagne and I'm
sitting there terrified, like, 'Am I gonna get out of here?' Any time someone could just
pull over and arrest me. -I think he was very lucky. <i>REPORTER (over TV): The
hunt is on this morning for an
American wildlife researcher,</i> <i> Wayne McGuire as the prime
suspect in the murder
of naturalist Dian Fossey.</i> <i> McGuire left the
country last month.</i> <i> His whereabouts unknown.</i> <i> Rwandan Police have asked
international authorities
for help in locating McGuire.</i> WAYNE: I want to respond
to the outrageous charge
of the Rwandan government that I murdered
Dr. Dian Fossey. I had absolutely
nothing to do with
Dian's tragic death. She was my friend and
one of my mentors. I had everything to lose and
nothing to gain by her death. I am shocked and outraged
at these false allegations. The Justice Department
is free to question
me at any time. -The Rwandans had
solved their problem. They had identified who had
killed the prominent American and the American embassy had spirited that person
out of the country and
so therefore the Rwandans had done their job. -Wayne McGuire didn't
strike me as someone who
was hiding a guilty secret. -There certainly seemed
nothing unusual about Wayne. -When I think about
Wayne knowing him, Wayne
killing someone, hmm. The question is why would
Wayne kill Dian Fossey? -I want to make this
clear, I did not kill Dian. ♪ ♪ -We heard that
Rwelekana had died, in prison, and the official story was that he had hung
himself in his cell. They said that shows
that he was guilty. JOSEPH: He was
a very nice man. AMY: He was a great friend,
he was a family man. Just a man of real integrity. -It was convenient to go
after him and, and kill him. And it was terrible. <i> REPORTER (over TV): McGuire
was tried in his absence
and convicted with a Rwandan</i> <i> co-worker who allegedly
committed suicide in his
prison cell before the trial.</i> KARL: I did attend the trial. Any reasonable person
would have found that there
was no compelling evidence whatsoever, it was farcical. <i> REPORTER (over TV): At the
trial no defense lawyer
appeared for McGuire,</i> <i> no witnesses were called.</i> <i> No physical evidence
was presented.</i> <i> The trial lasted 30 minutes.</i> -A judgment was rendered
of guilty as charged
and a sentence of death was handed down for Wayne McGuire. KATHLEEN: I thought it was
ridiculous and it was wrong. They had no real evidence of
his guilt, none whatsoever. JUVENS: As a Rwandan
it makes me feel bad. Today, if I saw a judgment
like this, I would be shocked. I would say the judge is
incompetent beyond belief. IAN: Those who charged
him suggested he wanted
to steal her research. -That's the word that
popped up over and over again, 'precious documents,
precious documents.' -You had to be as
out of touch as that
government of Rwanda, to think that you could
kill the most famous
person in a field, take their information
and publish it and
become famous yourself. -They made the accusation
that it was my hair. <i> REPORTER (over TV): The
prosecutor explained to CNN
strands of hair found in Miss</i> <i> Fossey's hand were sent to
a lab in Paris for analysis.</i> <i> The lab confirmed the hairs
were those of a white person
other than Ms. Fossey.</i> <i> McGuire was the only other
white person in the area
on the night of the murder.</i> -From reading the forensic
reports established in Paris
it is obvious that they did not take any samples from
Wayne to compare it with the
samples they found in the hands of the victim. So, how can this be
incontestable, I don't know? -If the report says she had
her own hair in one hand and
somebody else's hair in the other hand, why didn't they
test Wayne McGuire's hair? -It could have been her hair
because it was dark hair. AMY: She could have just
reached up when she got hit
and grabbed her own hair, which would be a
logical reaction. -I got back a very, um,
non answer from the FBI. It was inconclusive as to
whether or not the hair,
in her hands was the hair on her head. -It wouldn't be conclusive
proof either way. We know that the crime
scene's contaminated by
lots of people moving about. -The Americans said to
the Rwandans, 'You've got
to find out who did this', and so the Rwandans "did". -The Rwandan authorities
either were truly incompetent
or they didn't want to solve the crime. -Wayne McGuire and
Rwelekana, in my view, were
not the guilty culprits. I don't think you can
draw any conclusions from
the fact that the footprints went by Wayne's cabin. The path that's most
likely to get you to Dian's
cabin without being heard is the one that goes
by Wayne's cabin. Dian's murder is
still unsolved. -I didn't believe
the official story. -It just seemed the Rwandan
government was happy to have
Wayne out of the country and Rwelekana dead and the
case could be closed. FRANK: She had almost
continuous difficulties with
one or another element of the Rwandan government. -She was becoming an obstacle.
-A thorn in their sides.
-She knew she had enemies. -If the government
wanted Dian Fossey
out of Rwanda they had the power to just get her out. -I keep going back to
the gold smuggling. -I think someone in a high
position suspected, or knew,
that she had something on him and had her killed. -They certainly could
have found somebody
around who would do it. -Dian's letter suggests
that she had uncovered an
illegal gold smuggling ring, and that someone in
a position of authority
was implicated in that. -I think it's possible
that an official could
have had her killed, because she knew things. -Dian had signed a contract
for a movie of her life. -The film deal that
she was negotiating for the
book<i> Gorilla's in the Mist.</i> -She talked about having
evidence that she was going
to disclose to the world. -People involved in illegal
activities might be afraid of
a global spotlight being put on them by a Hollywood movie. There were perhaps some
very powerful forces at play,
trying to silence Dian Fossey. (explosions) -Many people were massacred
during the genocide. Others just fled the country. The entire court the Ruhengeri
court was burnt down. Chances of getting any
documentation anything
related to the trial is, is almost impossible. -Whoever is responsible is
either walking free or has,
has perished in the wider bloodshed that Rwanda
experienced in the 90's. -I don't think
we'll ever know. But I don't think that Dian
would have objected to that
as an ending for the script, because she died a warrior,
she would have written that. ♪ ♪ -It's a tragedy on all sides. Dian lost her life. Rwelekana lost his. And Wayne's life
was hugely changed. IAN: Wayne had to
change his career. WAYNE: Losing my academic
career, what I had dreamed of
since I was 5 years old was more severe than being accused
of murder believe it or not. -Obviously the Rwanda of today
is a different place and there
would be an expectation of a much more, I think, fair
and modern judicial process. -The damage is done, you know,
to clear my name would be
nice but to live for that one simple moment, no that's
not worth that, that's
not what I'm looking for. I'm in a different
field now, I work in the
field of mental health, helping people to recover. I am able to help other
people because I've
experienced trauma. ♪ ♪ FELIX: Dian's story
was a story of courage. The gorillas are thriving. The numbers have doubled
since the time of Dian Fossey. If Dian hadn't come to
Rwanda to habituate gorillas,
to study their behavior, they would not be here today. -If anybody could say that
they'd saved a species, I would think that Dian could. She undoubtedly turned
the world's attention
towards gorillas. -She somehow got behind the
big, bluff bravado and found
the real gorilla. It's that amazing
meeting of another
mind that happens to be in a non-human
body that is the magic and that's what Dian
opened up to the world. (making gorilla noises). BETTIE: You had to learn
how to make gorilla sounds. (making gorilla noises). -They like that huh? -The work that she
started, the innovations
that she brought, you know, habituating gorillas, getting
to know them individually
and starting what she called active conservation is
still what we do today. -The first gorillas
she contacted in 67, the
descendants of those animals are still being followed,
monitored and observed today. -Gorilla tourism went from
being a potential threat
to the gorillas to being an important part of the
saving of the gorillas. Before she died Dian somewhat
reluctantly admitted publicly
that the way it was being managed, gorilla tourism was
changing things for good. -It has taken a huge effort
from everyone, from the
Government from the partners working together to ensure
that these animals are safe. ANNOUNCER: Gorillas in the
Mist, the feature film based
on the life of Dian Fossey, stars Sigourney Weaver as the
legendary wildlife researcher. -After I played
Dian and spent so much time
with the Mountain Gorillas in Rwanda, it was impossible
for me to go back to the
way I saw the world before. It was such a gift
to me, actually to be
inside Dian's head. I think it was very
frustrating to her that
in the hierarchy of beings on the planet,
animals were below humans,
since I think in many ways she thought
they were superior. She felt for a while
like the only person who was
concerned about saving them and that was probably true
to a certain extent. She knew the movie
would help and I think
she would be so delighted and let's not say hopeful, but optimistic about
the gorillas' welfare at this
point and even though 880 still means that the gorillas
are critically endangered,
it's a lot better than 280, which it was when she died. IAN: It's such a shame
that Dian hasn't lived
to see Mountain Gorillas approaching a thousand. That is a conservation
success story, which she
would have really enjoyed. SIGOURNEY: "I looked
up into Digit's warm,
gentle brown eyes. He stood pensively,
gazing down at me before
patting my head and plopping down by my side. I lay my head on Digit's
lap, a position that
provided welcome warmth. When you realize
the value of all life, you
dwell less on what is past and concentrate more on the
preservation of the future." -They're healthy and thriving
and that is Dian's legacy. -Dian, if she were to come
back from the grave, she
would just be so happy. She did not die in vain. Her work is continuing
and is going to continue. Captioned by Cotter
Captioning Services.
