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Dian Fossey murdered in Rwanda

Broadcast Date: Jan. 16, 1986

She devoted 18 years of her life to studying rare mountain gorillas in the rainforests of Rwanda. But in the end, Dian Fossey's love of gorillas brought on her death. Enraged by the trauma visited on the gorillas by poachers, Fossey destroyed their traps and pushed for their prosecution. According to Dr. Jane Goodall, the result was perhaps inevitable: in December 1985, an unknown attacker murdered Fossey in her cabin with a machete. In this CBC-TV interview, Goodall says Fossey was fatalistic about the outcome of her efforts to protect the gorillas.

Dian Fossey murdered in Rwanda

• Dian Fossey, who was 53 when she died, was buried alongside the gorillas she loved in a cemetery she had built for gorillas killed by poachers.

• A year after her murder, Rwandan authorities convicted and sentenced her American research assistant to death in a trial lasting 25 minutes. He had long since returned to the United States, which had no extradition treaty with Rwanda. According to the New York Times for May 22, 1987, "The proceedings are widely seen as a face-saving move."

• Journalist Georgianne Nienaber believes Fossey's death was more complicated than a simple case of vengeful poachers. She has alleged that Fossey's opposition to gorilla-based tourism initiatives and illegal actions by Rwandan provincial governor Protais Zigiranyirazo were her undoing.

• "Diplomatic cables and writing from [the time of the Rwandan genocide] indicate that [Rwandan] higher ups realized Zigiranyirazo was a likely suspect in Fossey's murder," wrote Nienaber in the Huffington Post in 2008. "He was involved in illegal trading in endangered species and gold smuggling out of Congo, and there is much additional evidence in the historical record that Fossey was about to expose him when she was murdered."

• Fossey's story was dramatized in the 1988 movie Gorillas in the Mist, starring Sigourney Weaver. It was based in part on Fossey's 1983 book of the same name; she had sold the film rights before her death.

Dian Fossey murdered in Rwanda

Medium: Television

Program: The Journal

Broadcast Date: Jan. 16, 1986

Guest(s): Jane Goodall, Glenn Hausfater

Host: Bill Cameron

Duration: 8:54

Last updated:
March 25, 2009