Adamson of ‘Born Free’ Fame Slain : Conservationist, 2 Workers Killed by Gunmen in Kenya

Gunmen ambushed and killed British conservationist George Adamson of “Born Free” fame and two of his employees near his remote Kenyan homestead, police and a survivor said Monday.

The retired Kenyan game warden and hunter was gunned down when three men in military-style uniforms, believed to be Somali bandits, fired on his utility vehicle with automatic rifles, said Mohammed Maru, an Adamson employee who survived the Sunday afternoon attack.

Maru said Adamson and four Kenyan staff members were making the four-mile trip from their homestead to an airstrip.

Adamson, 82, and his late ex-wife, Joy Adamson, became famous for their work in releasing captured lions to the wild, which she described in her book “Born Free.”

Joy Adamson Killed in 1980

She remained in Kenya after their divorce in the 1970s and was killed by a servant in 1980.

Dozens of police were combing the parched scrubland around Adamson’s homestead in Kora National Reserve, 150 miles northeast of Nairobi. Police said the murderers were probably ethnic Somali bandits, known as shiftas , who are blamed for most armed robbery and animal poaching in sparsely populated eastern Kenya.

Speaking in Swahili, Maru said through an interpreter that he, Adamson and three others had set off for the airstrip at about 1 p.m. Sunday after hearing shots in the bush nearby.

A few minutes earlier, German visitor Inge Leidersteill, escorted by an Adamson employee, had left the homestead in a pickup truck to meet a plane, he said.

Maru said Adamson’s vehicle came across the pickup truck as its occupants were being robbed by armed men.

“I shouted at George to slow down and stop, but he didn’t, so I jumped out as the vehicle was moving,” he said.

Maru, who was holding Adamson’s rifle, said shots sent the vehicle swerving into the bush. He ran back to the homestead.

The bullet-riddled bodies of Adamson and his employees, Angala Solala and Ongetha Dikayo, were found later in the vehicle.

The other occupant had escaped with a bullet wound in the leg. Leidersteill and her driver were unhurt.

Kenya has witnessed a recent spate of killings of foreigners by poachers or robbers. In July alone, at least five such incidents were reported. Among the victims were an American woman shot dead by robbers who raided her tour group in Tsavo National Park and an American nun killed at her isolated mission in eastern Kenya.

Adamson was game warden of Kenya’s northern Frontier District in 1944 when he married Joy, an Austrian-born artist whose books would thrust him into fame.

In 1956, her husband brought home three motherless lion cubs. One, which they named Elsa, became the central character of “Born Free.” Adamson served as technical director for a film adaptation.

That book and its sequels, “Living Free” and “Forever Free,” described the Adamsons’ unique and controversial practice of taking lions born in captivity and teaching them to survive on their own before freeing them.

After living apart from her husband, Joy moved to the game reserve in the late 1960s to work with leopards.

Adamson had lived at Kampi ya Simba, which means Lion Camp in Swahili, since his divorce in the early 1970s.

He had no children.