Marcus Wickham-Boynton: The forgotten wildlife killer of Ol Pejeta
President Jomo Kenyatta with the Chairman of the Triad Group of Companies, Adnan Khashoggi (centre), who called on him at State House, Nairobi. Others are (from left to right) Assistant Minister for Co-operative Development, Peter Muigai Kenyatta, Nairobi businessman, K.M. Ali, and Chief of Protocol, F.K. Nganatha.
By John Kamau
What you need to know:
- It was Marcus who sold Ol Pejeta to the arms dealer, Khashoggi, whose dalliance with the intelligence in the US and Saudi Arabia was well known.
- In the UK, Marcus owned what the Los Angeles Times described as a “treasure-filled 16th-Century mansion” that sat on 5,000 acres.
- Interestingly, Marcus had no heir, and he bequeathed the property to a 12-year-old boy – a distant relative.
He was rich – a billionaire – and a bully. Even by colonial standards, Marcus Wickham-Boynton, a name eclipsed by the larger-than-life Adnan Khashoggi in Ol Pejeta, has been forgotten. He not only owned the expansive Ol Pejeta, but he also had a yacht and properties in Yorkshire and Majorca in the UK.
It was Marcus who sold Ol Pejeta to the arms dealer, Khashoggi, whose dalliance with the intelligence in the US and Saudi Arabia was well known. As he once told The New York Times, “You have to accept that there are people like me, who are well-connected with all sorts of people all over the world, including the intelligence services of many countries.
I am neither a CIA agent nor a Saudi agent, but I am well connected with both sides.” When I recently stumbled on some letters about him, I was enthralled by his impunity in Kenya, though I was not surprised.
In the UK, Marcus owned what the Los Angeles Times described as a “treasure-filled 16th-Century mansion” that sat on 5,000 acres. The entire property was said to be worth $16 million by the time he died in 1989. Interestingly, Marcus had no heir, and he bequeathed the property to a 12-year-old boy – a distant relative.
The property has its fairy tales, for within it is the skull of the daughter of the pioneer owner, Sir Henry Boyton, who had told her sisters to make sure that if she dies, the skull should be kept in the attractive Burton Agnes Hall and “if my desires are not fulfilled, my spirit shall, if it be permitted, render the house uninhabitable for human beings.”
Arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi whose ranch in Nanyuki was also used as a base for covert activities.
After inheriting Burton Agnes Hall, Marcus returned to Kenya and invested in Ol Pejeta. It was here that he wished to experiment with ranching and kill wildlife as a sport. Ol Pejeta satisfied his wild side. It was full of wildlife, and he took it upon himself to kill as many as he could as a hobby.
The confidential documents I stumbled upon were written in 1966 by the Nyeri Divisional Game Warden, J. Barrah, who was perturbed that Marcus had not been prosecuted – despite various complaints about him.
“He has been a constant thorn on our side and will not tolerate any form of wildlife on his enormous ranch, which has led to animosity amongst his more conservation-minded neighbours,” wrote Barrah about the man he described as a “millionaire and Justice of the Peace” member.
As a conservationist, Barrah was well known in Kenya and had worked together with George and Joy Adamson (the author of Born Free) in trying to stop wanton killings of wildlife that white poachers had started.
He had been assigned to the settled areas of Nanyuki – a colonised space of notoriety and intimidation. Combating poachers was always a dangerous mission, and it would cost George his life in August 1989 when his estranged wife Joy had been killed in 1980, ostensibly in a “wage dispute”.
Still on Barrah, he was in 1972 appointed Kenya’s Chief Game Warden, and part of his legacy was conserving the Maasai Mara reserve. Even after his post was Africanised, Barrah was retained by the Kenyatta government as a wildlife consultant. He was always picked to escort visiting dignitaries to the national parks and game reserves.
In one of the safari, he persuaded Prince Bernhard, then head of the World Wildlife Fund, to purchase the land adjacent to Lake Nakuru from a private entity to set up the Lake Nakuru National Park as a breeding ground for Black and White Rhinos.
But he had a dark side, too – especially in his treatment of Mau Mau freedom fighters in the 1950s. Barrah, when he was a police officer, killed the Nairobi Mau Mau commander, General Mwangi Toto and executed some fighters who were arrested near Muthaiga Golf Club.
His retention after independence would always be an embarrassment to those in the government who knew his record. It is not clear how he escaped Jaramogi’s deportation spree, for when he was Home Affairs minister, Odinga deported most of those policemen who engaged in hunting down and killing freedom fighters, including Ian Anderson, who escaped to Bahrain where he left a legacy of torture and terror.
Adnan Khashoggi's house in Ol Pejeta.
Marcus would always escape the British winter and head to Ol Pejeta – the space he had colonised. “Whilst out here, he passes the time touring round in his Land Rover with a .270 rifle and telescopic sight, killing or maiming any game which crosses his path,” complained the Warden.
“He is aided and abetted by an African gun-bearer, licensed to carry a .303 rifle, and suspect of killing a giraffe, on a neighbouring farm. This I think could be proved if there was a ballistic expert in Kenya, available to examine the spent bullets recovered from the carcasses. However, I am reluctant to persecute the gun-bearer when his employer is as equally as guilty.”
The game warden seemed to be at a loss on what to do with Marcus, mainly after he shot three ostriches the day before he left for London. In the confidential note, the Nanyuki-based Warden, W.H. Winter, was in a dilemma. If he had arrested the gun-bearer and left Marcus, it would have raised questions about a race-based prosecution in independent Kenya.
Possibly due to his connection with the political elite, both past and present, Marcus had been allowed “to control” wildlife within his ranch. But the Warden felt that Marcus was engaging in wanton killing of wildlife.
He wrote: “The wounding of three ostriches, which Wickham-Boynton claims died on his neighbour’s property, indicates that he is incompetent to carry our control measures without causing undue suffering. Shooting a giraffe with a .303 rifle by the gun-bearer constitutes a classic example of under-clubbing. I therefore recommend that Wickham-Boynton be debarred from carrying a firearm on his return to Kenya and that the gun-bearer’s rifle is replaced by nothing less than .375 Magnum calibre.”
Adnan Khashoggi's bedroom at Ol Pejeta Sweet Waters.
Barrah was willing to provide more evidence on Wickham-Boynton’s activities in Laikipia and copied his letter to the chief firearms licensing officer. Whatever action was taken, it appears that Marcus lost interest in the Ol Pejeta ranch and sold it to Adnan Khashoggi, the gun runner. Ol Pejeta was a classic ranch — and still is. To get permission to buy the ranch, Khashoggi was taken to State House by Kenyatta’s son, Peter Muigai.
A photo taken in the State House shows Kenyatta, Khashoggi, Muigai, and the Chief of Protocol, F.K. Nganatha. During that meeting, Khashoggi handed Kenyatta a Saudi golden sword. He had said that his company, Triad America Corporation, would invest in Kenya. In 1987, it filed for bankruptcy, and Khashoggi was later jailed.
That January, Khashoggi arrived at the Embakasi airport in his executive Boeing 727 jet, which was a flying office complete with suites for the billionaire and his cronies. He then headed straight to the Mt Kenya Safari Club, the luxury resort in Nanyuki once owned by a Texas oil millionaire Ray Ryan, Swiss banker Carl Hisrchman and U.S. film star William Holden. He then retreated to his ranch in Ol Pejeta.
Soon, Ol Pejeta became Adnan Khashoggi’s hideout as he touted himself as the ‘richest man in the world’. AK, as he was popularly known, was also a mysterious character whose life has been summarized as one of successes, scandals, extravagance, and eccentricity. He was a Casanova, a deal maker, and a power broker. At Ol Pejeta, Khashoggi had brought Mr Charles Njonjo as a director, along with well-known accountants Percy James Gill and Courtland Edward Parfet, a prominent rancher at Solio.
With these connections, Khashoggi would usually get VIP treatment in Kenya together with his two sons, Nabilla and Mohammed, who camped in Nanyuki to hunt wild animals at a time when it had been banned.
The matter featured during the Njonjo Inquiry in 1984 in which Minister for Wildlife Mathews Ogutu had written to the Chief Licensing Officer, Wildlife Conservation, requesting him to allow Khashoggi “with a party of 11 persons” to conduct hunting.
They were being led by a professional hunter, Carr Downing. It was a continuation of what Marcus had started in Ol Pejeta. Killing wildlife with impunity.
