News Break
03/14/2005 16:20:49 EST Neb. Hires Man Convicted of Fossey Murder
By KEVIN O'HANLON
Associated Press Writer
LINCOLN, Neb. - A man convicted by a Rwandan court of murdering Dian Fossey, the American whose wildlife research in Africa was the subject of the movie "Gorillas in the Mist," has been hired by the state of Nebraska to oversee a mental health office.
The Health and Human Services System announced Monday that Wayne Richard McGuire will be a program administrator for the Behavioral Health Office of Consumer Affairs.
Fossey was hacked to death in Rwanda in 1985. McGuire, an American who was her research assistant, was convicted in absentia. But he has remained in the United States, which does not have an extradition agreement with Rwanda, since the conviction.
McGuire, who has denied any involvement in Fossey's killing and most recently worked for a mental health agency in Oklahoma, told The Associated Press that his conviction did not come up during the interview process.
HHS spokeswoman Kathie Osterman said the state agency knew of the conviction and was not troubled by it. Osterman said HHS officials interviewed people familiar with the political strife in Rwanda at the time of the murder and do not believe McGuire's conviction was legitimate.
"We felt comfortable offering him the position," Osterman said.
State Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha said he will look into McGuire's hiring.
"I'm going to get to the bottom of why HHS and Nebraska hired this man," Chambers said. "Murder is murder. For this man ... to be hired by this state, is unconscionable."
Fossey, 53, was killed in her jungle camp on the slopes of Rwanda's Mount Visoke, a 12,175-foot dormant volcano, where she lived among endangered mountain gorillas.
McGuire, a doctoral candidate from the University of Oklahoma, was the only other foreigner at her Karisoke Research Center. A native tracker fired months earlier by Fossey also was charged in her death. He died in a Rwandan jail.
A three-judge panel in Rwanda said that McGuire, who returned to the United States before the investigation into Fossey's murder was completed, killed her to gain access to her research on mountain gorillas.
Prosecutors said they believed McGuire wanted to acquire the manuscript of what was to have been a sequel to her 1983 book, "Gorillas in the Mist." They said the manuscript was the only thing missing from Fossey's home.
But HHS' Osterman said of the verdict: "We believe that it's not valid."
And McGuire called his conviction was "a joke."
"The United States doesn't validate it," he said. "This was 20 years ago. All that stuff is long gone. It doesn't exist anymore. I didn't do anything."
Don't wanna "monkey around" wit dat man.
JonR
