Dian Fossey: Secrets in the Mist (2017): Season 1, Episode 1 - Gorilla Girl - full transcript

VARIOUS REPORTERS:
Dian Fossey gained
international fame

saving the last
of the mountain gorillas...

...in connection with the death
of naturalist Dian Fossey.

...has been found dead
in the central African state
of Rwanda.

Fossey was found in her cabin
in the African rainforest,

brutally murdered,
hacked to death.

DIAN FOSSEY:
I came here
essentially for research.

I wanted to know all there was
to be known about them.

TV REPORTER:
Dian knows their personalities,
their habits,

and is learning
how they communicate.

Many who knew her
saw a darker side,



and felt she had become
obsessed with
saving the gorillas.

FOSSEY:
It was something I just felt
compelled to do.

I had to do it.
I can't explain it.

TV REPORTER:
Even if the police
do solve her murder,

another mystery will remain,
the mystery of her life.

WAYNE MCGUIRE:
I sleep pretty sound.

So, I was sleeping very sound
when I was woken in my cabin,

"Dian kufu, Dian kufu."

"Kufu" meaning dead.

So I woke up.

I'm putting my clothes on,
while I'm running along.

I'm trying to breathe.

When I went into the room,
you had tables knocked over.

Papers everywhere.



There was blood on her face.

There was blood on her hair.

There was blood on the rug
where her head was lying.

I was in shock.

For a moment,
there are no emotions.
You're numb. Numb.

We knew that she had enemies,
but she didn't deserve
to die like that.

To this day I'm still
traumatized by the memory

This was the wall of her house

The door was here

We went in
and she was lying there

Her head looked like it had
been hit with a hammer

bits of her skull
like broken glass

She sacrificed her life
for the gorillas.

REPORTER:
Ten thousand feet
up in the rainforest

are the last
of the mountain gorillas.

And you might not
find them here if Dian Fossey
had never lived.

She dedicated the last
18 years of her life

to protecting
the mountain gorillas
from extinction.

Rwandans called her
"The Woman Who Lives
In The Forest Without A Man."

FOSSEY VO:
Neither destiny nor fate
took me to Africa.

Nor was it romance.

I had a deep wish to see
and live with wild animals...

in a world that hadn't yet
completely been changed
by humans.

Exactly at 4:30 p.m.
on September the 24th, 1967,

I established the Karisoke
Research Centre.

"Kari" for the first
four letters of
the Mount Karisimbi.

And "Soke" for the last
four letters of Mount Visoke.

I have made my home
among the mountain gorillas.

IAN REDMOND:
The story is so compelling.

This woman found her passion,
found her niche,

and really changed the nature
of human-gorilla relations.

Dian first visited East Africa
as a tourist.

She took out a loan,
hired a guide, went on safari.

She'd found a way to get there
and see gorillas

when, at that time,
very, very few people
had seem them.

It was a life-changing moment.

KELLY STEWART:
Dian Fossey was
definitely a pioneer.

I do not think that
word has been overused.

Before that, nobody had done
a long-term study of gorillas.

Nobody had studied them
month after month
and year after year.

REDMOND:
She wanted to be
the scientist who began

the first long-term field study
of gorilla behavior
and their society.

And to take that
as far as it would go.

FOSSEY VO:
I've been following
one gorilla group
round all month

and am now able
to get within 30
to 60 feet of them.

To be perfectly frank,
I think they're quite confused
as to my species.

REDMOND:
In order to study them
and learn about their behavior,

Dian had to get them
used to her,

and that process
is called "habituation,"
winning their trust.

The habituation process
is not nice

because you're upsetting
this family of gorillas
day after day after day.

Dian's methods played on
the gorilla's curiosity.

So she would behave in ways
that would elicit a curious
rather than an anger response.

Like when she was climbing
a tree to get a better look,

she would deliberately
ham it up.

And she found that
that got their attention.

FOSSEY VO:
I've gotten them accustomed
to me by aping them,

and they are fascinated
by my facial grimaces
and other actions

that I wouldn't be caught dead
doing in front of anyone.

I feel like a complete fool,
but this technique
seems to be working.

REDMOND:
Dian lacked a formal
scientific training.

She was essentially
working it out
as she went along.

Each day, she would hike up
to this place, into the rain
usually, to find the gorillas,

observe them,

come back and then sit
in wet clothes typing...

reams of reports of her
observations of the gorillas...

with the rain hammering
on the tent outside.

Just think about that,
living under canvas.

And only after a couple of years
of that did a cabin get built
with corrugated iron roof

and a bit of grass matting,
and the possibility
of having some warmth.

DAVID WATTS:
To do this kind of work,
you have to put up
with a lot of discomfort,

and you also are going to be
in isolated situations
for long periods of time.

She had the determination
to stick with it,

and to put in the time
and make the effort to succeed.

ALAN ROOT:
I was asked by the National
Geographic to film her project

but I went and got myself bitten
by a puff adder, which is, um,
a deadly local snake,

and, uh, I lost my finger.

And so I asked a good
friend of mine, Bob Campbell,
if he could stand in,

and he very happily agreed.

FOSSEY VO:
The new photographer,
Bob Campbell,
is as cocky as hell.

He is honestly
the biggest bore
I have ever met.

He really thinks
he's the big time.

He explained that, ideally,
he wanted her and the gorillas
in the same shot,

and she was very reluctant.

She felt this unwillingness
to disturb the gorillas
by going too close,

but... (laughs)
she was eventually persuaded.

STEWART:
He started capturing
these incredible moments.

Like the first time a gorilla
reached out towards Dian.

ROOT:
That's the shot.

(chuckles)
That's what he was there for.

REDMOND:
When the sun shines
in the meadows at 10,000 feet

and the Hypericum trees
are covered in
little yellow flowers,

and the Hagenia trees
with the big droopy branches,

and it's like a fairyland.

And if a little bit
of mist sweeps through,
it's very romantic.

ROOT:
I wasn't really surprised
Bob and Dian got together.

She loved him,
depended on him,
needed him around.

STEWART:
He didn't just film,
he became part
of the research too.

He tracked the gorillas.

He helped her build up
her camp together as a team.

Campbell got these
pictures of gorillas
nobody had seen before.

Nobody had gotten
that close to them before.

ROOT:
She'd become famous,
the gorilla lady.

That cover was iconic.

STEWART:
I remember Dian
being on the cover

holding the orphan gorillas,
Coco and Pucker.

FOSSEY VO:
I now have two baby gorillas
in my care: Coco and Pucker.

They were captured
by Rwandese park guards

and they were intended to be
"snuck" out of the country
for the Cologne Zoo.

REDMOND: They had been
captured. They weren't being
well cared for,

and she offered to
look after them
and nurse them back to health.

FOSSEY VO:
Coco now completely
accepts me as her mother.

REDMOND: I think the reason
they survived was that
they began to love her.

(growls loudly)

REDMOND:
The idea of the gorilla
as the monster is there.

And then Dian
transformed our image.

STEWART: Dian really
conveyed how amazing
it is to gain their trust,

to be close to them.

It was something different
than just loving gorillas.

And she had favorites.

FOSSEY VO:
A bright-eyed,
inquisitive ball of fluff

associates with none
of the four adult females
within the group,

and it seems likely
that his mother has died.

He's come to be known as Digit,

because of a twisted
middle finger that appears
once to have been broken.

Digit is more strongly
attracted to humans
than are other gorillas.

For some reason,
he's gentler with me
than with Bob,

a fact that I don't
particularly regret.

He always examines, smells
and handles everything gently,

and occasionally even returns
objects to their owners."

STEWART:
In the early '70s, Dian had
the trust of the gorillas.

She was in love
with Bob Campbell.

It was really
the pinnacle of her life,

and it's heart breaking
how it all ended.

KATHLEEN AUSTIN:
Somebody came into
my office and said

they had just gotten word
that Dian Fossey
had been killed.

I said okay.

Since I was the back-up
consular officer, it was
my responsibility to go up.

I packed a backpack and then
trekked up the mountainside.

AMY VEDDER:
I decided I'd go up with her

'cause I knew the way
and I knew the buildings
and I knew the staff.

At that time, the message was
she'd been killed with a knife,
and it was hard to imagine.

It was hard to believe,
it was... You know,
this just didn't make any sense.

AUSTIN:
We arrived up at Dian's house
just as night was falling.

As we were
approaching the house,

I noticed metal pieces
to the wall had been bent up,

and I thought,
"Well, that's interesting."

And as we came around
to the front, there were
Rwandan police there.

There was the French doctor
who had been waiting
for me to get up there.

What struck me
when I entered the cabin...

...and this will sound dumb...

...but the Christmas tree
and presents

AUSTIN:
We went into the house.

And there she was,
lying on the floor.

Her face and head
were covered with blood

VEDDER:
There was a gun
next to her hand on the floor.

The cartridge was out of it.

She was in her bedclothes.
She wore long johns (laughs)
to bed.

She had died
several hours previously

There were six machete wounds
on her head and face...

...so the cause of death
was obvious

FOSSEY VO:
I wonder why I ever began
the hopeless task

of trying to preserve
an entire subspecies alone!

She'd already had an idea
that something like that
was going to happen.

She clearly felt
threatened by something.

She talked about
fear of people.

She had a gun near her bed,
we all knew that.

If this was sort of
a robbery motive,
nothing was taken.

Her jewelry was there.
Her money was there, it was
a couple of hundred bucks.

It looked like somebody
was looking for something.

And how that ties into
any reason for her murder,
I have no idea, no idea.

MCGUIRE:
She kept her cabin
pretty clean.

Now you walk in
to this place a shambles.

It was like night and day.

The house was just smashed.

It almost seemed like
someone was in a rage.

It was a targeted attack...

...they wanted to hurt...

...or kill Dian Fossey.

VEDDER:
The holes into her bedroom.

It was quite obvious
the tin had been cut
and had been pulled back.

How could somebody have cut
that much and not made
a tremendous amount of noise?

And why was that not something
that was an alarm for Dian?

Why wouldn't she flee?
Why wouldn't she, you know...

So how did she end up being
killed right there by her bed?

I kept thinking

Who could have killed
someone like this?

I had, once in my life,
seen a dead body,

and I had certainly
never expected to see a person

who had been a victim of murder,
a violent murder.

And it was somebody I knew.
You know, it was Dian.

MCGUIRE:
From the stories she told me,
putting pieces together,

man she was really right
about what she said.

VEDDER:
Dian had made enemies
with a lot of people over time,

but we never expected
her to be murdered.

REDMOND:
Dian was very cautious
of trusting people.

Her immediate response
to meeting people, um,
was not to trust them.

STEWART:
She had such
a lonely childhood.

I don't think she felt
much love from her parents.

They divorced
when she was small.

She had a very acrimonious
relationship with her mother,

and she blamed it all
on her stepfather.

She was very tall and ungainly.
She always felt
incredibly awkward.

So she didn't have
a lot of friends.

REDMOND:
She had been treated
badly by people.

She liked animals.
You could relate to animals

because they were very upfront,
and you knew
what you were getting.

Whereas humans are complicated.

STEWART:
For her, Bob Campbell
was the perfect fit.

She saw him as the perfect fit.

FOSSEY VO:
I call him Twinkletoes.

Thanks to Twinkletoes,
I'm able to get caught up
on a lot of work,

and it's a small price to pay
to have a meal ready for him
when he returns from the field.

I'm really a domestic sort,
aren't I?

STEWART: In the early '70s,
they were really
working together as a team.

Him filming
and taking photographs
for National Geographic.

He loved the gorillas,
and over the years, he really
was part of that project.

So she felt like
she wasn't doing it alone.

FOSSEY VO:
Bob is so kind.

I really hope
he'll be able to stay.

STEWART:
Dian was very much
in love with Bob,

but he was already married.

She thought he would
leave his wife
and stay there with her.

But he left.

It was obviously
a huge decision
not to stay with her.

STEWART:
He didn't want
to leave his wife.

That just wasn't what Dian
had seen on her horizon.

FOSSEY VO:
I'm not brave enough
to say I haven't been hurt,

but it's no good gearing
your life around someone

if their life is obligated
to someone else.

I'm deeply sorry for him,
only because he can't seem
to be true to himself.

STEWART:
If it had worked out,

if he had said,
"I want to marry you.
Let's go live in Nairobi,"

she wouldn't have gone,
I don't think.

So she was in love with him,

but I just can't see her
even following Bob
away from Karisoke.

ROOT:
Dian just completely
went to pieces.

Distraught, destroyed.

FOSSEY VO:
I began drinking early,
and by afternoon was finished.

God, I hope someone
comes up here soon.

STEWART:
It wasn't long after Bob
Campbell left that I arrived.

And Dian was wonderful,
wonderful with me.

She was really
showing me the ropes.

She was so into it.

The silverback bent down

He's going to be
coming forward over there

They're going to be
curious about you

The feeding noise
is simply to reassure them

You sort of crunch vegetation,
and you make sounds
that they're used to.

Uncle Bert

STEWART:
Her first group
that she habituated,

she named the silverback
after her beloved uncle,
Uncle Bert.

and one of the females
after Aunt Flossie.

You recognize individuals
at first by the wrinkles
above their nose.

So Dian called them nose prints,
because they were
like fingerprints.

And so you draw the nostril
and do the pattern of wrinkles
above their nose.

It was a lot to learn.

Gorillas, normally
they're on all fours.

They walk on the flat
of their feet and on
the knuckles of their hands.

But they only stand up
when they want to dominate.

To look impressive and
big and beat their chest.

That's to impress a potential,
a threat or rival,
and Dian realized that.

So as she approached them,
she would hunker down
so she wasn't dominating them.

She learned to be submissive.

It's that method that
was Dian's breakthrough.

STEWART: Dian really set out
to get basic data to describe
gorilla society.

We didn't even know how long
do mothers suckle their young.

That wasn't known.

JOSEPH MUNYANEZA:
Dian had to know where
they are at, where they slept.

How the families are doing.

How the babies are doing,
how the mothers are doing.

I think she loved more gorillas
than she did for anything,
probably including humans.

STEWART: After Bob left,
it became more of "animals
are nice, people aren't."

She became attached
to the gorillas individually.

It was a personal relationship.

The gorillas became
Dian's main source of joy

and even a feeling of closeness
with another living being.

FOSSEY VO: Digit really looks
forward to the daily contacts
as a source of entertainment.

He often invites play
by flopping over onto his back,

waving his stumpy legs
in the air and looking at me
smilingly as if to ask,

"How can you resist me?"

At such times I fear
my scientific detachment
dissolves.

REDMOND:
When I arrived
at Karisoke in 1976,

I understood that
I was going to be
a research assistant,

but it was clear
that there was more
than just research going on.

"Active conservation"
as Dian called it.

There was a rule at camp
that if you come across
poaching sign,

you follow the poachers.

You follow the tracks because
the tracks lead to the traps.

FOSSEY VO:
When I arrived in Rwanda,

the Parc des Volcans
had only a dozen park guards.

Poachers, most of whom
were friends or relatives
of the park guards,

were free to come and go
across the park boundaries
as they wished.

(thunder rumbling)

STEWART: What poachers do
is they set trap lines
to catch, mainly, antelope.

WATTS:
Most of the poachers
weren't after gorillas.

The snares that
they set for the antelope

didn't distinguish between
an antelope and a gorilla.

So if a gorilla stepped
in one, it got caught.

Sometimes gorillas
end up in those traps.

And they would get hands cut,
or feet cut, or something.

REDMOND:
And gorillas can lose
a hand or even die.

STEWART:
To Dian, it was if her family
was being attacked.

The wire pulls on its hands
or its foot, and it rots
or it dies of an infection.

AUSTIN: The crime scene
was not like we would see
a crime scene,

with yellow tape around it
and only certain people
allowed in,

and, you know, putting
booties on and all that
sort of stuff.

That did not exist whatsoever.

We went to have a look
around the camp

We found definite tracks

Two sets of footprints

bare footprints

No one in the park
walked barefoot

Everyone wore boots or shoes

White people don't walk barefoot

But locals do that easily

They were taking a picture
of the footprint

without any measurements

Somebody put a pen down
to say, "Here, this will give
you scale," and the man said,

"Well, I know how long
a Bic pen is.
I don't need it in the picture."

So he really didn't understand
the idea of putting a known
length object down

next to a footprint
would tell you
how long the footprint is.

And it was also like that
with investigating
the fingerprints.

I saw them take the machete
by the handle...

...with bare hands
and put it in a plastic bag

The precaution was to put it
in a plastic bag...

...but after handling it with
bare hands it was pointless

AUSTIN: Her hands
were clenched and there was
hair in her hands.

So was she clutching
the back of her head
as she was being attacked,

and so that's
why she had hair in her hand?

Because it did...
It looked similar.

I mean it was dark.
Her hair was dark, it was dark.

Or did she grab someone,

you know, and rip hair
from their heads
as they were attacking her?

If you have a suspect,
you can compare these hairs...

...with those of the suspect
to see if they match

STEWART:
When I heard that
Dian had been murdered,

I was shocked but not surprised,

and there were a lot of people
I know who had worked with her
who felt the same way.

Because Dian had
a lot of enemies.

The popular conception
immediately would be,
poachers killed Dian...

to get her out of the way.

Dian had her own form
of anti-poaching.

There was a hatred
between poachers and Dian.

Dian was always trying
to scare poachers.

They believe in
some kind of magic.

STEWART:
She did terrify them.

Using Halloween masks
to cultivate the reputation
of a witch.

FOSSEY VO: I've had fun today,
terrorizing the illegals
in the park

with my Halloween masks.

And they are very effective.

STEWART: Dian had
a vigilante-type attitude
towards protecting gorillas,

and she felt that she had to,
to some extent, take the law
into her own hands

because the park authorities
were not doing it.

People who had been out
into the forest looking for
poachers and snares and so on,

actually caught people
and brought them back to camp.

They would eventually be
taken to the park headquarters,

but before that happened,
Dian did her own
interrogations.

She would take matters
in her hands,

which was, I would say now,
I mean illegal.

She went too far sometimes,
by intimidating them
and humiliating them.

STEWART: She would put
a mask on and do this
black magic thing,

and she'd whip them
with stinging nettles.

She just turned
them into these kind
of sniveling wrecks.

MUNYANEZA:
She used to confiscate
machetes from poachers

and so she would put them
like a trophy right in her room.

And so it was not
just one machete there.

STEWART:
Dian felt a certain amount
of guilt,

but she felt she had to do it.

She said to me,

"You know, there's only
black and white when it comes
to saving the gorillas.

MUNYANEZA: She believed
and was convinced that
these gorillas are hers.

She was protecting her babies,

and she would go all the way,
would do anything, to do that.

Desperate times call for
desperate measures,

and I think Dian would justify
her sometimes extreme behavior

by saying, "Well,
I'm one person.

I have to be this extreme
to get a result."

MUNYANEZA:
The poachers wanted food,

and she was preventing them
to catch their antelope.

Poachers were now
her fierce enemies.

FOSSEY VO:
The poachers want me
out of here very, very badly.

And I've been told that
I am next on their list.

This news doesn't
worry me very much

because I am not afraid of them
and am also well-armed.

I don't even go to the john
without my gun, and I have
every intention to use it.

I remain deeply concerned about
having habituated gorillas
to human beings.

The second it takes a gorilla
to determine if a human
is a friend or foe

is the second that might
cost the animal its life.

REDMOND: The 2nd of January,
1978, was certainly
a turning point at Karisoke.

Dian decided to make
it an anti-poacher day.

One of the trackers,
just ahead of me, rounds a bend
in the trail and says,

"O wole ooh engagi."

Engagi, gorilla.

The whole scene
was flattened vegetation,

so clearly there'd been
an extensive fight.

It looked like a young
silverback, but I went to check,
to look for his face.

And when I got to the body,
there was no face, no head.
Just an empty, gory socket.

And I guess it was
a slow dawning on me...

it must be Digit.

Dian had known Digit
since he was an infant.

Okay, if it's Digit,
we can identify him
from a broken finger.

So I picked up the arm,
and it was just the bony stump
of the wrist

where the hand
had been hacked off.

But everything else
said it was Digit.

Clearly there'd been a frenzy.

'Cause the poachers had
used dogs to stop Digit
from running away.

And the body had been
speared and hacked.

It was the body of a friend.

The mutilated,
decapitated body of a friend.

I set up a camera in a tree
to get the men bringing Digit
to the front of Dian's cabin.

She didn't go to pieces.

Um, it looked like
a shutter went down
behind her eyes.

He was Dian's favorite.

Dian had watched him grow up.

FOSSEY VO:
There are times when one
cannot accept facts...

for fear of shattering
one's being.

I would rather die myself
than to know what he must have
gone through when he died.

REDMOND: His death was
the end of life at Karisoke
as we knew it.

TV REPORTER:
Last Christmas,
at the age of 53,

Dian Fossey was hacked to death
in her mountain cabin.

MCGUIRE:
Look at the way
she was murdered.

She had been killed
like a poacher killed a gorilla.

TV REPORTER: Brutally murdered,
hacked to death in a crime that
is still under investigation.

People were stunned
that this American researcher
who had become so famous,

and brought so much attention
to Rwanda, had been killed
in this way.

TV REPORTER:
But questions remain about
the way she chose to live

and the way she died.

AUSTIN: What was
the motive for killing her?
We didn't know.

The whole thing is kind of
a heart of darkness story,
it really is.

Especially what's become
of Wayne McGuire.

TV REPORTER:
The hunt is on this morning

for an American
wildlife researcher,
Wayne McGuire,

as the prime suspect
in the murder of naturalist
Dian Fossey.

Strands of hair found
in Miss Fossey's hand

were those of a white person
other than Miss Fossey.

McGuire was the only other
white person in the area
on the night of the murder.

MCGUIRE: 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.