Scottish treasure-seeker killed in remote Kenyan village

He loved gemstones and would brave anything including cobras, marauding elephants and leopards while hunting for the stones in the animal kingdom.

In fact, he preferred spending his nights on treetops during such missions; where he felt safer despite the trumpeting of elephants and hissing of deadly snakes in the bush.

So much was Campell Rodney’s passion for gemstones that at only six-years-old he could list the different types of treasure stones found across Africa, where he had lived since he was two-weeks-old.

But his story of mineral discoveries would come to a cruel end following his gruesome murder on August 11, 2009, in Kambanga, Mwatate, Taita Taveta County over the same stones he so treasured.

But as Rodney’s family and the global geological community come to terms with the death of the 71-year-old, the prime suspect in the murder is still a free man.

When Lady Justice Maureen Odero of the Mombasa High Court sentenced seven men to 40 years in prison over the geologist’s death last year, she indicated that the prime suspect — a man called Salat, was still at large.

Prior to his murder, Rodney had been embroiled in a protracted dispute with Mwatate villagers laying mining claims to gemstones deposits at the Mwasui and Mukuki ranches.

And although it was Rodney who first ‘discovered’ the blue-purple gem, which he named Tanzanite, locals had become restless about living in abject poverty and wanted the gems to make a difference in their lives.

Theirs is the familiar story line about African miners selling gems at miserable prices only for the same to fetch hundreds of dollars abroad in plush jewellery stores.

The bare-footed villagers wanted a share of the millions accruing from the blue-purple Tanzanite stone which had a ready market in Europe where it is marketed as “the tantalising jewel”.

Not even the fact that Rodney allegedly kept a python in his home, as a pet to prevent the highly superstitious locals from stealing his stones, kept the villagers away.

The tension blew out of proportion in early 2000, as locals started sneaking onto his vast ranches to dig up the treasure stones.

The peak of the tension would come on August 2009, when locals started issuing bare-knuckled threats to evict and kill him.

During the hearing of the murder case at the Mombasa High Court, his son, Bruce Bridges, narrated how his father met his death barely hours after he reported threats to his life at Wundanyi police station.

Rodney, who was travelling with his son and four employees, was killed by a gang of about 20 men, who ambushed them at Kambanga on the Mwasui Ranch.

The gang armed with crude weapons cornered the crew as they tried to remove a roadblock mounted by the angry villagers.

Rodney’s killer, whom the court heard is called Salat, is reported to have stabbed him with a knife in the left upper shoulder “perforating his left lungs and aorta leading to death”, as a pathologist told the court.

“After the attackers left, I ran back to my father.  He was very pale and the ground around him stained with blood. I tried to administer first aid.  He had a huge wound on his side.  I took my shirt off and tried to plug the wound,” Bruce recounted.

During the hearing of the trial the court was treated to fascinating theatrics as the suspects — Mohamed Dadi, Alfred Njuruka, Samuel Mwachala, James Chacha, Daniel Mdachi, Osman Abdi and Crispus Mkunguzi – attempted to prove their innocence.