Joy Adamson
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Joy Adamson (January 20, 1910 – January 3, 1980) was a naturalist and author, best known for her book, Born Free, which described her experiences in raising Elsa from cub to lioness.
She was born Joy Friedericke Victoria Gessner in Troppau, Silesia, Austria-Hungary (now Opava, Czech Republic). She was first married to Austrian Viktor von Klarwill and then botanist Peter Bally. With her third husband, George Adamson, she made her home in Kenya on the shores of Lake Naivasha. She studied and painted animals in the wild, and became famous as a result of the publication of Born Free in 1960. Several sequels were also published; two films were made: Born Free and Living Free. The former stars Virginia McKenna and the latter Susan Hampshire as Adamson.
In addition to her books about lions, Adamson also wrote two books about Pippa, a cheetah she took on in 1964, first meeting her in an elegant tea room in Nairobi; Queen of Shaba: The Story of an African Leopard, which is about her final big cat; and an autobiography entitled The Searching Spirit.
Adamson later separated from her husband. He died at the hands of poachers in 1989, nine years after her murder.
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[edit] Murder
On January 3, 1980, in a remote part of Kenya, Adamson's corpse was discovered by her assistant, Peter Morson (sometimes reported as Pieter Mawson). He assumed that Joy had been killed by a lion, and this was what was initially reported by the media.
Further police investigation found that Joy's wounds were too sharp and bloodless to have been caused by an animal, and concluded that Joy was murdered with a sharp instrument. The authorities questioned her former employees, as Adamson had a reputation for firing many of them. Paul Wakwaro Ekai, a labourer employed by Adamson, was found guilty of murder and is serving a life sentence in a Nairobi prison. Ekai escaped the death sentence because the judge ruled that he was a minor when the crime was committed. In a 2004 interview with The Guardian newspaper, Ekai claimed that he had killed her (with a gun and not a sharp instrument as previously thought) after she shot him in the leg for complaining that he had not been paid[1].
[edit] Trivia
Adamson appeared in "The Bargain" and "Death Walks by Night," two second-season episodes of the British television crime drama The Vise, which were broadcast in 1955.
[edit] Books
- Born Free: A lioness of two worlds (1960) ISBN 1-56849-551-X
- Living Free: The story of Elsa and her cubs (1966) ISBN 0-00-637588-X
- Forever Free: Elsa's Pride (1964) ISBN 0-00-632885-7
- The Spotted Sphinx (1969) ISBN 0-15-184795-9
- Pippa: The Cheetah and her Cubs (1970) ISBN 0-15-262125-3
- Joy Adamson's Africa (1972) ISBN 0-15-146480-4
- Pippa's Challenge (1972) ISBN 0-15-171980-2
- Peoples of Kenya (1975) ISBN 0-15-171681-1
- The searching spirit: An autobiography (1978) ISBN 0-00-216035-8
- Queen of Shaba: The Story of an African Leopard (1980) ISBN 0-00-272617-3
- Friends from the Forest (1980) ISBN 0-15-133645-8
