The official Account
The Carlyle Expedition sailed from New York in 1919, led by Roger Carlyle (age 24), a millionaire playboy who inexplicably turned from the life of a wastrel to finance and head an archaeological expedition to Egypt. The principal members of the expedition were
Sir Aubrey Penhew (age 54), titled, wealthy, and a noted Egyptologist;
Hypatia Masters (age 27), a beautiful society girl and an accomplished photographer and linguist;
Jack Brady (age 36), mercenary soldier, weapons expert, and Carlyle’s confidant and bodyguard; and
Dr Robert Huston (age 52), fashionable psychoanalyst and interpreter of dreams.
The members sailed from New York to
London , to meet with
Sir Aubrey Penhew . After a few weeks they departed for Egypt. Using Cairo as a base, the expedition performed several short desert excavations. An important find was rumoured, but the expedition refused comment to reporters. The principal members departed for Mombasa, Kenya, ostensibly for a vacation, and quickly went inland to
Nairobi.
In Nairobi, at the beginning of August, the expedition hired twenty bearers and headed into the wilderness. They were seen often at first. The last letters from them arrived in early September, and then they vanished.
In March of 1920 a Kikuyu tribesman told authorities in Nairobi of a party of whites near
The Mountain of the Black Wind, a local name for one of the high Kenyan peaks. Later rumours intimated that the party had been destroyed by inhuman forces. A search party, hired by Carlyle’s sister
Erica Carlyle, found the remains of the expedition after ten weeks of effort.
The corpses of the bearers were remarkably preserved and appeared to have been pulled apart by animals, though a coroner’s report never mentions tooth marks on the bones — they had been horribly killed and torn to shreds. The encampment was totally destroyed, in no little part by the seasonal rains and undergrowth in the months since the disaster.
No sign was found of the whites who had led the expedition, a fact easily established by the absence of dental work among the corpses. Despite reports to the contrary the bodies were strewn about in the open, and no effort to conceal them had been made.
Blame was quickly pinned on Nandi tribesmen. Some mention was made of a pagan cult (the Bloody Tongue) powerful in the area but authorities scoffed at the idea and did not use it in the subsequent trial.
Fingers were pointed at some random tribesmen who were subsequently hung, the expedition members were declared dead, and the incident was forgotten.
Discrepancies
Jackson Elias investigated the massacre in a trip to Kenya and discovered a number of inconsistencies. He made extensive notes, a briefing of which can be read in
The Nairobi Notes .
The key point was that the tribesmen convicted and hanged for the crime were probably scapegoats to satisfy the colonial authorities.
Further questioning of soldiers involved in the discovery of the bodies revealed that the bodies of the white members of the expedition were not found at the site. Only the bearers.
An old friend of
Jack Brady confirmed to
Jackson Elias during an Interview that he saw Jack Brady alive and well in
Shanghai several months after the massacre.
A photo in
The Nairobi Star from August 1919 shows the Carlyle expedition still together as officially reported.
Hypatia Masters shows the early signs of pregnancy. Sir Aubrey appears to be younger in this photo than the one taken in New York in April 1919.
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