World Of Secrets - Searching for Soldier Dad: 2. Eureka

Episode Date: April 27, 2026

How did the hunt for an American serial killer inspire DNA detectives in Kenya? Growing up, Kenyan lawyer Kelvin Kubai admired the British soldiers stationed in Nanyuki. Now, he is on a mission to hold them accountable. Orphan Yvonne was told her dad died when she was a baby. She hopes to find relatives in the UK. But could she get much more? Searching for Soldier Dad is a BBC Long Form Audio production for the BBC World Service. Please note, the image being used is for illustrative purposes only and the child depicted is a model.Presenter: Ivana Davidovic Series producer: Josephine Casserly Sound design: Tom Brignell Executive producer: Matt Willis Commissioning senior producers: Katy Davis and Anne Dixey Commissioning editor: Jon Manel

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Chicago, 2011, a cop is murdered. Police and prosecutors swear they have the trigger man. He swears he didn't do it. How far will each side go to prove their right? Like it's just one bombshell after another, you know, where you're like, what? What? The story of a PlayStation, a brain-eating amoeba, and the relentless pursuit of justice.

Off duty, out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. It's April 2018. Armed police are staking out a house on a typical suburban street in California. Think well-manicured lawns and swimming pools. Officers from the sheriff's fugitive apprehension team watch from their truck as an elderly man with wisps of gray hair emerges from the door. This is the moment they've been waiting for. One of the officers approaches, and within seconds, the old man is on the ground, handcuffed.

Tonight, hiding in plain sight, police say one of the most elusive serial killers in American history has been captured outside his suburban hall. For four decades, detectives had no leads in a series of rapes and murders, mostly in the 70s and 80s. The once-married former police officers, now under arrest for a violent crime spree that terrorized California. They believed they had a serial killer on their hands.

He was given the name the Golden State Killer. But they had no suspect and no way of finding their man. The only clues were DNA samples from crime scenes. But there was no match on the police database. By 2018, the detectives working the case were desperate for a lead. They enlisted the help of an amateur DNA detective called Barbara Ray Venter. She was a retired 70-year-old who had become an expert in using commercial DNA databases, which had boomed in popularity during the 2010s.

You probably know the ones. You'll discover which places your ancestors called home, leaving traces of this global tapestry within your DNA. Companies like Ancestry, 23 and Me, and Heritage. If you want to find long-lost relatives or know where your ancestors came from, you can order a testing kit from one of these companies. Taking the test is super easy. You simply swap your cheeks, then mail your sample to our lab. Then, all you have to do is wait for your results.

You may end up with surprising new family connections. These commercial databases contain tens of millions of DNA profiles. Anyone with an account can search for a match. match. And that's exactly what Barbara Ray Venter did. She scoured these databases to find a match with the DNA found at a crime scene. I'm sitting there at three in the morning, all by my little lonesome, staring at my computer. I know who you are. You're Joseph D'Angelo. Bingo. They have a suspect.

Good morning. Well, Joseph D'Angelo will face a judge here today at the Sacramento County Jail. And within days, Joseph DiAngelo is behind bars. He pleads guilty to a wave of crimes, including 13 murders and 13 kidnapping-related charges, and admits dozens of sexual assaults. He's now serving over 20 life sentences. They say cutting-edge DNA testing allowed them to make a match. We were able to get some discarded DNA. Thousands of miles away, on the other side of the world,

someone else is watching this news. And he's inspired to use the same technique to solve a very different problem. And then I thought, thankfully, finally now, we have a potential mechanism to hold individual fathers to account for deeds overseas. This is World of Secrets, Season 12. Searching for Soldier Dad,

a BBC World Service investigation. I'm Ivana Davidovich, a BBC journalist. For the past two years, I've been following DNA detectives as they attempt to identify and track down British soldiers who fathered children in Kenya and then disappeared. It's not just a hunt for missing dads. This project will dig deep into the heart of one of Britain's most important institutions. It's army.

Episode 2. Eureka. Back in 2021, In the midst of the COVID pandemic, I was a business journalist at the BBC. Hello and welcome to Business Daily. Making radio programmes from an ad hoc recording studio in my living room. In today's program, the growing industry of forensic genealogy. I was working on a story about the booming industry in commercial DNA databases. I heard about a man with a plan that sounded like science fiction.

It piqued my interest, so I gave him a call. Oh, hi, Andrew. This is Ivana from the BBC. Andrew McLeod is a lawyer who spent many years working overseas in the foreign aid sector, including for the United Nations. The more senior I became in the UN system, I saw more and more abuse of women and children at the hands of foreign aid workers, both in NGOs and UN. I quit the UN in disgust at the abuse of women and children and ever since then have been campaigning to reduce the amount of abuse suffered by women in the developing world at the hands of rich, white, saviour, white men. Foreign men and local women in relationships, which are at best imbalanced and at worst exploitative. But the foreign men weren't soldiers.

They were UN and charity workers. The sexual abuse of women and children by staff from the UN and NGOs has been widely documented. And there is something that particularly eats away at Andrew, the children left behind by these relationships. He says that when the father's relationship, locate, the children and their mothers are often left with no support. Then in 2018, he sees that TV report about the Golden State killer.

Police say one of the most elusive serial killers in American history has been captured outside his suburban hall. They say cutting-edge DNA testing allowed them to make a match. This was his eureka moment. Hang on, if a man has abused a woman or a child overseas, and that woman or a child gets pregnant, can you use the DNA of the resulting child, put it through the same process as the Golden State Killer case, and find the father?

And the answer is yes. The clever thing about this method is that it can work even if the person you're looking for has never done a DNA test. You can easily imagine if you're an absentee father or indeed a serial killer, you might not put your DNA on a database that anyone can search.

But if anyone in your extended family, up to a third cousin, has uploaded their DNA, there could be a match. And then, just like in the case of the Golden State Killer, some clever DNA detective work can identify the target. For example, in one of the cases we had Child M. In Child M's case, we took her DNA, put it on the databases and found an uncle. So then we showed that the uncle had two brothers.

One of those brothers has to be the father. One had travelled to the country where M lives. One hadn't. In 2019, Andrew used this method to track down Western sex tourists who had fathered children in the Philippines. He told me it was proof of concept. He knew this technique worked and he was on the lookout for new locations to apply it.

Then, in 2024, I got an email from Andrew. he decided to launch a new project with a new focus where are the battle gates we're like on the main road now but I can't see it where is it we're just outside of Nanyuki on one side of the road

are small shops selling souvenirs and carvings on our left this is the main entrance but as you can see very very little it's just not much is visible from here on the other side are two layers

of tall concrete fences topped with coils of razor wire. The British Army Training Unit Kenya, or Batuk, the UK's biggest military base in Africa, loomed large over Kelvin's early years. Back in the 2000s, Kelvin Kubai grew up not far from here. When I was young, nearly seven years old, I would see British military trucks

in a very long convoy of camouflaged vehicles was driving to the far north along the dusty roads. Along with the group of other local kids, Kelvin would watch the line of trucks head north, kicking up clouds of dust. And we would start by and wave at the soldiers, and sometimes they would wave back and throw some gift of bread to the kids.

Their convoys heading up the Great North Road, which was built when Kenya was part of the British Empire in the 40s. It stretches through the seemingly endless desert landscapes towards Ethiopia. I would look at them with lot of admiration. I think that's why most of the kids within

Nanyuki grew up wanting to be soldiers, you know. But as Kelvin grew older, his impression of the British soldiers started to change. Then growing up a little bigger and seeing the impunity with which they operated

and that really shocked me. It's a very beautiful village on the very shoulders of Mount Kenya. Kelvin's childhood home is in a village in the verdant green hills that surround Nanuki. Every morning you wake up to a snow-capped mountain alongside the equator. There's very cool breezes. And the waters here, they are melted glacier waters.

When he's at school, Kelvin first becomes aware that there are kids who are singled out for being different. These are the children of British soldiers. Some of these kids of mixed-dress heritage. And of course, they were pretty much ridiculed. But it's not just the kids being singled out. I started even to realise for the mothers, especially the women, is even much more harder.

It becomes very hard for the mother to explain. And it becomes quite evident that probably she has... a child out of wedlock. So for these women, it comes so easy to ridicule them and judge them. And so people tend to blame the victims, which now, you know, turns the narrative into blaming the women instead of seeking redress for these children. Today, Kelvin is showing me around.

He's 28, but very much an old soul, usually dressed in patterned knitted jumpers, even in the midday heat of the equator sun. He's thoughtful and reserved, but underneath, he has a steely determination. Well, I honestly hate injustices, and I always want to stand for the small man against a big man. I'm the woman. You know, a woman in this case. The fight against injustice is in Kelvin's DNA.

There's a very beautiful rose on a grave. I hadn't seen it. Over there. Is it a pink one? You can see the pink rose? Yeah, I can see the pink one. more. Kelvin has brought me to a place on his family's land where his grandfather is buried.

He was a young man who took up arms to fight for the independent. Kenya, I mean, he was a patriot. As a younger man, Kelvin's grandfather was a high-ranking commander of the Maumau Rebellion, an armed uprising in the 50s against British colonial rule. The British army's suppression of the rebellion was one of the bloodiest. moments of the British Empire. It's estimated that more than 11,000 Kenyans were killed and many more detained in camps.

Kelvin was raised on the stories of his grandfather's struggle. I love to associate with those harmed by greater injustices that I can't fight against. And it is in such scenarios that I think I find my passion and I find my purpose. Kelvin finishes school and then studies to be a lawyer. When he qualifies, he starts taking on cases against the British Army. The challenge was that many lawyers were unwilling to take up any cases or client with cases against the British Army.

One time, he represents the families of two people killed by unexploded ordinance. He also seeks compensation for a man left injured after he was run over by a British military truck. Then one day, Kelvin receives an email from a woman. who says that she has a child whose father has left Kenya, stop all contact and isn't supporting them. The father, Kelvin hears, is a British soldier. Soon Kelvin speaks to another woman. She too has a child with a British soldier

who has left the country. And then another and then another. I started to document these cases. I went all the way to the north, where there are vast training fields. He drives two hours north of Nanyuki. The same journey made by the military vehicles he used to stand and watch as a child.

But the time for watching is over. This time, Kelvin is here to act. My initial idea was that I would begin a petition at the High Court of Kenya. He wants to get court orders to force the fathers to pay child maintenance to the mothers, but he quickly comes up against an obstinate. These are people in another country.

There was no way of enforcing or even getting their DNA to a Kenyan court for the purposes of doing a confirmatory DNA test. With the men back in the UK, the Kenyan court has no authority to make them pay child maintenance. It was frustrating and disappointing for me.

Seeing all these injustices and there is no any feasible solution. There is sometimes in our practice Is there a moment when you really come to an end? He feels like he's run out of road. That is, until one day, he speaks to an Australian lawyer who has an idea that could change everything. It's, of course, Andrew McLeod.

So I was at that point why I was so frustrated, disappointed that I was welcome to any slight chance of success. At Britbox, Character is Everything. Stream the iconic characters defining British TV on Britbox, including Ludwig. I think I might just have solved a murder. Vera. Now we're getting somewhere. Agatha Christie's Poirot.

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I just am special. Stream the best of British TV on Britbox. Watch with a free trial today at Britbox.com. Chicago 2011. The cop is murdered. Police and prosecutors swear they have the trigger man. He swears he didn't do it. How far will each side go to prove their right? Like it's just one bombshell after another, you know, where you're like, I, what, what? The story of a PlayStation, a brain-eating amoeba, and the relentless pursuit of justice. Off duty, out now. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. The crew of NASA's Artemis II mission have successfully completed their.

voyage around the moon. This is what we've been waiting for for 50 years. Traveling further from the earth than any human has ever gone before. And 13 minutes, the BBC Space podcast told the inside story with audio from the mission. We can see the moon out of the docking hatch right now. It is a beautiful site. We're seeing more and more of the far side. And insight from experts at NASA. That's the way it is in spaceflight. There are a lot of tough questions and we could never fly a perfectly safe mission. The safest mission is just staying home in bed. From liftoff to Splashdown, catch up with 13 minutes presents Artemis 2 from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

It just looks on. Andrew, pleasure, after such a long time. So how long have we been talking about this? Years. Fast forward to December 2024. This is when I meet Andrew and Kelvin in person for the first time. It is. Who would have thought that the first time would be like this?

Yeah, exactly. Couldn't have a predicted that one. And so much of this work has evolved. We're at that cafe from episode one, waiting for people to arrive for the first day of DNA testing. We have prison to believe that her father is Scottish. It's here that what seems like a far-fetched plan suddenly gets a lot more real.

So we need to have a quick chat on law. And they're joined by an... And they're joined by another lawyer from the UK. We heard him in the first episode. He's called James Netto and is a crucial part of their plan. Like when I go to bed at night, I am actually thinking that his clients... If they find the fathers, it's James who will take the case to the High Court in the UK to have them added to his client's birth certificates.

We've always got to keep in mind everything we do. Number one priority is best interest for women and children. Of course. Bouncing around the cafe... Andrew is virtually fizzing with energy. Remember these are British fathers and the children, as of birth, as of right, are British citizens. Children of members of the armed forces

are entitled to British citizenship, no matter where they were born. Which means those children are legally, morally and ethically entitled from the father, the exact same things that they would be entitled from the father if they lived in Britain. Andrew says that, in the cases of those underage, they will try to force the fathers to pay child maintenance.

This has never been tested in the UK courts. So let's get them the child support orders. Let's make sure their educations are paid for as they should be. So this is at the very basement of a larger long-term project to prove the scale of abuse, get justice for victims of abuse and prevent future abuse. When you say this is all about abuse, some of these relationships that you are talking about

were consensual, weren't they? It's not always a product of abuse, a child. Abuse is a spectrum. I think if a man is in a position of power and gets sexual favours because of that position of power, that's abuse. If you misuse your power, understanding that a woman is in poverty,

that is, in my mind, abuse. Is Andrew right? It's a controversial view. Our relationships between, these soldiers and local women really so imbalanced that they're inherently abusive. It's nighttime in Anuki, Saturday night. It's quite busy, it's quite lively, a few bars around. One evening, after they finish collecting the DNA samples,

Kelvin takes us to one of the main streets in Anuki. We pass bar after bar, each with speakers by the doors and colourful lights inside. Sometimes they come in groups and the local girls are usually also looking for opportunities to also come and speak to them. Sometimes they say it's British boys behaving badly. How do you think these British soldiers view local Kenyan women? I think they view them as single plastic use and the plastic here sadly is the women. I mean, it's something you use and disposed. Do not care much about what happens thereafter.

Nowadays, Nanuki's bars are quieter than they used to be. We've been told that there is now a curfew for British soldiers. When the clock nears midnight, groups of young soldiers down their drinks and head home. But when Kelvin was growing up in the 2000s, things were different. People I've spoken with describe it as kind of a wild west. A former sex worker told me several stories of soldiers fighting, of one who attacked a woman in a bar, and another who got into a brawl with a sex worker

after refusing to pay. And I also heard about one particular nightclub where downstairs everyone would be drinking and dancing, but upstairs was pitch black. I'm told that this was where some British soldiers would go to have sex with local women, right there in the darkness above the dance floor. A few of the relationships that I hear about

starting Anuki's bars and clubs. I meet a man called Peter, who's 33. Like Kathy, he never knew his dad, who was a British soldier. He tells me about how his parents met. They met in a club, because that time in the 90s, Nanyuki was booming with parties, you know. Peter paints me a picture of the scene in Nanyuki. Many people from the surrounding cities,

they come to Nanyuki to party, you know, and they also come because they know the army, the British Army is there and they have money, you know, so they love them. The Nanyuki girls love white men. They love them a lot. Even they fight over them in the club. Many girls have to go out Friday, Saturday nights, to hunt for the white boys. Hunting for white boys.

I hear this phrase from someone else as well. Until now, I'd imagine the soldiers as the hunters. But this adds shades of grey to that picture. One woman I met told me that when a new intake of soldiers arrived, local women would head into town to meet them. They'd called them fresh meat. Because they know when you're with a white man life will change. For some, meeting a white man is seen as a ticket to a better life.

And most of them too, they don't like the life here. They want to be there in Europe, you know. Many, many Africans dream of living in Europe, you know. Peter says his mum was only seven. when she met his dad. They dated for three months. She got pregnant, then he left and never came back. Yeah, she was very in love with my dad a lot.

I think my dad just confused her. It's easy to want to neatly divide these relationships into two groups, those formed out of love and those formed out of a desire for a better life. But in reality, the two are inseparable. Love is not always just about falling for a person, but falling in love with an imagined future. I keep asking people, do you know any Kenyan women who've had relationships with British soldiers,

where they've had a happy ending, got married, moved to the UK? There's often one success story, sometimes a friend of a friend. It reminds me of stories I've done about migrants crossing the Sahara or the English Channel. Word of a few success stories can generate just enough hope to believe that for you, it will be different. For Peter's mum, her vision of a better life far from materialised. She dropped out of school and was left pregnant and alone. I think my dad touched my mum's heart and she was like blind, you know.

Peter has also decided to participate in the DNA testing process. in the hope of finding his father. We'll catch up with him in the next episode. Good morning, all. We spent two days observing DNA samples being taken in Anuki. There's a possibility we may have a new client there. And word starts to get around that there are lawyers and scientists in town. Okay.

Here we go. Kelvin keeps hearing about more candidates to take part, and they are based in increasing remotely remote areas. This area was initially called remote road. I can see why. Over the next three days,

we drive for hours around the region, turning up at the houses of people who might be the children of British soldiers. Me and the producer Josephine are squeezed in the back with James. Kelvin and Andrew are in the front. And we're on the edge of the

Great African Rift Valley. Yeah. Grass is shrubland, with goats grazing at the roadside, gives way to vast desert plains. Great African Rift Valley that stretches all the way up to Lebanon. It's fantastic here. I love it, and it reminds me a lot of Australia. We have very similar geography here in the eucalyptus trees,

and the eucalyptus oil, and the high blue skies. I love this part of the world. We spent hours in the car, picking over all the thorny issues that this project throws up. If a man doesn't know he has a child, for example, from a one-night stand or having sex with a sex worker, should he really be held responsible? The Jokerbunk's men often is, do you have any children?

Not that I know of. Some people say the men don't know they have children, and that's true. But the men did know they had unprotected sex with a woman. So the consequence of that decision is possibly having a child. So it's almost giving them too much of a free pass to say they didn't know. And what about contraception? Why don't these guys just use a condom? Even if only to protect their own health.

There's something about men when they are far away from. To experiment on anything. When you know you can get away with anything, the more reason you want to wear. I'm also curious about the role of the lawyers. I know how critical Andrew is of what he calls white saviour men, what makes them so different? We've got to disillusion ourselves from some sort of white saviour complex.

The reason behind all of this and all of our work here is trying to do something long-standing, something that actually changes the fabric of this horrendous injustice that's going on of these towns and in these families. And in this context, we have white men coming to follow up on what white men did with the help of another black man And it works out. Our next stop is a village outside Nanuki. Kelvin has heard about a 17-year-old girl. He tells us she's an orphan who lives with her grandmother.

Before he died, she believes her dad was a soldier. We go with Kelvin to take a sample of her DNA. We arrive at a metal gate which opens onto a small plot of land. And we're greeted by a teenage girl. Hello, how are you? What's your name? I'm Ivana. This is amazing. We're almost the same line.

Yvonne is mixed race. She has angular features and is wearing a pink hoodie with braided hair pulled back in a ponytail. She welcomes us warmly and starts showing us around. Yeah, this is where I was born. This is where I've been raised up and I'm here and I'll still be here. Yvonne tells me that when she's not at school,

she helps out on the farm. We had some goats, and we had to sell them so that we can take some money to the school for school fees. She takes me over to a mound of earth, a few metres from the house. This is my mum's grave. It's her mother's grave. Yvonne tells me that she died very young. It's 20 years.

Yeah, she was too young. Although she's quietly spoken, it's clear that Yvon possesses a real, emotional maturity. You can't change. It's in the past. I have to go on with life. It can't make me stop living. So if she died, I have to accept the fact.

I have to move on. Yeah. Sometimes it's hard. Sometimes it's also normal because if I just cry, it wouldn't help. So I have to work hard. Yvonne says her grandmother doesn't let her out much. She's terrified that what happened to Yvonne's mum could happen to her.

So while her classmates are going to parties, she mainly stays at home, doing school work and looking after her younger cousins. We go inside with Kelvin and James. The house has a few rooms under a corrugated iron roof. We sit down in the living room on armchairs neatly covered in pristine white doily cloth. As well as some other uninvited guests which the producer Josephine and Jane's try to shoot out of the house. I start by asking Yvonne what she knows about her dad.

Beyond him being a soldier, details are thin on the ground. I had my father work in a batuck and he loved my mum so much. Yvonne's grandmother, Rose, tells us that her husband, Yvonne's grandfather, worked as a barber cutting the soldier's hair. He used to take his teenage daughter, Yvonne's mother Anne, into work with him. She tells us it's there that Anne met a young soldier who became her boyfriend. They love each other much, much. Were they married?

No, who car, no, I'm not married. She says he looked young, probably in his 20s and slight, that his military uniform almost overwhelmed him. We keep talking, but Yvonne's grandma can't remember many more details. Tell me about how did your daughter tell you she was pregnant? Do you remember that day? What we do know is that at some point, Anne fell pregnant. Yvonne's uncle later fills in some of the blanks.

He tells us that this young soldier had already left Kenya when Anne realized she was pregnant, and that she called him to take him to take him. tell him the news. He soon stopped picking up the phone. He says that she emailed him but got no reply. Then, when Yvonne was still a baby, her mother Anne fell ill. We know from her death certificate that Anne died from complications in another pregnancy. She died age 20. Yvonne's grandma brings out a photograph of Yvonne's mum. She has tightly curled hair tied back in a red bandana and she's looking straight into the camera with a half smile and a cool look in her eye.

Do you see yourself in her? Yeah. You do? What do you think is the most common? My lips. Your lips, yeah, that's why I thought. Yeah. Yeah.

You have a bit of that kind of a cheeky smile. Yeah, definitely. Looking at this picture of her mum, only a couple of years older than her age now, overwhelms Yvonne. Sorry, I'm sorry. This is so hard. Done such a great job. After Yvonne's mum died,

her grandfather was still working as a barber in the British military camp. So some of the soldiers who were the client to the grandfather who was a barber. They came with a message that he, Yvonne's dad, had passed away. They just came as a soldier

as they keep on coming in cycles. So the cost of them. that were friends to Yvonne's father now came with his message. That he's not among their cohort this time not because he passed away. He hadn't come back to Kenya, they said, because he had died. With both her mother and father no longer alive, Yvonne's grandmother raised her, and you can feel how proud she is of Yvonne,

who she tells me is very bright and excelling in school. What do you want to do? Journalists. She'll be asking the questions next time. I can see it's happening. This first time that we meet Yvonne feels like a whirlwind. We arrive knowing nothing about her dad and we'll leave with some small clues.

But the picture is incomplete. Yvonne seems confused by Kelvin's visit. Her dad is dead. She's known this for her whole life. Her only hope is that she might discover a cousin or distant family member in the UK. But Yvonne's story will become one of the biggest mysteries of this project. That's next time on World of Secrets. This has been episode 2 or 5 of season 12 of World of Secrets,

searching for Soldier Dad from the BBC World Service. World of Secrets, Searching for Soldier Dad, is a long-form audio production for the BBC World of the BBC World. service. It's presented by me, Ivana Davidovich. The series is produced and written by Josephine Cassily. The series editor is Matt Willis. Our script advisor is Lucy Proctor. Sound design and mix by Tom Brignall. We would like as many people as possible to hear our investigations. So please leave a rating and a review and do tell others about World of Secrets. At Britbox, character is everything. characters defining British TV on Britbox, including Ludwig.

I think I might just have solved a murder. Vera. Now we're getting somewhere. Agatha Christie's Poirot. Bonjour. And more beloved favourites. I'm a policeman. I'm professional.

I'm a time lord. I'm the Duchess of York. Once you know them, you never quite forget them. I ain't being vain. I just am special. Stream the best of British TV on Britbox. Watch with a free trial today at Britbox.com.