He was the most vilified man in Kenya – Aloof,arrogant,haughty,trigger happy,eccentric,loony,riddled with impunity,short-tempered and downright bloodthirsty. That was Tom Cholmondeley,born Thomas Patrick Gilbert Cholmondeley also known as The Old Etonian.
Son and heir of the fifth Lord Delamere,the notorious Mr Cholmondeley was twice accused of murdering Kenyan locals on his expansive 50,000-acre Soysambu Estate in Rift Valley, which he was known to patrol while wearing a cravat and armed with a lethal Luger pistol and Winchester rifle.
The two bloody incidents received widespread national news coverage, stoking fierce resentments over race and land rights and exposing deep tensions about the post-colonial British presence in Kenya.
The first death was of Robert Njoya, a 37-year-old poacher whom he had come across on his family’s Soysambu estate in 2006.
And another death of Samson ole Sisina, a Masai wildlife ranger investigating illegal bushmeat traffic,who he mistook for a robber, and shot five times with his Luger.
Reclusive and fabulously wealthy,Mr Cholmondeley had little time for locals crisscrossing his vast estate in search of wild game or whatever mischief they would be up to.
Prior to his legal – and even personal – troubles,Cholmondeley was once married to some English woman called Sally Brewerton with whom he had two boys,Hugh,16 and Henry Cholmondeley,18.
They later divorced and he started dating some other English woman eerily named Sally just like his first wife. Sally Dudmesh.
LEFT: Tom Cholmondeley’s girlfriend,Sally Dudmesh.
Mr Cholmondeley and Miss Dudmesh maintained a lifelong relationship until his sudden death at the MP Shah hospital of cardiac arrest.
But unknown to his girlfriend Miss Dudmesh,Mr Cholmondeley had been having a secret longterm affair with some other woman called Wendy-Anthony Hoole,a former British airways flight attendant.
Their secret love affair was so long,so deep,so intense that Miss Wendy Hoole even ended up getting pregnant for him,giving birth to a boy who was born on April 21,2016.
He is only four months old.
But Wendy wasn’t just any other random woman to Mr Cholmondeley,the swaggering farmer and Delamere heir born into the notorious family which created the Happy Valley set immortalised in the film White Mischief.
Wendy and Tom had met back in England and he continued to date her until when he officially asked her to move to Kenya in 1995.
So In Love: Tom and his secret girlfriend Wendy back in the 90’s
Wendy left England for a life of pompousness,excesses,bliss and romance with Tom who was now staying at his opulent Flamingo House on the family’s Soysambu Ranch.
Three years later,however,Tom had a nasty paragliding accident and their relationship began to disintegrate leading up to a nasty break up.
Tom moved on to Sally Brewerton and married her.
Wendy moved back to England and married some American dude called Jeffrey Durham.
Soon enough,Cholmondeley’s marriage to Sally hit the rocks and he started dating the other Sally – Sally Dudmesh a relationship that continued until his death early this month.
But after his arrest and jailing for manslaughter in 2009,Wendy crept back into Cholmondeley’s life,visiting him in prison endlessly and also staying by his side until after he was released in 23rd October 2009.
And last Christmas- December 2015- Wendy discovered that she was pregnant for Mr Tom Cholmondeley.
Secret Lover : Wendy and the little boy she bore for Tom Cholmondeley
She told him about it but he didn’t break the news to his longtime partner Sally.
February 2016 was the last time Wendy saw the love of the life – only to give birth two months later.
She named the boy Rupert and claims that Tom was a proud father.
In a tragic twist of fate, Cholmondeley was planning to visit England next month to have his hip operation and meet his son. But, at the last minute, he switched the surgery to Nairobi’s MP Shah private hospital, where he died a week ago.
He died having not met the little boy.
Mr Cholmondeley remains unburied and a tussle over his postmortem has already started manifesting.
Source ; Daily Mail
