Claims about missing girls

FOLLOWING last week’s story about the 1980s mystery of six missing girls believed to be victims of notorious Gert van Rooyen and his partner Joey Haarhoff, new insight about Van Rooyen has been revealed which perhaps sheds new light on the case.

Beneath a Pretoria shopping mall just off Bloed Street lies a deep well that was once a playground for Van Rooyen, who lived in a small house on Bloed Street.

Leon Vermaakt lived on that street when growing up and this week spoke about Van Rooyen, who lived a block away from the Vermaakt family and whom he knew as a young boy.

He believes Bloed Street and its surrounds may hold clues for the police.

While Vermaakt and his brother had been forbidden by their parents to play with Van Rooyen in the 1950s, there was an open piece of ground where the children would all play – and nearby was the well, which may hold darker secrets.

“The well was quite deep. I used to throw stones in there,” said Vermaakt, adding that it was eventually covered with metal sheets. It is believed the well was still there in the 1980s, but is now under the site of the Bloed Street Mall.

An SAPS search-and-rescue officer who was at the scene of the Blythedale cottage on the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast where it was suspected the girls’ bodies may have been hidden, said this week he still believed there were clues in the vicinity of the cottage.

Now retired, Jack Haskins was the first officer in KZN to have a searchand-rescue dog and it was his German shepherd, Rolf, who accompanied him to the cottage on the beach in the late 1990s.

“This case was never closed and I have done numerous searches for these young girls over the years. I still think there are clues at Blythedale and I do believe something happened on the North Coast with them,” said Haskins.

Meanwhile, an archived story in the Independent on Saturday in May 1999 highlighted the investigation into connections between the case and the cottage in Blythedale by detective Glen Fetchit – 10 years after the girls had disappeared.

He had been working on the case with a psychic who had success tracing people in the past.

Fetchit gathered 29 exhibits at the cottage dubbed the “Chamber of Horrors”, including a steel axe, an old hairband and blood-stained shorts.

The exhibits were sent for forensic testing and fingerprints, but he was told three hours later that the tests had been completed, were all negative and he should consider the case closed.

Fetchit expressed doubt over forensic tests being completed in three hours and said: “I know who was involved and why the investigation is being stifled. I also have information about where the others are buried.”

He also said that among the evidence he found was a register confirming that Van Rooyen and a high-ranking minister had booked into a Blythedale resort at the same time.

GERT VAN ROOYEN