TELL NO LIES

Polygrapher Silke Kaiser offers insight into the criminal mind

What goes on in the mind of a criminal? Polygrapher Silke Kaiser could give you some chilling insights. In her new book, Gotcha, she unearths the various layers that make up the world of crime in South Africa and explores the psychology behind criminality.

Silke Kaiser was helping out at a friend’s stationery store when money went missing (some from the till and some from her purse), and a polygrapher was called in. The culprit turned out to be a trusted employee – someone she worked closely with. ‘It had a profound effect on me,’ she says. ‘I was devastated that somebody I was so fond of would do something like that. Knowing what I know now, I realise that it probably wasn’t personal. She must have had her reasons; maybe she was struggling financially. But I took it very personally at the time, and was very hurt.’

Lie detecting is hardly a common career choice, but Silke immediately signed up for a polygraphy course at the South African Polygraph Academy. She was well into her thirties before she first considered it as a career, although she’d long been fascinated by the criminal mind, watching documentaries and devouring books on crime and psychology in her free time. But it wasn’t until she was 37 and the incident at the shop happened that she ditched her job as a PA to pursue polygraphy as a career.

Qualifying was one thing, she discovered, but employment was quite another. Silke used to walk around Isando, Gauteng, handing out flyers in the vague hope of finding potential clients, she says. Today, that’s

no longer necessary – she works mostly on referral and is very much in demand.

‘I learn something from every person I deal with, whether it’s about body language or their life, and I find that incredibly valuable,’ she says. ‘It’s an honour for me to be in this industry and I’m grateful to clients who give me work.’

Most of Silke’s work is related to farm attacks.

‘There is a culture to farm attacks; they’re pre-planned,’ she says. ‘Lukas Swart is one of the few experts in SA. He gets information on when an attack is about to happen through impimpis [informers] and presents it to the farmer. I then go out to polygraph to see who is organising it. In my book I talk about contact people, hit squads, the watcher in the woods… They plan meticulously, and they usually go to the sangomas beforehand. I’ve found some kind of muti involved in about 70% of the farm attacks I’ve worked on. It’s usually to make sure the attack is successful and that there are no obstacles. People also go to sangomas for cash-in-transit heists. It’s a thread that runs throughout crime in SA,’ she says.

Convicted farm attack perpetrators who have served their sentences have confirmed to Silke that the information in her book is 100% accurate. (They prefer to remain nameless, of course –as impimpis, their lives would be under severe threat.)

Silke has also always been fascinated by women who commit ‘priority crimes’ like burglaries and armed robberies.

‘These women often commit crimes at the behest of a man to whom they’re trauma-bonded,’ she says. ‘The trauma bond is also known as a betrayal bond, and it typically occurs within an abusive relationship, usually with a narcissist or sociopath.’

In other words, the woman often commits the crime to ‘prove her love’ for, show her loyalty towards, or out of fear of the man who asks her to do it. It’s abuse of another kind. The cycle of abuse is something Silke explores in depth. Crime in South Africa, and around the world, can often be traced back to one thing, she says: the lack of a strong father figure. Perhaps efforts to address crime need to begin in the way that men are raised. Now 53, Silke describes her childhood as ‘chaotic and unstable’. ‘I was born in Germany and came to South Africa when I was six years old,’ she says. ‘I always say, “I wasn’t born in Africa but I was born to live in Africa.” This is my home, my country. Its people are in my heart.’

Her parents were fierce disciplinarians and the family moved around a lot – Silke changed schools 11 times between Grade 1 and Grade 8. Although it was tough at the time, she says, her upbringing made her the tenacious woman she is today: strong enough to deal with the death and destruction she encounters on crime scenes.

She never intended to write a book. The idea was born after she gave a talk on crime in South Africa at a business meeting.

‘Afterwards, somebody said, “Write your book!”’ says Silke. She was so inspired that she wasted no time doing just that, and titled her first draft Crime in South Africa – which her editor hated.

‘He said it was crap,’ says Silke, ‘and told me to put myself in it.’ She took his advice: the book, now renamed Gotcha, is a more personal account of some of her cases and details of what her work has taught her about criminal behaviour in South Africa.

In it, Silke speaks to someone who she believes was a cash-intransit robber, looks at how drug addiction affects families and talks about how one often gets to the truth in a roundabout way. In one chapter she writes about a mysterious tip-off she gets: to examine the hands of the workers at a factory where theft was suspected. As it turns out, some of the guilty employees had been storing the goods they had stolen in a container filled with chemical water, which made their skin turn white. Further polygraphy tests then also revealed that a manager (who nobody suspected) was involved in even greater theft.

There’s even an incident involving a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes... the owner of a wedding venue phoned her in a panic one day: a woman had kicked off her Jimmy Choos under the table and they had disappeared – would Silke come over and try to identify the thief? By this time, she says, her gut feeling was so well honed that she could often spot a guilty conscience on sight, and soon identified the culprit who led her to where she’d hidden the shoes – in a bin.

Not getting emotionally involved, says Silke, can be hard at times.

‘In the case of sexual harassment, 99.9% of the time, women are telling the truth. It’s difficult for them to come forward, and when they do, it’s an act of absolute courage that often moves me

to tears. You can’t help but be emotionally impacted, especially when somebody is hurting. I’ve had managers crying with me as well. It can be traumatic but you just have to learn to process it.’

Silke, who lives in Edenvale, makes sure she takes time to decompress from what is clearly an emotionally draining job by going running, reading, getting guidance from Dr Phil and watching YouTube videos. Her four dogs keep her anchored and expect a walk the minute she gets home.

‘That’s my therapy. I also have friends and family that I can vent to.’ Her sister and 16-year-old niece also both provide her with a welcome refuge. Oddly enough, she finds research as relaxing as it is stimulating – at the moment, she’s studying criminology through Unisa (although she might switch to forensic profiling) and working on her next book, which will deal with her own childhood, as well as with sociopaths and narcissists.

Interestingly, when it comes to the criminal justice system in South Africa, Silke believes that our laws, magistrates and judges are ‘perfect’. The problem? Incomplete dockets, or dockets that are lost, she says.

‘The judges and magistrates cannot sentence because of this. When you get to court, half the documents are missing. It has a lot to do with corrupt policemen: that’s where the problem lies.’

And even though she finds herself constantly engaged with the dark side of society, Silke remains hopeful when it comes to the future of this sometimes frustrating country.

‘I hope that under the new presidency we will all flourish. We are an exceptionally angry nation, and we’re concentrating on the wrong things. People are starving; they’re not getting what they have been promised, and we obviously don’t have enough skills and education. All of this needs to be sorted so that we flourish as one nation.’