Death in the mountains’ shadow

Stellenbosch is world-renowned for its wine, gorgeous scenery and beautiful people. It’s the home of students working towards their future, successful businessmen and respected professors. But don’t let the luxury and blue mountains fool you. The sleepy town hides numerous crimes that rocked its community, the country and the world.

Over the past two decades the front pages of newspapers splashed the details of the murders of Inge Lotz, Hannah Cornelius, Susan Rohde, the Van Breda family… But this book also contains the stories of lesser-known victims, such as Felicity Cilliers, the farm worker whose murder was forgotten by all but her family.

The victims and the murderers in this book come from all walks of life, confirming not even Stellenbosch can escape the harsh reality of crime.

Acclaimed author and journalist Julian Jansen’s third book reads like a crime novel and contains never-before published information on each crime.

Extract

The Franschhoek pass murders

At some point after 15:00, they spotted the black Golf and the three young people at the look-out point. Some of the men liked the “Golfie”, but others said a two-door car would not be suitable for other criminal activities. They drove on.

One of the men – the one who had initially come up with the plan in Cape Town – said after a while that the black Golf was “breaking his heart”, that he had long desired a car like that. So, they decided to return to the lookout point where the Golf and the young people were and stopped there after all.

A teacher from Paarl, who had been at Jan Joubert’s Gat that afternoon in the company of four friends, saw the Ford Sierra turning off to the lookout point just as he and his friends started driving back to Franschhoek.

One of his passengers recounted later that she’d been immediately concerned when she’d first seen the young people at the look-out point. “I actually became annoyed with the kids, because I felt they weren’t really safe on their own.”

Her concern was not unfounded. Less than a month before, a man from Moorreesburg, Mark Rabe, had been robbed of his bakkie and shot dead on the same pass, barely 2km from where the three young people were relaxing.

The teacher said that something about the occupants of the Ford Sierra had made him uneasy. He still remarked: “Uh oh, these people are trouble.” But he did not turn around.

***

Audrey Myburgh struggled up the steep mountainside at Jan Joubert’s Gat, her face contorted with pain. A bright red stain on her left side showed

that something was seriously wrong. Groaning, she reached the parking area at the look-out point and staggered towards the tarred road. The driver of a Volkswagen minibus filled with tourists from Alaska saw the woman waving her arms and braked hurriedly. Audrey was trembling with shock, and a passenger draped a jacket around her shoulders. Another vehicle stopped, picked Audrey up and rushed her to Franschhoek to receive medical attention.

The bodies of Audrey’s friends, Dorian and Marisa, were found on the mountainside. She told the police haltingly what had happened: Men in a blue car had shot her and her friends. She gave them a description of the black Golf, as well as of their attackers’ blue Ford Sierra with its CY number plate.

Audrey was taken to Stellenbosch Hospital while police vehicles raced to the look-out point with blaring sirens. On their arrival at the scene, police officers and members of the Off-road Rescue Unit, a crew of volunteer 4x4 owners, got to work. Using ropes anchored to 4x4 vehicles, they abseiled down the mountainside.

Sergeant Ashley Malgas found Dorian’s body in a half- seated position. A few metres away, Marisa lay face down. Both had gunshot wounds to the head and were dead when the police arrived. As gruesome as the scene was, it told only half the story of the ordeal the three young people had faced that Wednesday afternoon. It would take the police a while to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

Various items were found at the scene: a .38 bullet, a .44 Magnum bullet, a black cap, a pair of sunglasses, lightbrown sandals, a small quantity of dagga in a cardboard container and a can of orange juice.

The Volkswagen Golf with its CL number plate had disappeared. Boland and Cape Town police stations were asked to be on the lookout for this vehicle and the Ford Sierra the attackers had used.

When the news of the murders broke, police officers who had been on foot patrol that afternoon recalled seeing a blue Ford Sierra and a Golf passing them at high speed. As they were on foot, they had been unable to pursue the vehicles.

That same afternoon, the police tracked down two cyclists in the Groendal suburb of Franschhoek who were probably the last people to have seen the three friends before they were attacked. Sarel Botha and Henry Pietersen provided valuable information. Botha recounted that he and five other “Rastas” had arrived at the look-out point at about 15:00.

It was then that the black Volkswagen Golf arrived at the look-out point.

Botha and his friends waved at the three young people in the Golf. Audrey and Marisa sat down on the parapet wall and called the cyclists over to them. The women told them they were originally from Kwazulu-natal.

“The one lady gave the other lady a stop of dagga and she rolled a zol, which they smoked in turn. The man didn’t smoke. They offered us a skyf too, but we declined,” Botha related.

Shortly afterwards, the Ford Sierra arrived and drove slowly past the small group before leaving the look-out point again. The cyclists said goodbye and resumed their journey to Franschhoek.

While taking a breather on the pass during their homeward trip, the cyclists saw the Ford Sierra and the black Golf come racing past them. “They went round the corner so fast that you could hear the tyres screech.”

Botha recognised two of the men in the Golf. They had earlier been in the Ford Sierra. The cyclists rode on, and at the foot of the pass they saw the police vehicles racing up the road.

Although the killers got away that afternoon, their freedom was to be short-lived – thanks to painstaking donkey work on the part of the police and an exceptional stroke of luck.

***

It was just before midnight on the day of the murders, approximately two hours after the first report about the missing black Golf and the blue Ford Sierra had been issued on the police radio. Inspector Roland Gabriels had been searching for the two cars for two hours, and at that stage he was combing the streets of Athlone in his patrol car. Then came the breakthrough the police needed: from his vehicle, Gabriels spotted the blue Sierra 2.0LX parked in the open in front of a smokkelhuis (shebeen) in Lower Klipfontein Road, Silvertown.

He notified the police’s radio control immediately, and Inspector Herman Beckmann of the Murder and Robbery Unit in Bellville was dispatched to the scene. Inside the house, Beckmann and his colleagues found three men sitting on a bed. Two of them would eventually be linked to the Franschhoek Pass murders: David Williams (23) from Eerste River and Patrick van Schalkwyk (22) from Springbok. In the Sierra, the officers discovered Marisa’s ID book wrapped in newsprint, a wallet, a .45 pistol and a receipt for R80 paid for 13.65 litres of fuel. The fuel had been purchased with a petrol card marked “DC van Rensburg” at a service station in Klipfontein Road.

The men were arrested, and the Ford Sierra was driven to the Bellville South police station for fingerprints to be taken.

Then came the momentous stroke of luck. During the trip to Bellville, a black two-door Golf drove past the Ford – the same Golf for which three young people had paid with their blood earlier that day. On seeing the Sierra, the occupants of the Golf thought their comrades were inside the car. They hooted and waved merrily, little knowing that the occupants of the Sierra were in fact police officers. The police played along and waved back.

At the red traffic lights at the Vanguard Drive/n2 interchange, about 2km from the smokkelhuis in Lower Klipfontein Road, the officers seized their opportunity. They stopped, jumped out and ran towards the Golf. The dumbfounded occupants were arrested. They were Morné Lakay (23), a panel beater from Athlone, and a 17-year-old boy.

On the Friday, two days after the murders, Captain Deon Beneke and Beckmann took Lakay to the smokkelhuis where his comrades had been arrested. The house was very dirty and in a mess. Lakay pointed out the place where a .22 pistol and two .38 revolvers were hidden. In a cupboard without doors, Beckmann found an Absa bank card with the signature “M du Toit” and Dorian’s wristwatch.

Meanwhile, a police captain had taken the 17-year-old suspect and his mother to the Franschhoek Pass, where the boy was made to point out the details of the crime scene. On seeing the site where a bunch of fresh flowers had been placed, the boy’s mother became very emotional.

The fifth suspect in the case was 27-year-old Jehan Abrahams from Lentegeur in Mitchells Plain. He had been tracked down by Beneke and arrested on the Saturday after the murders. During Abrahams’s arrest, his wife handed a gold ring to the police. He had given it to her earlier and said he got it from a friend.

Next came a shocking discovery. It turned out that two of the suspects – Williams and the minor boy – were out on bail after having been arrested for the murder of Rabe, the man who had been shot dead and robbed of his Mazda Drifter bakkie on Franschhoek Pass the month before. Some of the suspects were also linked to hijackings and other violent crimes at tourist attractions in the Cape Peninsula and the Boland.

Williams, Abrahams, Lakay and the 17-year-old boy were eventually positively identified.

Williams did not want to make a statement and said he would speak in court.

On 8 August 1999, he and Lakay escaped from the Groot Drakenstein Prison by fashioning a rope from four sheets they had torn into strips. They fled in a Nissan 4x4 that was parked nearby but were apprehended again that same day.

Prof van Rensburg, who in his capacity as a surgeon was frequently called out at night for emergency operations on people who had sustained gunshot or knife wounds in gang fights, said during a media conference he would like to ask his son’s killers what it had felt like that to shoot him in that way. Dorian had been his only child.

The appearance of his son’s alleged killers in the Paarl Magistrate’s Court attracted great interest, and relatives had come from as far away as London.

Outside the court, hundreds of people protested against crime. Among those who participated were doctors, nurses, community leaders, primary school pupils and victims of crime, as well as the mayors of Paarl, Wellington and Franschhoek.

The session in front of Magistrate Gaynor de Wee took place behind closed doors, as one of the suspects was a minor. After turning 18 during the trial, he would be identified as Heinrico (Turtle) Petersen. The five accused were charged with 10 counts that included murder, robbery and indecent assault.

The docket of the investigating officer, Captain Christo Mouton, contained a list of stolen items: a Swatch woman’s watch, a pair of white sunglasses, a gold belly chain, a Nokia cellphone, a Siemens cellphone, a Pioneer radio/tape and CD player, loudspeakers and amplifiers, two gold earrings, a Swatch man’s watch, a Bossi man’s leather wallet, a gold and diamond ring, an Absa bank card, a petrol card, an unknown amount of cash and a black Volkswagen valued at R30 000.

In February 2000, the Western Cape director of public prosecutions decided not to prosecute Van Schalkwyk. The man from Namaqualand was going to testify for the state against the other four accused in terms of Section 204 of the Criminal Procedure Act. If he could convince the court that he was telling the full truth, he would be indemnified against prosecution. Because of fears for his safety, he was placed in a witness protection programme.

In August 2000, the high-profile case was transferred to the High Court in Cape Town, where it was heard by Judge Deon van Zyl.