Witness may help Siam murder probe after dramatic arrest

A WITNESS from out of town who could help in the investigation into the murder of Siam Lee arrived in Durban yesterday afternoon, according to private investigator Brad Nathanson, who this week detained a suspect minutes before handing him over to police.

He would not comment further about the witness.

The suspect, believed to be a 29-year-old biochemist, is expected to appear in court on Monday.

Lee, 20, disappeared mysteriously before her charred remains where found more than a week ago in a sugar-cane plantation. Her murder has exposed a secret brothel in a posh Durban neighbourhood.

Initial appeals by her family described an “abduction” from the house by a spurned lover.

Now police are attempting to piece together Siam’s final hours.

The stone- walled cottage-style house where the suspect was apprehended could not look further away from the urban underworld.

Set among smallholdings in the Assagay area of Durban, it’s more easily associated with the nesting weaver birds in its garden trees than the libido-boost- ing pills, penis enlargement creams and other sexual devices found on the property

Information led private investigator Brad Nathanson and his team to the house on Wednesday, where they spotted the luxury car believed to have been used to abduct Siam.

“He (the suspect) hadn’t been home for two days, so we closed everything up. If he’d seen the garage open when he came home he would have disappeared,” said Shane Brits, operations manager at Brad Nathanson Investigations.

However, minutes after leaving they got word that the suspect was on his way home along the M13 freeway.

“We sped there and sat in surveillance.”

They apprehended him and took him to the ground as he appeared to be preparing to escape, said Nathanson.

Brits said he seemingly lived the life of a loner.

The luxury car – a Mercedes Vito – has been taken into police custody pending forensic investigations.

Meanwhile, word has come out about other efforts to track down Siam, which led members of the Mobi-Claw security company into Durban’s prostitution underworld.

Mike Myers of Mobi-Claw wrote on Facebook about highlevel Highway brothels and lowlevel hangouts in the flatland close to the beachfront.

“These women would go off with the client and return to ‘their’ spot within 15 minutes to an hour, not bathed or showered after a quick interlude in the client’s car, waiting for the next ‘John’ – and plenty of Johns there were,” he wrote.

They said they charged R100 for “oral pleasure” and “full house treatment” was an extra R50.

Myers called the Point, Pickering and Fisher quadrant “the most sordid”. “In the first block we entered, each flat was not much bigger than a parking bay. Some had six to eight inhabitants. Faeces, urine, syringes and needles were on the floor. One person was even lying, passed out, with a needle hanging out the arm.”

Further along, in a more upmarket block, two receptionists were on duty at the entrance.

“A night here costs R80. Some rooms are furnished, others are not and permanent residents furnish them themselves,” wrote Myers.

“We found a woman that everyone said was Siam, but it wasn’t. We could certainly see the similarity.”

Siam Lee