You be the Judge - How can Heinrich van Rooyen be guilty?
The First Chapter of Christian Botha's Book "Search for Truth"
In March 2008, Heinrich van Rooyen, a disc jockey at a Knysna nightclub,
was found guilty of murder in the first degree. The judge had decided that he
had taken the lives of Jessica Wheeler and Victoria Stadler and he was
consequently sentenced to two life terms in prison, without the possibility of
parole.
It is not often that Christian Botha’s views are at variance with those
of the judge in a case that he has investigated, and he has completed scores of
cases across the years. But in this situation he begged to differ. There was
the evidence before them, the statements of the witnesses and the findings of
the forensic laboratories: Judge Nathan Erasmus read it one way, Botha read it
in another. He and his team had also painstakingly collected and analysed
evidence and they drew their own conclusions. He is still convinced that the
wrong man was found guilty and was erroneously sentenced to a life of hell in a
high security, overcrowded, boring, HIV/AIDS- rife and sodomy-riddled South
African prison.
Both the trial judge and the Constitutional Court’s Judge Pius Langa, to
whom Heinrich van Rooyen appealed in February 2009, agreed that the man they
had in custody was guilty of the murders and that his sentence of 30 years
would have to be served. Van Rooyen went to jail as a 23-year-old, full of life
and joie de vivre. He will come out as a 53-year-old, jail-hardened,
bitter old man who has lost the major portion of his life.
Botha does not agree with the decision that found him guilty of murder.
After reading his findings and his conclusions and interpretations of them, and
those of the court during the case, you consider your own verdict.
It started with a phone call to Botha’s new, first-floor office in
Gonubie East London. He was sitting thinking, enjoying an early morning cup of
coffee on 14 October 2005 .
Spike was not allowed to be there as the building’s proprietors felt it was
unhygienic to have a dog in the office. Botha missed his company. This morning
Botha had his feet up on his office desk and was talking to his colleagues,
Daryl Els and Frans Molokome, who sat at their conference table before they
each tackled their piles of case files.
The telephone on Botha’s wooden desk rang shrilly. He had to answer it within
two rings or it would send the call straight to the fax machine. He swung his
legs down onto the floor and made a grab for the handset. He always laughed at
himself for doing this. He was sure that clients must think him over-eager and
rather desperate for work when he answered calls so quickly and breathlessly.
‘Christian Botha Private Investigations, CBPI,’ he now said. It was a man who
didn’t want to give his name at first. This often happened so it didn’t faze
Botha.
‘Have you heard about the murder of Jessica Wheeler?’ the caller asked.
‘No, should I have?’ Botha responded.
‘Her body was found in the grounds of St. George’s Main Street 6:30
yesterday morning. I am a businessman in
Knysna,’ the man continued, ‘I think that this murder will tarnish the image of
Knysna as a safe and exciting coastal holiday resort, especially now, with the
Christmas holiday season just around the corner, and many of us dependent on a good showing of tourists to
the town. This might frighten them off and make them change their minds about
coming here.
‘I want to know if you will take on a private investigation into her
death. I have heard good things about you in the investigation field.’
‘Why would you want me? Surely there will be a police investigation?’
‘Yes, there will be, but I still feel that you would be able to assist the
Knysna police in finding a speedy solution to this murder,’ the man said.
They talked about the matter for a minute or two and by this time the
caller seemed to feel more comfortable with Botha. He loosened up and gave him
his name, which he said was Kenneth Powell.
Botha was surprised
at the call and wondered at the man’s motive. Why did he, a businessman, want
Christian to take on the case so quickly after the murder? Didn’t he have any
faith in the Knysna Police? Did he know something else more pertinent
than the fear of the money-jingling tourists staying away? Did he have
another purpose, not yet revealed? Maybe he had a grudge against someone and
wanted that person implicated in Jessica’s death?
‘I fear the police might bungle the investigation,’ Powell told Botha.
‘They seem to bugger up everything they touch. I’d like you to get it over and
done with as soon as possible. Jessica was NOT A
FRIEND HE DID NOT KNOW HER a friend and I promised I’d be there if ever
she got into trouble, but I wasn’t. I didn’t answer my phone in the middle of
the night. I feel I owe her a speedy solution to this crime by finding the
perpetrator and having him charged, at the very least. I am familiar with your
reputation as a crime cracking PI who works quickly and thoroughly. I would
like you to take on this investigation for me.’
‘Ok, I understand your feelings,’ Christian said. ‘I will help you, but I will
have to compile a service contract agreement and settle on a price for a
preliminary investigation so that me and my team of three can go to Knysna and
begin our inquiry,’ Botha told him.
Powell agreed to the terms and conditions and a week later he transferred the
required funds into Botha’s business account; he also advised them where in
Knysna they could stay at a reasonable price. The investigation could begin.
Powell specifically wanted to ensure that all the evidence collected by
the police was coordinated correctly, and that the docket didn’t go missing. ‘I
want you to help because I have a sneaky feeling that the police will mess it
up,’ Powell said. ‘All the policemen in Knysna are running around investigating
and questioning everyone they can see. I feel there is no proper coordination
or planning to it, and this concerns me. I want you to make sure everything is
handled correctly.
‘This could be a disaster for the image of our town if it isn’t solved
soon. People will start thinking it isn’t safe to come here, and our businesses
will be very hard pressed to make profits. We rely on the tourism trade for our
living, and Christmas is our main tourist season,’ he said.
Botha was to hear this refrain over and over again in the coming months:
‘We don't want to scare the tourists away. They are our lifeblood.’ In fact, he
deduced that quite a lot of what happened with regard to the police case was
influenced by this desperation for a conviction. And the media pressure didn’t
help the case either.
Botha started his investigation while still in his office in East
London . He made contact with a Captain Mapuma of the Knysna
Police, the officer assigned to the murder, and told him that he had received a
mandate from a businessman in Knysna to assist in the investigation of the
Jessica Wheeler murder. Mapuma was very helpful and said he would be happy to
give Botha and his team all the cooperation they needed.
Botha and Els began by going through all the media reports they could find on
the case. The newspapers gave them a fair idea of the crime: Jessica Wheeler,
aged 18, a local girl who had been living with friends in Main Street St George’s Main
Street
The newspapers stated that she had been strangled and possibly sexually
assaulted. Jessica’s jeans were off her body and laid out neatly on top of her.
She was still wearing a black G-string and a black sleeveless blouse, with
straps over both shoulders. She was found lying on her back, with her takkies
placed beside her.
Jessica had no external, visible injuries but there was talk that she
had suffocated from soil entering her windpipe and oesophagus and this might
have meant that her head had been pushed down into the earth during the attack
on her. This had caused her death by suffocation, not strangulation.
That was all Botha’s team knew about the case, but he also deduced, as did Els,
that she must have died lying on her face, with her nose and mouth pressed into
the ground, or she would not have ingested all the sand which had suffocated
her. She must thus, at some time after her death, have been turned over onto
her back by the perpetrator, who then laid her clothes neatly over her body.
What kind of killer would be that precise?
When the money had been deposited into Botha’s bank account he and his
team of investigators packed their bags and left by road for Knysna. They
included Christian himself, Daryl Els, Frans Swele Molokome and Play Adams.
Botha felt that he needed this high powered team with him in order to work
cooperatively alongside the police so that between them they could solve the
case as quickly as possible. He worked with the police on all cases, and found
this was often a very successful collaboration for both teams.
Els had years of experience in the SA Police Service and the Scorpions
and Botha acknowledged that he had learned a great deal from him over the
years.
Frans, a Setswana, went along because he was able to expertly infiltrate
black areas and shebeens, where Botha would stand out like a snowman in a
coalfield. Frans speaks five black
languages, as well as fluent English and Afrikaans. Botha finds this helpful in
any investigation; quite apart from the fact that Frans has years of
experience. He had assisted the Brixton Murder and Robbery Squad in Johannesburg
Play Adams, a silver-tongued Coloured man from East
London , has an intimate knowledge of the townships of the area and
knows the people well. He has an excellent social manner and is good at
gleaning information from people without them even knowing they have given it
to him.
When Botha’s team arrived in Knysna they booked into their chalet and
then phoned Captain Mapuma. He was in Durban
‘You can carry on with your investigation and share your findings with the
SAPS,’ Captain du Toit said, ‘but you cannot see the docket and you cannot have
any police information on this case.’ He was not friendly or cooperative.
This was a sudden change in the police’s attitude. After being initially
very helpful, Christian now felt the police had cut their hands off. The most
important aspect of any murder case is to get information from the scene of the
crime, the autopsy report, the crime scene plan, evidence collected from the
scene, statements from any witnesses and so on. Not to have access to this
vital information was a major blow to the team. However, they didn’t let it stop
them in their tracks. After discussing it they decided to continue and to visit
the crime scene themselves, just to get an idea of the lay of land and to see
if there were any CCTV cameras from the garage across the road that faced in
the direction of the murder scene.
Next they employed a tactic which had often led to Botha gaining vital
clues from eyewitnesses: they looked at the windows of flats opposite Jessica’s
own flat and also opposite the churchyard, to see if there was any possible
chance of finding a witness or a ‘curtain twitcher’ there, someone who might
have been awoken during the night by an unusual noise or scream and who might,
just might, be able to cast some light on what had happened.
‘ Jessica was ostensibly murdered in the churchyard in the middle of
Knysna, along Main Road
That night they caucused in the chalet again, and shared their findings
over yet another of Els’s superb dinners. This time lamb chops, chips and eggs.
Later Botha decided to visit a good friend of Jessica’s in the town. He wanted
to go alone so as not to intimidate or frighten her, as she may have been if
his whole team had suddenly descended on her. He drove along the narrow Main Road
Jessica’s friend was Sandy Cox and she lived at her boyfriend’s house in
a suburb a short distance from the centre of town. Botha had phoned her to ask
if he could visit her and she had given him directions to the house. She
received Botha politely and pleasantly.
‘I want to see justice done for Jessica,’ she said to Botha, ‘and I will
do anything I can to assist you.’ She invited him in for coffee and
during their talk, with tears sliding down her cheeks, she told Botha that she
knew that Jessica had sent a blank SMS to a local businessman who owned a restaurant in town, in the early
hours of the Friday morning of the murder, at about 2: 30 . She also said that cigarette
‘stompies’ had been found at the scene
‘How do you know that?’ Botha asked her.
‘I heard this from a policeman friend who was on the scene after her
body was found early on the Friday morning,’ Sandy
‘What relationships did Jessica have? Did she have a boyfriend?’
‘No, not at this stage,’ said Sandy Cape Town Sandy
‘Jessica was upset with Koos,’ Sandy
‘What happened after Jessica’s body was found?’ Botha asked. ‘What did
her friends do?’
‘All her friends gathered together near the scene to comfort each
other,’ Sandy
‘What was the weather like here the day she was killed?’ Botha then
asked. ‘Was it sunny? Raining? Windy? What?’ He knew that weather could affect
evidence.
‘The morning of her murder was very hot,’ Sandy
‘About what time did you all go to the churchyard?’ Botha asked.
‘Probably about nine o’clock ,’
Sandy
Botha wondered why the constable would have been wearing long sleeves on
a hot day. Could it have been to hide possible injuries inflicted to his lower
arms by a young girl struggling for her life? Was the constable hiding his
arms? Why was he still in the previous night’s clothes? He made a mental
note to find out. Maybe he had tussled with Jessica and she had scratched his
arms? No clues would go without
scrutiny. He decided he had found out all he could from Sandy
After they had contemplated the case for a while the next morning, the
team set out to find any possible witnesses to the activity in the churchyard.
Botha and Els concentrated on the flats and buildings in the immediate vicinity
of the churchyard. They knocked on doors and asked questions to see if anyone
had seen or heard anything untoward that night, and particularly in the early
hours of the morning.
‘One woman Daryl and I interviewed, in a flat directly opposite the
churchyard, was a Mrs du Preez,’ Botha told Frans and Play later that night
over supper. ‘She said that she had been sleeping and had been woken in
the early hours of the morning, between 2:30
and 3:00 , by the sounds of
a couple arguing. She said she could hear the raised voices of a man and a
woman shouting at each other somewhere in the street below. She could make out
that the woman repeatedly said to the man that he had “betrayed her.” She said
it was quite cold, so she hadn’t got up to look out of her window and soon the
voices had stopped and she had gone back to sleep.’
The next day Botha and Els’s first visit was to businessman Andrew
Johnson, the acquaintance to whom Jessica had sent the blank SMS early in the
morning. They met at a coffee shop in town and asked him to tell them
what had happened that night and why Jessica had called him on her SMS messaging service and
not anyone else.
‘I had Jessica’s number saved on my regular cellphone but it was broken
and in for repairs. As a result I was using my own SIM
card in a borrowed phone. When my girlfriend and I woke up in the
morning and I turned the phone on, there was a blank SMS from Jessica,’ Johnson
explained. It had come from a number
which did not reveal the sender’s name and I didn’t recognise it.
‘Nonetheless, I saved the message and later that day, after the murder,
I checked the SMS again, and found that it had come from Jessica. A little
while ago, at a social event, Jessica, some of her friends and I had exchanged
our cellphone numbers and I had laughingly told the girls that if ever they
were in any danger, or faced any emergency, they should call me and I would
rush to their aid. I now fear that this is what happened, but I was asleep at
the time, didn’t know her message had come in, so couldn’t respond to her.
‘Maybe also it was because my name starts with an “A” and it was the
first number saved on her phone? Who knows what she did in her final moments.’
Botha felt that the SMS was important as it gave an indication of the
time line of events during the night on
which Jessica was murdered. Then he
mentioned something that really interested Botha.
‘Maybe you might like to interview a young car guard, 16-year-old,
Jaco Kiewiets, who was working nearby in Main Road
‘The inspector said he had interrogated Kiewiets but later brought him
back to me, saying there was nothing that he could tell him that had any
bearing on the murder case,’ Johnson said, adding that he felt concerned about
the answers given him by the police. ‘Kiewiets
had told me that on the night in question there had been a certain bald, white
man with a young white girl, (later found to be Jessica Wheeler,) at the murder
scene and that the two of them had stood together for some time, smoking
cigarettes. He also said that minutes before he saw them light up their
cigarettes another white man, whom he recognised, joined them for a while. As a
result, I assumed that one or both of these men must have been involved in the
murder.’
Botha knew this was important
information. His next action was to gather information about Jessica's
movements on that night, before she was attacked. The team established that she
had been at a local nightclub with friends from the time she had left her
waitressing job at about 23:00 until about 1:45 , when she left on her own to go back to
her flat in Main Road
Play and Frans were sent out to try to locate the car guard, Jaco
Kiewiets, and also to question all the other car guards they could find in that
part of Main Road
At the time she had been sharing her flat with a roommate, a man called
Jake Homburg. That night Jake had invited two girls from overseas, who had
arrived in Knysna from Durban
‘This impulsive behaviour wasn’t unusual for her,’ Jake said. ‘There is
a main entrance to the building, which was locked at the time. On many
occasions when people came to the flat, they phoned Jessica on her cellphone to
say that they were downstairs and to ask if she would go down and open the door
for them. Which she did. Only this time, she didn’t come back into the flat but
must have gone out with the person who phoned.’
At this time it dawned on Botha
and Els that the police captain they had come to see was probably still in Durban Durban
Frans and Play, in the meantime, had located the car guard, Jaco
Kiewiets, and had spoken to him. They felt he had quite a bit to say that was
pertinent to the case. They fetched Botha and Els who then also questioned
Kiewiets. What they learned was that Kiewiets had originally approached Johnson
with the information on the day after the murder. Johnson had handed him
over to Inspector Burger and he had then told the policeman his story. He listened, asked him to show him the bald
man, and then dismissed him.
Botha and Els asked Kiewiets to make a sworn affidavit of everything he
observed that night. He agreed readily.
‘Early in the evening on 13 October, I was working as a car guard in Main Road
‘Later I saw the bald guy talking to Jessica Wheeler in the churchyard.
He was smoking a cigarette with her. I was working opposite them, in the road
outside Lewis Stores, which was just across from the churchyard, so I saw them
clearly. I had walked towards the police station to check the clock, to see
what time it was, and I noticed them there. It was just after two o’clock in the morning. The
policeman was nowhere to be seen at the time, or at least, I didn’t see him.
Just the girl and the bald guy standing smoking and talking was all I saw as I
walked past.
‘Inspector Burger asked me about it, and I told him the same story as I
have told you,’ Kiewiets said. ‘He took me, in the back of a police car, to do
a “pointing out” and to identify the bald guy. Which I did. He was on a balcony
at his home, and was unaware of the “pointing out” at the time.
‘Who is that?’ Inspector Burger asked me. ‘Yes, that looks like the
man,’ I said, ‘the one who was driving the white Toyota Tazz. I am sure it is
him.’ Inspector Burger said the bald man’s name was Dick Doman.
Armed with this information, Botha and his team immediately set up a meeting
with the Southern Cape Commissioner of Police, at the Provincial Office in
George. They passed on the information they had
received from Kiewiets. The Commissioner was very helpful and
immediately set up a task team, appointing two detectives – Captain Coerecius
from Mossel Bay and Inspector Toks Nomdoe from Plettenberg Bay. Botha
and Els, along with the two policemen, were called to the Provincial Offices
and were all briefed together.
‘We questioned Kiewiets at
various times over a four day period,’ Botha said later to Frans, ‘and his
story never changed. We arranged for a lie detector test and he passed it with
flying colours. We engaged a private company to do the polygraph, not the
police. After exhaustive tests on the polygraph, we were convinced that
Kiewiets was telling the truth, despite his youth. Later we even took him to
the churchyard and had him point out exactly where he had seen what. Then we
compared his evidence with the police ‘map’ of the crime scene, and saw that
his observations had been completely accurate. He had definitely seen the bald
man, Dick Doman, with Jessica in the churchyard that night.’
Botha decided that the team had made a breakthrough in the case, and he
wanted to celebrate. They bought enough steak, chops and boerewors for a
slap-up braai at their chalet. A few litres of Coke and ginger ale were
also part of the meal: Christian doesn’t drink alcohol at all and while on the
job, neither does his team.
‘Later we organised a pointing
out ceremony, and I was able to take a lot of pictures of the relevant places,’
Botha explained. ‘We were also able to ascertain that Jessica and the man or
men she was with, had all smoked the same brand of cigarettes. Their stompies
had all been taken away, presumably by
the police. Later this proved to be the case, but no forensic tests were ever
done on them, to see who had smoked them, as far as I can ascertain. This could
have been vital evidence, along with the casts of their footprints, to prove
that Heinie had not been in the churchyard with Jessica. But it never came up
as the evidence was ‘lost’ or spoiled by all the constables stomping over the
shoe prints at the scene at the time.
On 9 November Botha
and his team found out that Stones, the nightclub where Jessica had been
dancing with a disc jockey called Heinie, had a closed circuit TV system which
filmed the dancers and patrons at the club, as well as all the exits and
entrances, every night. They wondered if these tapes would reveal anything of
interest to the inquiry, so they decided to go and see about it.
When they arrived they questioned the disc jockey, DJ Heinrich van
Rooyen, known as Heinie, a tall and very
good looking young man with thick, wavy hair and a sophisticated, well groomed
style. They noticed he was friendly to everyone and had open, honest, and
cheerful manners. He also laughed often.
‘The tapes from our system have already been given to the police,’
Heinie told them, but he said he was willing to try to make a copy on a disc
for Botha from the computer’s hard drive. He tried, but he was unable to do it
because he didn’t fully understand the
computer’s system. He advised Botha to contact his boss, who was away at the
time, the following day.
Remarkably, despite what allegedly transpired later, these tapes never
surfaced again, not even in the court case which was so critical to Heinie’s
future. They could have proved that what he had said about going out and coming
in again with Jessica during the evening was true.
The police said they ‘couldn’t find them’ and that they had inexplicably
‘gone missing’. The missing tapes failed to become an issue with the
court, perhaps to Heinie’s detriment: they might have saved him from a lifetime
in jail.
Botha and Els didn’t think at the time that it would be necessary to
get copies of the tapes for the police
because they had already established an eye witness, Kiewiets, who had seen
Jessica and Dick Doman in the churchyard at around 2:00 on the night of the
murder. According to Kiewiets’ affidavit, they were talking, not arguing, in
the spot that was later to become the murder scene.
At no time did Botha or Els think that Heinie van Rooyen might have been
a suspect in the case. He hadn’t ever seemed nervous, shifty or tense to them.
Quite the opposite. Any emotions indicative of fear or culpability, sliding
eyes which wouldn’t meet theirs, a sweaty upper lip or shaky hands, might have
alerted them to his possible involvement, but they picked up none of this in
his demeanour. He certainly displayed no signs whatsoever of being a guilty man
with an awful secret.
‘We spent a considerable period of time with him,’ Botha said, ‘and we
had a very frank and wide ranging discussion with him. He seemed at ease, happy
and confident.
‘Did you find Jessica sexually attractive?’ Els had asked him bluntly at
one point during the course of their discussions.
‘Yes, I did. She was a lovely girl,’ van Rooyen had told him.
‘Did you have sex with her at any time?’
Van Rooyen was rather shy about it, but he told Botha and Els that at
some time during the evening, when everyone was rocking in the nightclub, he
and Jessica had slipped out into the club’s nearby parking lot, and in a deep
shadow had enjoyed a ‘quickie’. It was somewhere between midnight and 00:35 . They had stood up against the wall and she put her
arms around him, under his shirt as she hugged him. Maybe she had even
scratched his back a little in a heightened moment of passion. Some girls do.
His back was never examined. Afterwards Heinrich went back to Stones and she
went to Zanzibar
Christian, Daryl and Heinie, all laughed about it at the time and
thought Heinie was a lucky man.
It was obvious to
them that Heinie was quite a ladies’ man and rather fancied himself with the
white girls. This was a fact later picked up by the media once the DJ was
officially accused of the crime. He was named a Don Juan and a Casanova . But
that did not make him a killer.
‘Sometime during the evening,’ the DJ said, ‘after having returned
to Stones, Jessica left Stones with a female friend and again went across to
the Zanzibar Zanzibar
By this time the police had an interest in van Rooyen and before long
they took him in for questioning. He was soon released for lack of evidence
linking him to the murder. He did not tell them that he had had sex with
Jessica during the evening that she was killed. He felt, at the time,
that his sex life and that of Jessica, was private.
How wrong he would be. Little did he know this would later be used
against him in a most devastating way.
In addition to Heinie van Rooyen, the policeman Koos Roets and his bald
friend, Dick Doman, were also called into the police station by Inspector
Burger for questioning after the car guard, Kiewiets, had given his affidavit
and placed them at the scene of the crime on that fateful night. Botha and Els
were both invited to sit in on the interviews and they accepted.
‘These two suspects were very different indeed from our friendly, sunny
DJ,’ Botha said later to Frans and Play, ‘they were both fidgety and seemed
panicky, and neither of them could look us straight in the eye. Doman smoked
about thirty cigarettes in as many minutes, while his upper lip dripped sweat
and his hands shook. The young constable was trembling visibly, so much so that
he couldn’t keep his hands still. Roets fidgeted with everything – his clothes, his sleeves, his hands, his face
– and his lips quivered. He could hardly answer any questions, his voice was
soft and weak. He hesitated before
answering the questions. He seemed so upset that he wrung his hands and cried
several times. Tears ran down his cheeks and sobs escaped his body.
‘To me they both looked nervous, jittery and quite frankly, guilty,’
Botha told Frans and Play. ‘They also lied, because, in answer to the question
about what they had done after they had had the argument in the street with
Marie, where Doman had thrown her handbag into the car and they had all driven
off, he said they had gone home and had not come back into town again. That was
a complete fabrication, and was in direct contrast to the eye witness report
given by the car guard, Kiewiets who said the two men, the bald guy and the
young constable, had both come back to town and parked the car. The
police didn’t ask them about this discrepancy. They were released and told to
be on their way.
Botha and Els were astounded, as were Frans and Play. They were convince
that Kiewiets was a reliable witness and had seen what he had said he had seen
and placed these two men squarely at the murder scene on the night Jessica was
killed.
After this police interview, Botha decided that they had finished their
preliminary investigation, fulfilled their brief, and according to their
investigations, found the alleged suspects as witnessed by the car guard. They
were satisfied that the killer or killers had been identified to the police.
Their job was done. The rest was now up to the police and the court when they
tried the suspect/s.
Christian called Kenneth Powell, the client who had hired him and his
team, and reported all their findings to him.
Powell was satisfied. He too thought that was the end of the matter,
short of the actual court case.
For Botha and his team was now time to go home. They drove back to East London , taking turns at the wheel.
Once back in the office they
produced their written report for businessman Powell, as was customary. They
always gave the clients a hard copy of their findings and specifically noted
down what the car guard, Kiewiets, the DJ, Heinie van Rooyen, and others had
told them.
Before they left, however,
with Botha believing firmly that working closely with the police was the only
way to go, handed all the team’s information over the SAPS in Knysna, satisfied
that they had done all they could to help identify Jessica’s probable killer or
killers. They expected that Dick Doman and Koos Roets would be investigated
further.
Once more they were wrong.
Neither of these men was ever apprehended as possible suspects, or
charged by the police, and neither had any DNA
samples taken from them, not even to see if it was their saliva, along with
Jessica’s, that was found on the stompies
picked up by the inspectors at the murder scene on the day.
Botha and Els were amazed at this turn of events. To them it had seems
the two cronies lied about everything. They felt that definitely one, or
possibly both of them, were involved in
Jessica’s death. They felt that for some reason not known to them, there
was some kind of a cover-up going on here. Who is being protected, they asked
themselves. And why? Why did the police not
seem not to believe the eye witness, Kiewiets. Was it because he was so
young, only 16, held a lowly job, and was a coloured? Would he have been better
believed if he had been 16, white, and a farmer’s son? Was this some kind or
racism, or was there something else behind it, something they didn’t know
about?
Botha was sure the truth would come out somewhere down the line,
especially in court. Truth would always out, wouldn’t it.
How wrong he would be on this score too, but he didn’t know it at the
time.
Botha didn’t count on top Police Services Director X* being put in
charge of the investigation, and the local police being taken off it. For Botha
and Els this was the second time in as many months that their detective work
had been pitted against that of Director X*. They had also worked on the Inge
Lotz murder case in Stellenbosch in which Fred van der Vyver had been
wrongfully arrested and charged with her murder. Director X* had led the
investigation into that girl’s death, a case for which he was highly criticized
by the High Court judge. In the Lotz trial much of the evidence the
police presented to the court was found to be flawed or deliberately planted.
The alleged suspect they put on trial, Fred van der Vyver, was eventually
exonerated and found not guilty. Fortunately his parents were able to fund his
cripplingly expensive court case to see that justice was done for their son. He
had been at work all day and was nowhere near the scene of the crime, although
he was the one accused of killing his girlfriend. So suspect was the material
presented that his parents had flown in forensic and other experts from the
United States to verify or discredit the evidence presented to the court by
Director X*.
Ultimately Fred was found not guilty.
With Director X* now in the driver’s seat again, Botha was afraid this
sort of thing might happen here too. The
wrong suspect could be taken into custody in the rush to find a culprit.
Evidence could be planted or wrongly interpreted, or even deliberately
falsified. Certainly the
Knysna townspeople wanted a convicted criminal, and fast, before the rumour of
a serial killer ruined their businesses.
In addition, racism also seemed
to have raised its ugly head and played a part. Heinie van Rooyen was a
coloured man; the townspeople, the Judge and Director X* were white. Botha and
Els feared Heinie might be condemned by this fact alone, before his trial had
even begun. They dreaded the thought.
On 14 November 2005 ,
back in East London once more, Botha and Els
read in the newspapers that another young girl, Victoria Stadler, had been
murdered in Knysna. She had been missing for five days and had been killed on
the same night that they had interviewed the DJ, Heinie van Rooyen. She was
allegedly killed during the early hours of Thursday, 10 November, 2005 .
The team followed the case through the newspapers but their interest was
purely professional and objective. Nobody hired them to do any further
sleuthing but all this changed for them when
Heinrich van Rooyen was unexpectedly arrested and charged with the
murders of both Victoria Stadler and Jessica Wheeler.
The police alleged in the media that
‘the DJ, Heinrich van Rooyen was the last person to have been seen with
both of the victims just before their deaths.’
‘This cannot be true,’ Christian exclaimed to Daryl, who was
equally shocked. Van Rooyen was the least likely suspect. Sure, he was sexy,
liked the girls and was flattered by the attention they gave him. But a
murderer? No! He simply adored girls too much to hurt them. It seemed a
preposterous allegation to Botha and Els. They had interviewed him in depth;
checked out his personality; watched him at the disco where he worked as the
DJ; seen the dozens of young women flocking round him; seen how tenderly and
gently he treated them; they simply couldn’t credit the allegation that he
might be a cold-blooded killer. It didn’t seem possible.
He was promiscuous – yes. A
glamour boy – yes. A murderer – no, not
likely.
‘It is unbelievable,’ Botha said
to Els and Frans. He was aghast. ‘And it’s not true that he was the last person
to be seen by witnesses with both of the girls. We know for a fact that
Kiewiets had seen Doman and Roets in the churchyard with Jessica. So had the
bread truck driver Mr. Minnie. Neither of them mentioned Heinie being on the
scene at the time.’
The office went quiet as each of the men gave the arrest deep thought.
Then Botha broke the silence. ‘We should phone Captain Coerecius.’ He reached
for the phone and dialled. He was soon put through.
‘What on earth is going on there?’ Botha asked, ‘Why have you taken the
DJ into custody? Surely you can’t think he is the perpetrator?’
His reply was simple. ‘I am no longer involved in the investigation and
the task team is no longer investigating these murders. It has now all been
handed over to Police Director X*. We believe he was given the case directly by
Commissioner Petros, who is the Western Cape Commissioner of Police based in Cape Town
Botha’s heart contracted at the news.
He didn’t trust this police director at all. If Director X* and his team
could construct evidence against van der Vyver, to the point even of lifting a
fingerprint on a round water glass and relocating it to a flat DVD cover, to ‘prove’ that Fred was there, when he
wasn’t, what might Director X* and his team do to construct their own scenario
of ‘a serial on the loose’ with their
remanded in custody suspect, Heinrich van Rooyen?
Botha and Els knew that the Knysna municipality and the
Knysna residents were desperate to find a killer and put him behind bars, so
that the town could regain its pristine reputation as a safe and secure holiday
venue. They didn’t want a serial killer wandering around. In fact, nobody did,
least of all Botha and Els. To blame an innocent person, however, and be
involved in a miscarriage of justice as
they had been in Fred van der Vyver’s case, was totally unacceptable. Botha and
Els were not pointing any fingers here, but they had their reservations.
Botha contacted Heinrich van Rooyen’s father, Izak, and explained to him
that his team had done the preliminary investigation into Jessica Wheeler’s
case, and that they had found that other possible suspects had been pointed out
by a witness. Consequently they didn’t believe that Heinrich could have done
it. They couldn’t disclose anything
about Victoria
Heinrich’s father was interested in hiring their services. Botha’s team
was assembled once more and they headed back to Knysna, having been paid a
retainer by van Rooyen’s attorney, Daan Derckson, for a preliminary
investigation into Victoria Stadler’s murder. While on the road they discussed
the matter and decided it would be a good move to try to strengthen the
evidence of the young car guard, and in
this way satisfy themselves that their preliminary findings in that case were
correct. They all believed that the DJ was not involved in any way.
In the meantime, there had been another murder in Knysna: this time it
was a man, Peter McHelm, who had been strangled near the Knoetzie Forest
Since the bodies of
both McHelm and Stadler were found in
the same vicinity, they thought it was
possible that the same person or persons had murdered them both. They felt
it was most likely not the same
perpetrator who had killed Jessica in the churchyard a month before. They knew
for sure that it could not have been Heinie van Rooyen who had killed
McHelm that afternoon because his alibi was rock solid. They were also aware that forensic evidence
had been taken at the two girls’ crime scenes though they had no knowledge of
the outcome of those tests. They did not know whether the two girls had been
sexually abused. Only time and forensic science would tell.
On arrival in Knysna Botha and Els interviewed members of the charming
and gracious van Rooyen family in their home in Hornlee, just outside the town.
Heinie lived with his parents, Izak and Rebecca van Rooyen, his common law wife
of five years, Nadia Nel, and their two children, a four-year-old and a baby of
eight months.
From their discussions with the family they learned that one of the
first policemen on the scene of Jessica Wheeler’s murder in the churchyard was
a dog handler with more than 20 years’ service in the police force, Inspector Danie
Petersen. The policeman had told the
family that on arrival at the scene where Jessica’s body had been found, he had
noticed three sets of shoe prints in what he referred to as the ‘struggle zone’
in the churchyard. One of these prints matched Jessica’s shoes; another was an imprint of a common takkie, while the
third was a sole print of a Hi-Tech hiking boot.
Botha and Els immediately decided to meet with Inspector Danie
Petersen.
‘Yes,’ he confirmed, ‘I did see three sets of foot prints in the dirt at
the edge of the garden where Jessica must have been attacked One set was made
by Jessica’s shoes, which had been neatly placed beside her body, so I knew the
prints were definitely hers, and those of a pair of ordinary men’s takkies, and
those made by a pair of men’s Hi-Tech
hiking boots.
Petersen added that, ‘When police
officials visited the crime scene, they discovered that a patch of garden near
the place where her body had lain, had been disturbed. On closer examination,
they determined that it was in all likelihood the exact spot where Jessica had
been attacked and her head pushed down into the sand, face forwards. She had
then inhaled the soil which clogged her nostrils and airway, resulting in
suffocation and death.
‘Nothing had been stolen from her: she still wore her rings, earrings
and her necklace, and her cellphone was next to her.’
The three sets of footprints had been clearly visible when he arrived at the
scene, Petersen confirmed. He had asked a detective to call for Inspector
Hector from George to come and ‘lift’ the shoe prints. Meanwhile Petersen
placed some sticks around them in a vain attempt to stop the police constables
who arrived at the scene, from trampling them.
‘If lifted by means of plaster casts, these three sets of footprints
would have played a vital role in linking the two male suspects, as identified
by the car guard, to the scene of the crime,’ Inspector Petersen explained to
Botha and Els. The PIs wondered if any detailed photographs of the shoe
prints, that might indicate size and dimension and type of shoes, had been
taken.
‘No, unfortunately not,‘ Petersen said. ‘I didn’t have a camera with me, or a
cellphone. Unfortunately when I returned about an hour and a half later, I saw
swarms of people all over the yard, and the sticks I had put in to protect the
prints, had been flattened. I checked and saw they had been obliterated by
other people’s boots and shoes. I was very disappointed to find that Inspector
Hector was still on his way. By the time he arrived the prints had vanished.’
Petersen was visibly upset by this fact.
Botha and Els shook their heads
in disbelief at this news. How could policemen be so incompetent as to trample
on vital evidence at a crime scene? In this case, though, a small element
of suspicion arose in Christian’s mind. He wondered if this action was the
result of ignorance and lack of training on behalf of the constables, or if it
was a deliberate attempt to eliminate incriminatory clues? Perhaps it had been
a calculated attempt at a cover-up? Botha had discovered that Doman was dating
Inspector Burger’s niece, Marie. Could this have been a factor to protect Doman
and police constable Roets.
Doman’s criminal record showed that his previous girlfriend had
registered a case of domestic violence against him, but he was found not guilty
and was acquitted. Doman had also, according to his records, previously been
charged with murder, but the case had been withdrawn against him as he had
turned a ‘204 State Witness.’ For
that he had received amnesty from prosecution for his information in the case.
If he had killed once, and it was on record, even though he had been let
off scot free, could he possibly have killed again, Botha speculated. This led
him to explain later to Frans and Play that, ‘from what I have found out I am
under the impression that Doman, who was the last person the car guard saw with
Jessica in the churchyard that night, has some violent tendencies.
This was later confirmed by people who knew Doman. Colleagues who spoke to Botha at Doman’s place of work
described him as having a “moerse short temper,’ and not a man whom they
would easily like to cross.
Botha recalled that on the day
after the murder of Jessica, an Afrikaans newspaper, Die Burger, had
printed a picture of her friends sitting together at the crime scene. In one of
the photographs Koos Roets had his one leg crossed over the other and his
Hi-Tech hiking boot was clearly visible. He now wondered if Doman was in
possession of an ordinary pair of canvas shoes, takkies, or if van Rooyen had a
pair as described by Petersen, in his shoe cupboard?
Botha decided to first check if Heinie van Rooyen owned either of the two types
of shoes, a Hi-tech hiking boot or a pair of canvas takkies. Christian
approached van Rooyen’s mother, Rebecca, who helped him to gather all the shoes
her son possessed. There were no Hi-tech’s and no canvas takkies in his
cupboards. She explained that he preferred leather-soled shoes which were easy
to dance in, and which facilitated his job as a DJ.
Botha then visited
the prison where Heinie was incarcerated, and
checked all the shoes Heinie had with him. He found there were no
matches there either. Heinie told Christian he had never owned a pair of
Hi-tech hiking boots and usually preferred leather slip-ons which were easy to
boogie in.
Christian photographed the soles of all the shoes Heinie owned, and a few more
besides. He planned to do a ‘line-up identification parade’ of the soles with
Inspector Petersen. He pasted them all into a photograph album, interspersed
with the soles of the different shoes. He arranged for a former member of the
Scorpions, who was not in any way involved with the case, to conduct this
unusual ID parade with Inspector Peterson. Peter Radue, from East
London , was asked to do the honours.
‘Please identify the three pairs of shoe prints you saw in the earth at
the crime scene,’ Radue asked Inspector Petersen. The Inspector bent to the
task and looked intently at all the shoes in the album line-up.
‘None of them is here,’ he said eventually, ‘I don't recognise any of
the soles of these shoes. These were not at the crime scene.’
Botha was elated. The Inspector did not identify any of van
Rooyen’s shoes as those which he had seen at the death scene. Unfortunately,
Botha knew that despite the Inspector’s confidence in what he had, or had not
seen, this evidence could not be tested in a court of law. No moulds had been
taken of the shoeprints at the scene and no pictures had been taken of them
either. But he felt that Petersen’s testimony completely exonerated Heinie of
being in the scuffle that night. Petersen, as an inspector, would surely have
credibility as a witness? It was not to be, as he had no moulds or pictures as
proof.
‘In my role as a uniformed policeman and dog handler, I am not issued
with a detective’s camera,’ Petersen explained. ‘I rely on the Crime Scene
Manager to do that. It is what is expected of him or her, and it is what they
are trained for. But unfortunately on this day, it didn’t happen. Nobody took
any pictures or made any casts of the shoe prints in the garden where I had
marked the spot with the sticks.’
Botha often wished that the South African police had the kind of
equipment with which American crime scene detectives are routinely issued: a
spray can of quick drying wax to set the foot or tyre print sharply in the
sand, and a small bag of dental cement to pour into the mould to set it ‘in
stone’. This enables detectives to immediately lift any suspect prints. Maybe
the determined and energetic new police chief, Beke Cele, will make it happen,
along with better training in crime scene work. Botha certainly hopes so.
But now, back to the second girl’s death, of which Heinie also stood
accused. They went over the facts again. Her body had only been discovered five
days after she had disappeared. This was four days after the body of the other
murder victim, Peter McHelm, was found about 900 metres from where her body had
lain in same vicinity in the Knoetzie
Forest
The police estimated that he had died on the
day before he was found. This would mean that both Stadler and McHelm
were murdered within the same 24 hour period. Both bodies had been hidden under
bushes, indicating a similar modus operandi and suggested to Botha and
Els that both Stadler and McHelm had been murdered by the same individual or
individuals.
They were very interested in the possible link between the two cases,
that of McHelm and Stadler. Both were different from Jessica’s murder. She had
been suffocated. McHelm was strangled. Victoria
The police took forensic evidence from Jessica’s body, and later from
McHelm and Victoria’s. They sent it away
for analysis. One of the inspectors made a video recording of the murder scene
with Victoria
Two thousand kilometres away in Makhado, formerly Louis Trichardt,
Victoria Stadler’s mother, Hannetjie Stadler, quietly loaded her suitcases onto
a bakkie for a drive to Knysna. She must bring her child back with her, she
murmured to herself. She had never felt
comfortable with her on her own in Knysna and had never understood why Victoria
‘Nee! Dis nie so nie!’ (No! It’s not on!) Victoria
Hannetjie told the police later that she ‘didn’t think too much of the message.
I thought that Victoria was probably at
work, dealing with a difficult customer, and had sent the message by accident.
She didn’t sound scared or panicky. I
didn’t have any premonitions that my daughter might be in any kind of
trouble. I thought that maybe Vicky had phoned because she needed a bit of cash
for food or airtime, so I put some money into her bank account the next day.’
Later that same day
she decided she might as well drive from her home to visit her only child to
see if she could perhaps persuade her to come home.
Apart from anything else, Vicky’s mom wanted to tell her about the death of her
favourite horse. Vicky was a great animal lover, and had a number of dogs as
well as her beloved mare at home. She would cry for days if she knew that this special
animal had died in her absence and Hannetjie didn’t want her to hear the news
over the phone. She lived on a plot with 62 of Victoria
It would be a two day journey but if she brought her daughter back with her she
would need to use the bakkie rather than the car, to transport all her luggage.
Her mom loaded Victoria
During her drive to the Eastern Cape Mossel Bay
‘I was thinking that I was going
down to find her and take her back home with me,’ Hannetjie told Lauren
Cohen, a reporter from The Cape Argus, ‘that’s why I took the
bakkie. But that didn’t happen.’ She was badly shocked when she arrived
in Knysna, to find that her precious daughter had been brutally murdered
several days before. ‘She was such a special girl,’ Hannetjie told the
reporter. ‘She spoke to me every day of
my life, on the phone. We laughed a lot, she was very funny, the light of my
life. I have so many sweet memories of her. I can hardly believe this has
happened.’
The Wheeler family, Jessica’s parents, Kevin and Dusty Wheeler, phoned
Hannetjie Stadler to offer her their condolences. They too, had cruelly lost
their daughter in a Knysna murder and were devastated by her death. Hannetjie
was shown a picture of their daughter, Jessica and was immediately struck by
the similarity in appearance between the two girls.
‘When I first saw the picture of Jessica I thought she was my own child, but
then realised this girl had freckles. They looked like sisters.’
The media began to speculate that there was a ‘serial killer’ on the loose in
Knysna. By implication young girls who frequented discos alone at night were
all at risk.
Botha and Els noted other similarities: they were both working as waitresses,
they were both brunettes, they loved to dance, they were night owls and they
frequented both the Stones and the Zanzibar
The emotional temperature in the sleepy, formerly safe and apparently sound
little coastal holiday village began to rise. People became afraid. The town’s
advertisers and promoters were desperate for a solution before tourism to the
village diminished or anyone else was killed. The pressure to find a killer
escalated. Everyone wanted a solution, and fast.
So too, did the police.
The blow of her
daughter’s death at only 20, was too much for Hannetjie Stadler. She
disappeared at once into a seaside retreat to try to come to terms with this
hideous loss of her only, beloved child. Such a senseless crime.
Hannetjie spent hours staring at the sea, silent and speechless. Quite
naturally she was not interested in speaking to the media, or giving any
interviews.
A week later, when she emerged from her retreat, she talked of the voicemail
message she had received from her daughter in the middle of the night. She said
that she thought the call had probably been made inadvertently while her
daughter was fighting off her assailant. She simply had not realised it. Victoria
Once she realised that the Knysna police were handling the case, Hannetjie
Stadler contacted a Pretoria Victoria
This put a match to the kindling and the whispers of a possible ‘serial killer’
began catch fire and do the rounds. Soon it was a raging bush blaze. The press
latched onto this sensational bit of pure speculation. Front pages were splashed
with it. The killer had to be found at all costs, and
soon! The grieving parents, of course, were also eager to
identify a suspect, but for another
reason.
‘I wanted to find my daughter’s murderer as quickly as possible,’ Hannetjie
said to Lauren Cohen. ‘I am going to go home to Makhado but I want to return to
Knysna if a suspect is found and charged. I want to see the eyes of the guy who
took the life of my child. I am confident that the private investigator that I
hired from Pretoria
Up to that time the police’s investigations had drawn a blank. Heinrich van Rooyen had been held for
questioning but had been released due to lack of evidence linking him to the
murders. He had allegedly been seen with both of the girls, dancing in the
Zanzibar Club on the night each of them was murdered. He had asked Victoria Victoria
Izak van Rooyen, Heinie’s father, is highly respected in his community and
occupation, as is his shop clerk wife, Rebecca. He is the retired former head
of Correctional Services in Knysna, and Heinrich is the third of their four
children. According to Izak, his children were brought up knowing right from
wrong, and they knew how bad it was to land up in jail. None of them doubted his
word for a minute and all seemed to tread the straight and narrow. They never
did drugs or joined any gangs, and they had a built-in horror of becoming
involved in crime and going to jail. It would be the worst thing that could
happen to them.
Heinrich’s job as a DJ meant that dozens of young girls admired him and flung
themselves at him and now and then he indulged in a bit of quick fornication
with one or other of them. Nothing much to worry about in a land of wholesale
polygamy and modern cultural norm of babies before wedlock. Izak told Christian that none of Heinie’s
sexual relationships lasted very long since he was very attached to Nadia and
their two children, and most of the girls he had made love to went on to become
good friends. He loved women with a passion and was a real stud.
This came as no surprise to Christian and Daryl. It was obvious to them that
Heinie was indeed a ladies’ man and at the peak of his powers. He was a
tall, good looking, virile and vigorous man. They had seen for themselves how
girls of all colours, but particularly white girls, crowded around him,
clamouring for his attention.
According to journalist Ella Smook of The Cape Argus, one of his school
friends reported that ‘he had been a bright student who always battled another
friend for the top spot in class’. She
echoed reports that ‘he had a preference for white girls’ and said that even at
school, he had shunned ‘our (coloured) nation’. He had rarely missed a day of
school at Fraaisig Primary, where Ella had been in his class, or at Knysna Secondary
School
Christian and Daryl could see that to young, protected, naïve white girls like
Jessica and Victoria, without any real experience of life, the DJ was glamour
personified. He had the moves and he had the music – and then some. Young girls
couldn’t get enough of him. He loved the adoration and was friendly and
charming to everyone.
Botha and Els set out to find out what had happened to Victoria Stadler after
she had dropped off Heinrich van Rooyen that night. They didn’t doubt that the
two of them had parked the car and
‘smooched a bit’ before he left the car and walked home. But what had she done,
or what had happened to her after he left, they needed to find out.
At that time the police were still waiting for the forensic evidence in both
the girls’ murder cases. When the results of those tests came back, perhaps
there would be a breakthrough. It was possible that some evidence which would
point to a perpetrator would be found on their bodies. They could but wait and
see.
For now, however,
what they did confirm was that the investigation into Victoria Stadler’s murder
had begun when, on the morning of 10 November, at 5:30 , the Forestry Department of Knysna
contacted the police to tell them that they had discovered a burning vehicle on
a side road off the main Knoetzie road into the forest. They requested that the
police come out immediately since they didn’t know where the driver and / or
passengers were. The car was a white VW Golf – which was later identified as
Stadler’s.
When, by 8:00 , the
police had still not arrived, the Forestry Department phoned them again.
Shortly after 9:00 an
Inspector Appels of the SA Police Service in Knysna arrived at the scene of the
burned out vehicle. He was the first member of the police to do so – three
hours after the Forestry Department’s first phone call.
After Inspector
Appels had looked around a bit at the ruined vehicle, he kicked the sand in the
road once or twice with his boot, and he left the scene. He took no photos nor
any notes. He didn’t stray into the forest to look for a driver or any
passengers who might have been there, alive, injured or dead. He did not string
any ‘crime scene’ tape around the wreck. No arrangements were made for the
vehicle to be taken into police custody. He made no effort to find the driver,
or identify the owner, or establish why the vehicle had caught fire. The scene
and the immediate vicinity were never searched.
On 15 November, 2005, a Tuesday, Izak Swarts, another Hornlee resident, who
had read in the papers that a young girl and her vehicle had been reported
missing, contacted the Knysna police and told them he had seen a burned out VW
Golf off the main road to Knoetzie. This was, of course, the car that Inspector
Appels had checked and then left
unattended for almost a week.
It was only when a different contingent of the police service visited the scene
for the second time five days later that they established that the vehicle had
belonged to the missing Victoria Stadler.
The scene was now
belatedly cordoned off and searched. Her naked body was found less than 100
metres away from the burned car. Because it had rained the whole week she was
lying out in the forest, and it had been very hot and humid, her corpse was so
badly decomposed that valuable evidence was contaminated by the elements and
lost.
Botha explained later that the police could see she had been strangled
and then stabbed twice in the neck. Her rings and all her jewellery had been
stolen from her body. She was also badly burned, presumably in her blazing car.
The fact that she was found so far from her burning car could have indicated
that she was dragged to the spot where her body was eventually found. The
police and Botha didn’t know for sure. Because of the constant rain that week,
no footprints or drag marks from her heels could be seen in the sand of the
road.
Although Victoria
‘Why had the police not found all her clothing on the day they found her body,
even though they had a sniffer dog and a helicopter and a hoard of policemen
all looking for her in the forest,’ Izak van Rooyen asked Botha bitterly after
Heinie was apprehended for her murder. ‘They must have been blind to have
missed her garments only five metres away, when they were so close to where her
body was lying.
‘Or, more plausibly
still,’ Izak asked Botha, ‘ had her clothes, in fact, not been there at the
time. Had they been taken from the forest before
Inspector Appels came onto the scene, kept dry for all those days, then been
planted there later on. DNA and
semen can only be lifted off dry, unfolded clothing and materials. But if her
clothes had been lying out in rain and heat of Knysna in the forest all
that week, all forensic material would have biodegraded after nine days in the
wet bushes. Had somebody possibly been there before Inspector Appels and taken
her clothing away?’ Izak speculated in his grief.
‘Maybe Appels knew
what was going on, and that influenced his lacklustre performance when he
allegedly ‘first’ viewed the vehicle. Maybe he had been instructed not to be
too enthusiastic at the scene of the burned out car.
Izak van Rooyen is completely
cut up about his son’s incarceration and still does not believe that Heinie
killed anyone, let alone two beautiful young girls who adored him as their hero
to the extent of both having unprotected sex with him in a consensual manner.
Christian knew that the rain and humidity would have affected DNA samples that were taken from Victoria Cape Town
‘If
her jeans were dry and unfolded and only subjected to heat, DNA in sperm could survive,’ the scientist told
him, ‘but if it was subjected to rain in a forest for nine days, the sperm
would spoil and mould would grow on it. No unspoiled sperm could be lifted from
clothes in this condition, and no DNA
would be found.’
Botha knew that the
police would do all they could to lift forensic material off Jessica’s
belatedly located jeans. Maybe they would be successful and maybe they
wouldn’t. He hoped any sound DNA
lifted off them would give them all some definite pointers which might lead to
her killer/s being identified.
Little did Botha know
that the DNA eventually sent to
the forensic laboratory from Victoria
Botha and his team next went on the hunt for anyone who could possibly
have seen Victoria Stadler on the day she was murdered. During this search they
questioned a number of people, including petrol pump attendants, asking them
whether they had seen anything at all that might possibly help to find the
killers.
At one of the garages, situated at the entrance to Hornlee, they found a petrol
jockey called Anna-Clara Klassens. She was prepared to give a sworn statement
about what she had seen, so Botha took her to an attorney’s office.
‘I am an adult person,’ she wrote, ‘sober and in my right mind. My ID
number is 550505 555 0155 and I live locally. I am currently working at the
Hornlee Service Station, Hornlee, Knysna, phone number 555 123 555,
where I am a cashier.
‘On the weekend that Victoria Stadler went missing, I was questioned by two
members of the Knysna police services about her disappearance. I gave them the
information I am about to divulge in full. I told them verbally what I had seen
but they didn’t take any notes. They said that they would come to see me at
another time and take a written statement from me.
‘To date I have not seen the two policemen again, and they have not come to
take my statement which I now make
voluntarily under oath to Mr. Els, who has identified himself to me.
‘On 9 November 2005 ,
I reported for service at the Hornlee Service Station at 18:00 . I was due to work a 12 hour shift until 6:00 on the morning of 10 November,
when I would go off duty.
‘Two black men worked with me on night shift on that particular evening. One of
their names is Samuel and I cannot now precisely remember the name of the other
black man.
‘All three of us carried out our normal duties that night and just before
midnight business quietened down and we had no clients to serve. We thus took
turns in taking a few little naps. During one of my waking periods, while my
two colleagues were sleeping, a white VW Golf approached and drove up onto the
forecourt. The driver stopped at pump no. 3. The nose of the car pointed in the
direction of the filling station’s cashier’s box.
‘I approached the car to serve the customer and when I did I saw that the front
passenger window was open and that there
was a hand sticking out of it. I took it that the person in the passenger seat
was going to give me instructions, so I
approached his window and stood there.
‘It was then that I noticed that the passenger was a black man and that the
driver was a white woman. I also noticed that there were two passengers in the
back of the car, two dark men.
‘The white woman leaned over the black man in the passenger seat and held a R50
note out of the passenger’s window. She asked me in Afrikaans to put R50 worth of ‘unleaded 95’ petrol into the car.
She also handed me the car’s petrol tank key.
While I was putting the fuel into the car, the front passenger’s window was
still wound down and I heard the white woman ask the black man where she could
buy a beer.
‘The black man in the front passenger seat answered in Afrikaans that they
could buy a beer at the Kleinbegin Tavern. I know that the front seat passenger
was a genuine black man and not a coloured because although he answered in
Afrikaans, his accent was that of a black man speaking Afrikaans.
‘Once I had finished putting in the petrol, I locked the petrol tank and gave
the keys back to the white woman, again through the front passenger’s window.
‘Quite a bit of time had elapsed by now and although I can no longer clearly
remember what the keys and the key holder looked like, I remember that there
were more than one or two keys on the key ring.
‘After I had given her back her key ring and taken the R50 from her for the
petrol, I walked back to the cashier’s box and the car drove away and turned in
the direction of the N2 national road.
‘I did not see the woman again after this incident and neither have I again
seen the three men who were passengers in her car.
‘After her body was found on the Knoetzie road, a photo of Victoria Stadler
appeared in the local papers. When I saw the photo, I immediately identified Victoria Stadler as the white
woman who had been driving the white VW golf and who had asked me to put ‘R50
unleaded 95’ petrol into her car on the
night of 9 November.
‘I personally know Heinie van Rooyen who has been accused of killing Victoria
Stadler and he was not one of the three passengers who were with her in the VW
Golf that night.
‘Too much time has passed now for me to accurately identify any of the black
men who were in the car that night or to contribute to an identikit. I don't
even think that I would recognise them
if I were to see them now. All that I can remember is that all three of
them seemed to be very young and if I were to guess, I would say that they were
all in their early twenties.
‘The content of this affidavit is true and I understand it fully. I have
no objections to taking the prescribed oath. I regard the oath as binding on my
conscience.
Anna-Clara Klassens’
The police were now on the hunt for Peter McHelm’s stolen vehicle. Some days later it was located in Cape Town
Botha
found out that on the night of the theft of the vehicle and Peter McHelm’s
strangulation, Byron Moses, who lived in the Knysna area, had visited his
girlfriend and stayed with her until 23:00 on Wednesday, 9 November. He told her he was
going home to his parents’ house to sleep but he was caught out in this lie the
next day when his mom asked his girlfriend where he had been as he hadn’t come
home that night. His alibi was thus blown, and even though he did pitch up for
work the next day his boss said he appeared to be ‘a man who had had no sleep
the night before, and who hid away rather than work.’
Moses alleged that Aubrey Tali
Kemoetie was the one who killed McHelm. He said Tali had a gun, and if he had
tried to stop him strangling McHelm, he would have shot him. It was obvious
that he was desperately trying to be seen as a bystander under duress.
‘However,’ Botha told Els, ‘it would
appear that Byron Moses indicated that he knew about two murders that were
committed in Knysna that week but wanted to distance himself from both of
them.’
‘I am prepared to give a full
statement regarding the death of Peter McHelm and also to tell you everything I
know about Vicky Stadler’s murder, provided that I gain immunity from
prosecution with regard to both cases,’ Byron Moses said. ‘Aubrey Tali Kemoetie
told me that he committed the second murder.
‘I was under duress at the time of the murder of Peter McHelm. I could not talk
easily about everything I know because I fear for my life. I am afraid of the
established and notoriously violent prisons 26 Gang,’ he said, adding that
‘Aubrey Tali Kemoetie is a very dangerous man and has already tried to stab me
with a knife at the court in Knysna.
‘Kemoetie had a firearm in his possession before he was arrested. He used it to
hit Peter McHelm on the eye before he murdered him by strangling him. At
the time he threatened me with death if I talked about either of the two murder
cases. I believed him,’ Moses said.
Kemoetie and Moses’s
clothing was taken by the police and put into evidence bags. It is
believed that the police are still in possession of the clothing. However,
inexplicably, this clothing was never sent to the forensic laboratories to see
whether there was any DNA evidence
on any of it that might have matched that of Victoria Stadler. If what Moses
said was true, surely the clothing they were wearing might have contained some
of her blood splatter from the two stab wounds in her neck, at the very least.
This matter was never aired or tested.
Without having any
insight into this collection of the two criminal’s clothes, and the forensic
material that might have been available on it, Botha concluded that the modus
operandi in the murders of McHelm and Stadler spoke volumes and should have
been considered a link between the two cases.
‘Do you think Moses is genuine?’ Botha asked Els.
‘I do. I have also spoken to a certain criminal called Ashley Kampher,
regarding these murders and about what Moses has been saying in prison, but he
is in fear of his life from the notorious prison thugs of the 26 Gang,
and won’t say anything,’ Els replied.
Botha had news for Els. The Knysna dog handler, Inspector Petersen, had sworn
an affidavit under oath in Afrikaans, saying:
‘I am an adult male, sober and of sound mind and I work as an inspector in
the SA Police Service, stationed at Knysna in the Dog Unit.
‘On Friday, 18 November 2005, after 21:00, I received a phone call from
Senior Superintendent Marotsi to go immediately to the Detective Branch in
Knysna, to talk to an informer at the office who wanted to speak only to me, in
private. I jumped in a car and immediately drove to Knysna. Once there a Mr van
Rooyen told me that a certain informant of mine was trying to contact me
urgently. I then met the informant and he told me the following:
‘Ashley Kampher boasted in front of a number of people that he, Aubrey Tali
Kemoetie and Byron Moses killed Victoria Stadler.
‘ Kampher said that the three of them had met Victoria Stadler near the filling
station in Hornlee. They then went with her to buy “smoke” (dagga) at Nekkies,
a place to buy drugs. After they bought the “smoke” they went to the
place where Victoria
‘After that they told Victoria Victoria
‘While the car was burning, Victoria
‘This particular informant has given me information on various occasions. I have always followed up, and it has always
proved positive, every time.
‘I trust the content of this affidavit and understand it. I have no objections
to the taking of the prescribed oath. I consider this oath binding on my
conscience.
DD Petersen
Two weeks later Heinie van Rooyen was arrested.
Botha and his team
could not believe it. According to
witnesses, Heinie was not the last person to have been in either of the
girls’ company. In the case of Jessica Wheeler, the car guard Kiewiets had
described what he had seen, very accurately, according to the report and plan
drawn up by the police on the scene of the murder. Botha, Els and the team were
very confident that he had spoken the truth when he said that he had seen
Jessica with ‘two white men, one of them a bald guy’ more or less at the time
of her death. He had not seen van Rooyen enter the churchyard at any time. The
sex they had enjoyed had taken place in the disco’s parking lot, not the
churchyard.
In the case of Victoria Stadler, they were also confident that the Hornlee
garage cashier had been telling the truth when she said Victoria Stadler, with
three black male passengers, had refuelled her car and after asking where she
could buy beer, drove off in the direction of the
N2.
It
was therefore scandalous to the team that van Rooyen had been taken into
custody. Heinie was charged with indecent assault and the murder of Jessica
Wheeler, aged 19, on 13
October 2005 , and the rape and murder of Victoria Stadler, aged 20,
on 10 November 2005 .
He pleaded not guilty to all the charges against him.
‘Of all the people we
met and interviewed, Botha said later, ‘Heinie van Rooyen seemed to be the
least likely murderer. He loved women and was often intimate with them, even
promiscuous, given the opportunity. But what really, is promiscuous in a land of Polygamy
Now began a series of
bail hearings and court case postponements which were to see Heinie van Rooyen
languishing agonisingly behind bars for three long years before the verdict was
finally pronounced by Judge Nathan Erasmus on May 2, 2008 . At each of the hearings, Botha
and Els felt they were being deliberately sidelined and their evidence
dismissed out of hand without being taken into consideration by the court. This
was, in fact, to prove to be the case.
However they were
determined to continue to search for the truth.
In the second bail
hearing of December 23,
2005 , a nasty shock was to burst over Botha before the end of a
day-long magistrates court’s
proceedings. Up until then Botha and Else felt they had been allowed by
the co-operative police team to share in the information returned by the
forensic laboratory regarding the two cases.
They were wrong.
Director X* and his police team were now on the case and they discovered during
the hearing, much to their shock and anger, that a great deal of it had been
held back. This had not given them time to analyse it and formulate any
possible explanations for the Defence. When it was finally revealed in the last
ten minutes of the court proceedings, it could have knocked them both over with
the proverbial feather.
‘I have received the preliminary DNA
results,’ said State Prosecutor, Machiel Heyns, intoned ‘but a number of tests
are still outstanding. We have found that the DNA
of the semen found on the body and underclothes of Jessica Wheeler matched that
of the semen found on the outside of the slacks of the other woman, Victoria
Stadler.
‘Autopsy reports show that Jessica had “semen in her anus,” and that she “had
been sodomised and suffocated in the sand.” Victoria DNA on the outside of her jeans. Both were from
Heinrich van Rooyen, the accused suspect.’
Botha and Els were
dumbfounded. Shocked almost speechless. There must be a logical explanation for
this.
The court erupted.
The magistrate, Les Strydom, banged his gavel for order in the court, and then
postponed the bail hearing again to 16 January, 2006 . Heinrich van Rooyen was again remanded
in custody.
Botha and Els wanted to see for themselves the results of the forensic tests,
as well as the photographs that were taken. Neither of the men, with more than
50 years of accumulated detection experience between them, could believe their
ears. They were absolutely convinced the
wrong man had been apprehended. There had
to be a rational explanation for why Heinie’s semen had been found on both
girls, despite the fact that they sincerely believed he had not killed either
of them.
To try to counter
this damaging DNA report, Heinie’s
attorney, Daan Derckson, emphasised Heinie’s five year relationship with Nadia
Nel and the fact that they had two
children, whom he loved dearly. After the murders and his arrest, he had lost
his job because his employer told him he thought that having him around was
‘bad for business’.
In his statement to the court, Heinie said he had met Jessica a year before, at
Al’s Dance Club. He had visited her twice. She was staying at the Knysna Hollow
Guest House at the time and on his second visit they had had sex and he had
spent the night with her.
‘It was what you would call a one-night stand,’ his statement read. ‘A week
later we saw each other at Al’s Dance Club again and although we were attracted
to each other, there was no talk of a long-term physical relationship between
us. I told her that I had a partner whom I loved, and two children, and she
accepted this.’
His statement also revealed that he had
first met Victoria Stadler at Stones two weeks before she went missing.
‘She was introduced to me by a mutual friend. We drank and talked and on
the last night that she was seen alive, she had come into Stones alone. She
waved to me while I was working as a DJ and I danced with her between sets.
‘There was a dance pole in the middle of the floor in the club, and I asked Victoria
‘She laughed and said “No, I would need a lot more self-confidence before I
could bring myself to dance around a pole, especially in front of all these
people.”
‘We danced there until 2:00 .
Victoria
‘When it was time for us to leave, she asked me if she could give me a lift
home, so I asked her to drop me off at the Hornlee Community Centre,’ Heinie’s
statement continues. ‘When we left
Stones and crossed to the Zanzibar Club she took my hand. In the parking
area near the library close to Zanzibar
‘She drove off and that was the last I saw of her. I heard the following
day that she was missing.’
Responding to reports that his jacket had been found in Victoria Knoetzie Forest
Jo-Ann Bekker of The
Cape Times wrote on 23 December, 2005 that van Rooyen had said in his
statement that he had lost ten
cellphones in two years, and of the four jackets his mother had bought for him, he now only had one, ‘the
red one’. The others he had lost or left in clubs or elsewhere.
When he was asked by the Prosecutor at the bail hearing if he had ever been ‘involved with date rape
drugs’ to have sex with ‘his victims,’ Heinie seemed appalled at the question.
‘I don't need to drug
girls to have sex with me,’ he said aghast, ‘it is mutually consensual. No, I
have never given anyone a date rape drug, least of all Jessica and Victoria,
and they are not my “victims,” they were my friends. We were sexually attracted
to each other and now and then we had fully consenting sex. It was just one of
those things that happen – pleasant, exciting, but nothing serious.’
Heinie’s bail application was turned down and he was locked up in prison, first
in Knysna and then in Port Elizabeth
The people of Knysna were overjoyed; a suspect had been apprehended and jailed,
awaiting trial. They could sleep easy again, the tourists could come and their
businesses could flourish. There was a collective sigh of satisfaction in the
town. The Mayor of Knysna, Joy Cole, made a statement over the radio, that ‘the
tourists can come back now because the serial killer is behind bars.’
Another bail hearing
came up on August 25, 2006 .
In the interim Heinie gave his full cooperation to the police investigators and
was adamant that he had ‘not ever,’ sexually assaulted or murdered the two
women.’ He added that he would do anything to clear his name and discover the
true identity of the murderer/s.
Botha and Els were in full agreement with van Rooyen when he said, ‘I believe I
was arrested because there was pressure on the police to apprehend a suspect
before the holiday season began.’
Van Rooyen’s lawyer,
Derckson, was also very unhappy that Heinie had been taken in by the police as
their main suspect in the deaths of the two young girls.
‘The only evidence linking my client to the murders is that he saw both women
on the night they went missing,’ Derckson told the court, ‘and some sex took
place between them.’
But Botha was in for
another shock.
After the bail
hearing where Heinie was once more
denied his freedom, his attorney, Daan Derckson withdrew from the case and gave
notice of this to the District Court. He himself did not appear but left the
news to be conveyed by Prosecutor Sibongile Mpambani.
The presiding magistrate in that bail hearing, Elmarie Potgieter asked
the tightly strung suspect to confirm that this was true. He did.
Later Derckson said
that he and the Van Rooyen family had decided to part ways as he had not been
paid anything as yet, for his services. ‘The reason is simple,’ he said, ‘my
firm hasn’t been paid a cent since the start of all these bail applications.
Derckson said he was
also being sued by Christian Botha for his fees. He felt that since he had been
hired by the van Rooyen family to investigate matters for their son, Heinie,
they should pay Botha his fees. He said
he would be contesting Botha’s claim, as it was Heinie and his family who
should be paying the R20,000 and not himself. He felt he was not responsible
for it.
A Port
Elizabeth
The next bail hearing
was set down for September 8,
2006 .
There the prosecutor,
Machiel P Heyns, cross questioned Daryl Els, who was called to the stand.
This was the second time in a matter of a few months that his detective work
had been weighed up against that of SAPS police’s Director X*. At that time Els was again with the
Scorpions. He explained that he and another private investigator, Christian
Botha, together with Daan Derckson, van Rooyen’s attorney, had interviewed the accused,
Heinie van Rooyen, about Peter McHelm, the man who had been murdered on the
same day as Victoria Stadler and whose body was found in the same vicinity in
the Knoetzie forest.
‘We all concluded that Victoria and Peter McHelm must both have been murdered
by others as it certainly had not been van Rooyen who had murdered them,’ Els
said.
He continued under cross examination, telling Heyns: ‘I am satisfied that van
Rooyen had not been the last to see Jessica Wheeler on the night she was
murdered in the churchyard, and he had not sodomised her, ever.’
‘How would it affect your evidence if van Rooyen’s semen was found in Jessica
Wheeler’s anus?’ Heyns unexpectedly asked Els.
At that stage of the proceedings Els and Botha had no idea of the findings of
the forensic laboratories and Els, thinking this was a hypothetical question,
answered, ‘if such semen was found, then there is definitely something Heinie
van Rooyen was not telling us,’ he shot back spontaneously.
Heyns gave a conspiratorial smile.
‘Exactly,’ he said, and sat down.
In the benches Christian’s heart sank.
There must be something else that Heyns knew that Christian and Daryl
had not yet heard about. What was he getting at with this question?
According to a journalist who was present that day, ‘Heyns told a packed
courtroom in Knysna that a preliminary and partial report from the police
forensic laboratory in Cape Town showed that the DNA
sample found in Wheeler’s body, as well as a semen sample found on the pants
Stadler was wearing on the night of her murder, were linked to van Rooyen.’
Els told the court that there were alternative suspects but during the court case
the State Prosecutor, Heyns, ignored this and insisted that DNA samples of van Rooyen on the girls ‘undeniably
linked him with their bodies.’ Well yes,
it did. He had had sex with them both on the night, a month apart, that they
were killed. But that didn’t mean he had been the one to kill them. In fact the
forensic scientist who tested his clothing was about to confirm this.
The State called a further three witnesses. According to Trisha Steyn of News
24, one of these witnesses was Charmaine van Schalkwyk, an assistant at the
police forensic laboratory in Delft Cape Town DNA tests. She
also received clothing from Heinie van Rooyen,
obtained through an illegal warrant on 17 November, 2005 by Director X*, after the van Rooyen
house in Hornlee had been searched.
Responding to a question by advocate Terry Price, for the State, Charmaine van
Schalkwyk admitted that ‘nothing had been
found on van Rooyen’s clothing that could link him to the two victims.’
‘Court adjourned,’ the Magistrate intoned, beating the gavel on the desk.
Everyone trooped out for a break.
When they returned, however, Heyns dropped his bombshell.
‘The first DNA results were faxed
to us by the State yesterday,’ he said. ‘These did not include all the test
results but the long and the short of it is that swabs taken from Jessica’s
anus were tested. Those, along with samples taken from the G-string she was
wearing, connect the accused Heinrich van Rooyen to her via the DNA in his semen.
‘Similarly, his semen and DNA were
also found on the outside of the long black pants Victoria Stadler was wearing
on the night she was killed.’
Heinie van Rooyen was not allowed to go home on bail. He was remanded in
custody in the same prison his father had formerly headed. He shook his head in
disbelief.
‘How could I possibly have landed up in here?’ he asked himself. It was the one
thing that their father had drummed into them throughout his childhood – stay
on the right side of the law and avoid going to prison. To Heinie, as with his
siblings, this dictum was virtually stamped into his heart and written in his
blood. Now his incarceration seemed surreal, a fabrication. He simply had not
committed the crimes. He trusted that the court case and all the evidence would
eventually exonerate him and set him free.
The parents of the two girls, meanwhile, were devastated at the news that their
beautiful, brunette, white daughters had been involved with a Coloured man,
and, in the case of Victoria Stadler, with several black and Coloured men. Hanging on to views more appropriate in the
apartheid era, they refused to believe the girls’ association with van Rooyen
had been voluntary. They were pleased that this liar was remanded in custody.
For white girls to favour Coloured men went against the grain. They would now wait for the trial of Heinrich
van Rooyen set down for 22
March 2006 . This was later postponed to May 2, 2008 .
The
people of Knysna were overjoyed; a suspect had been apprehended and jailed,
awaiting trial. They could sleep easy again, the tourists could come and their
businesses could flourish. There was a collective sigh of satisfaction in the
town. The Mayor of Knysna, Joy Cole, made a statement over the radio, that ‘the
tourists can come back now because the serial killer is behind bars.’
Two years later, on May 2, 2008 , van Rooyen’s
court case finally came up. But in the interim he gave his full cooperation to
the police investigators and was adamant that he had ‘not ever, ever sexually
assaulted or murdered the two women.’ He added that he would do anything to
clear his name and discover the true identity of the murderer/s.
Botha and Els were in full agreement with van Rooyen when he said, ‘I believe I
was arrested because there was pressure on the police to make an arrest before
the holiday season began.’
Van Rooyen’s lawyer,
Derckson, was also very unhappy that he had been taken in by the police as
their main suspect in the deaths of the two young girls.
‘The only evidence linking my client to the murders is that he saw both women
on the night they went missing,’ Derckson told the court during the eventual
trial, ‘and some sex took place between them.’
The challenge for
Botha and Els was to find out what explanation there could be for the presence
of van Rooyen’s semen in Jessica Wheeler’s anus. They pored over the forensic
report and the photographs of the body.
‘The first thing I noticed,’ Christian said while discussing this aspect with
Els, Frans and Play, ‘was that Jessica’s anus did not show any signs of being
ripped and torn. Van Rooyen is built like a bull, with an exceptionally big
manhood. Surely if he had sodomised Jessica, her anus would have shown signs of
trauma and there would, at the very least, have been blood on the outside of
her anus and on her panties? There was
none of that. Her anus looked normal and healthy.
‘By Heinie van Rooyen’s own admission, he and Jessica had slipped out of the
nightclub earlier in the evening and had had consensual vaginal sex standing up
against the wall of the parking lot. She had slipped her arms under his shirt
and held onto him around his back, and in so doing, taken up a bit of his skin
under the fingernails of her one hand. He had not used a condom and had
left his semen inside her.’
Botha reminded his team that the young car guard, Kiewiets, had said he’d seen
Jessica and Doman with Roets go into the churchyard. He stressed that Kiewiets’
story had been checked on a private polygraph and had been found to be true.
The two overseas visitors from Durban
To subpoena them as witnesses in the trial, however, would be an expensive
exercise since they had subsequently gone back overseas and would have to be
flown in from abroad. Heinie’s parents simply could not afford to do that.
Unlike Fred van der Vyver’s parents, who had enough money to fly in specialists
to prove that the evidence put forward by Director X* was not correct, Heinie’s
parents didn’t have the millions they needed to spend defending their son, whom
they fully believed was innocent.
Botha and Els tucked the information given by the girls into their minds and
thought that Jaco Kiewiets, despite his
tender age of 16, would be a strong enough witness without them.
How wrong they were.
They didn’t count on the possibility that he would be intimidated into changing
and obfuscating his evidence in the eventual court case. This element in his
court substantiation would prove to be a big negative for Heinie.
The team now turned their minds to the physical facts of the case and examined
the known clues in detail. They knew that Jessica Wheeler had had vaginal sex
during the evening with Heinie, as told to him and Els by Heinie himself. Some
of the semen must have leaked out while she was dancing with him later, and
spilled onto her G-string panties. That this does happen to women after sex is
a known fact. No deep, dark mystery there.
‘We know that her face was pushed down into the sand and that it suffocated
her, so we know that she was lying on her face when she died.
‘Neither of the two men seen by the car guard appears to have left their sperm
on or in her. As it happens, despite the
fact that they were initially the primary suspects, their DNA was not tested or looked for on her body or
clothes.
‘However, when her body was found she was lying on her back.’ They hypothesised
that the semen she had received from Heinie was in her vagina, and when she was
turned over onto her back it probably ran down out of her vagina and across her
anus towards the ground. When the
medical samples were taken, the doctor pushed the swab across the semen which
was running down past her anus from her vagina, and it was carried into her
body on the swab. When the swab was pulled out, it was once more moved across
the flow of leaking semen from her vagina. The swab could thus have picked up a
considerable load of semen from the
vagina, left there by Heinie van Rooyen from their consensual sex in the car
park, earlier in the evening.
Botha and Els both came to the conclusion that the ‘sexual assault’ that
the police had reported, was nothing of the sort.
But what of
Victoria Stadler? Van Rooyen’s semen had been found on the outside of her
trousers.
‘Masturbating each other would do that,’ Botha said. ‘It did not mean that van
Rooyen had killed Victoria
Botha wondered why , apart from the consensual sex issue and the semen found on
both girls, had Heinie van Rooyen been arrested and incarcerated with such
unseemly haste. He seemed to have been
found guilty before all avenues had been thoroughly researched by the police.
Surely there was justice somewhere, and that justice should be seen to be done.
To him it was a cut and dried case that the wrong person had definitely been
apprehended for crimes he did not commit.
During Heinie van Rooyen’s second bail application at the Knysna Magistrates
Court on 25 May 2006, Botha told the court that two eye-witnesses had placed
Doman at the scene the night Jessica Wheeler was murdered.
‘I am concerned that that police appear to have eliminated vital evidence
gathered by my team,’ Botha told the court. He emphasise that the car guard
they had interviewed had been honest. Kiewiets said he had heard a scream in
the churchyard. This scream had not been mentioned in his affidavit but he had
told Botha about it during their many interviews.
Botha told the court that the guard had said he had identified Wheeler after
seeing a picture of her in a newspaper. He also said that ‘on Thursday night I
saw Doman,’ (whom he identified,) ‘with the girl at the churchyard’ after I saw
the time on the clock and was walking back to my work position in Main Road
During the trial, however, Kiewiets was visibly fearful and intimidated, and
changed his testimony. The prosecution seemed to confuse and frightened the
young car guard to discredit his testimony. Whereas before he had
said that he had seen that the girl with the bald guy was wearing a white
blouse and a black skirt, he now said that he did not know what the girl he saw
had been wearing, and also that he had never identified her as Jessica Wheeler.
The defence suggested throughout the trial that Doman could possibly have been
responsible for Jessica Wheeler’s death.
There was another factor that Botha had uncovered and which he felt was
relevant. A truck driver, Mr. Minnie, who was delivering bread, had
seen a coloured man ‘with dreadlocks’ sitting on the wall next to the
churchyard, and that he had also seen a
bald male in the same locality. If two witnesses, Jaco Kiewiets and Mr.
Minnie, placed one person, Doman, at the crime scene in Jessica’s death, surely
that needed an explanation, Botha insisted.
The court didn’t seem
to think so.
Again, later, during
cross questioning about the second girl’s death the police investigators
dismissed information from the Hornlee petrol pump attendant as well. The court
did not agree that Els and Botha’s evidence was relevant. They dismissed all
their witnesses’ reports. Botha and Els both wondered if somebody had ‘got at’
Kiewiets and possibly threatened the teenager before he came to court. They had
evidence that other witnesses had been threatened, most notably the
Hornlee petrol pump attendant. Some days after she had spoken so openly to
Botha and Els, she begged them not to mention her name or to tell anyone what
she had seen. She said she had received death threats and been told not to open
her mouth or she and her family would be killed.
However, two other witnesses stepped forward to say they had seen Victoria
Stadler driving around with coloured or black men in her car late on the night
she was killed.
In a 22 March 2006 report, at yet another bail hearing, written by Ella Smook
of the Cape Argus, it was reported that’ two businesswomen, Carmen Sauer
and Mary Arnolds, told the court that they saw Stadler driving in her white VW
Golf with an alleged gangster, Aubrey Tali Kemoetie, whom they knew, in the
car.
‘At this point Kemoetie was awaiting trial for the murder of Peter McHelm.
Sauer and Arnolds said they had seen Stadler with Kemoetie on two consecutive
days, 10 days before she disappeared. There were three passengers in the back
seat of her car, they said. “The first time we saw them, things looked very
jolly in the car, with both the driver and the passengers singing and swaying,”
Arnolds
‘In response to the question of why they had taken so long to come
forward with their evidence, both women said police had asked them whether the
reason was that they had been offered some kind of “incentive” not to testify.
These allegations were answered with a categorical denial. ‘
In the same week, petrol station
attendant was also adamant that she ‘had seen Victoria Stadler on the night of 9 November,2005 . She did
not provide a reason for her certainty,’ Ella Smook reported. ‘She said the
police had only questioned her two weeks after Victoria Stadler’s death, and
she admitted under cross-examination that she had initially told the police
officer that she had seen the group at around 23:00 on the night of Stadler’s
disappearance – a time that did not fit in with Stadler’s known movements the
night she disappeared.
The question of
witness intimidation never came up in the court. Botha knew she had been too afraid to tell
them that she had the petrol slip from the night that Victoria
It became clear to him and Els that there was a desperate urgency to convict
someone, anyone, and preferably Heinrich van Rooyen, the man with his ‘wild
oats’ evidence found on both dead girls – and also that there was a ‘cover up’
on the go. The quicker the court could convict him and lock him away, the
better for everyone. Botha shuddered at the thought.
Later Botha took the stand at the second bail application, to present his
findings to the court. He was thoroughly cross-questioned by Prosecutor Heyns.
According to Lyn Sampson, a revered and respected Sunday Times
journalist and columnist, who was at the trial, ‘Botha was slaughtered by the
court. He performed very badly.’
When told this, Botha disagreed. ‘I didn’t think so,’ he said, ‘the only
trouble was they didn’t seem to want to hear my evidence or that of my
witnesses. It didn’t fit with their scenario, and it was largely ignored. They wanted to find Heinrich van Rooyen
guilty of both murders. Then they could put the so-called serial killer away
for life and everyone could sleep easily.
‘ I don't believe that Heinie is guilty of either of the murders and I was
upset when the magistrate didn’t take my evidence into account at all. Two days
later, when he summed up, he didn’t even mention one thing about it.’
In the meantime the police had arrested two coloured men, Byron Moses and
Aubrey Tali Kemoetie, on suspicion of murdering Peter McHelm. During Heinrich’s bail application Botha told the court that he
and Els had taken a statement from Peter McHelm’s murder suspect, Byron Moses,
who was in custody, without the suspect’s lawyer being present. Because
McHelm’s body had been found on the same day Stadler’s was discovered, Botha
was led to speculate that Victoria
Botha also revealed to the magistrate that Moses had told him Kemoetie had
said ‘he needed to get out of Knysna
because he had committed another murder the day before.’
‘The only other murder we know about that had taken place that day was
that of Victoria Stadler,’ Botha told the bail magistrate.
Prosecutor Heyns countered that Moses, in a statement to police, had denied
telling Botha that he had known about Kemoetie.
This of course, was a
blatant lie.
Much, much later,
Botha found out something which might have made a major difference to the case
against Heinie van Rooyen. In Peter McHelm’s murder case, clothing worn by the
suspect's in that case, Aubrey Tali Kemoetie and Byron Moses, was taken by the
police and put into evidence bags. Surprisingly it was never sent to the
forensic laboratories to see, via DNA
evidence, whether any of the materials found on it matched that of Victoria
Stadler. All things being equal, the police should still be in possession of
that clothing.
This clothing as
evidence never came up in any of the bail hearings for Heinie, nor in his court
case.
Later, Botha agreed
with the court that the State had a strong case against Heinie due to the DNA evidence which they had collected from both
girls. But he believed strongly that the evidence he himself and his team had
gathered was most significant. He told the court that he felt that just because
Heinie’s semen was found on both victims, it did not mean that he had sexually
assaulted and killed either girl. It was
circumstantial but not definitive.
‘For instance, if I sleep with someone’s wife next door, leave semen at the
scene and two hours later someone breaks in and she’s murdered, am I the
murderer?’ Botha asked of the court, which burst into laughter − much to the
magistrate’s irritation.
It emerged in court that Botha and Els had actually spoken to van Rooyen at the
Stones nightclub on the same night that Stadler disappeared. They had
gone to speak to him about the previous murder. It was a pure coincidence that
they had been in the club speaking to Heinie on the very night that the second
girl was killed.
‘Who would be foolish enough, on the very night that you are questioned about
the murder of one girl to go out and commit a second murder?’ Botha asked the
court. ‘It does not make sense.’
He then explained
that they had been speaking to van Rooyen about obtaining video footage from
the club on the night Jessica was killed. They wanted to see if she and Heinie
had, in fact, gone out for a while and then come back into the nightclub to
continue dancing, as he said they had. The tapes would show that clearly, but
the police had taken the tapes and they had now allegedly disappeared.
Under re-examination, attorney Derckson put it to Botha that if his client,
Heinie van Rooyen, having spoken to the private investigators about Jessica’s
death, had then gone on to commit murder a few hours later, it would mean ‘he
acted without a conscience and relentlessly.’
Botha agreed, yes, it would mean that.
It seemed this statement was enough for the Judge. Bail was refused and Heinie
van Rooyen remained in jail, pending trial. He was to sit for two long years
before he had his day in court.
The prosecutor now also said that the forensic laboratory ‘had found some
scrapings of Heinie’s skin under the finger nails of her one hand.’ This he felt,
had indicated that she had tried to fight him off.
Botha had his own theories on these matters and they didn’t concur with those
of Director X*. He knew that Heinie had said that during their contact in the
parking lot, Jessica had ‘put her hands and arms under his shirt when they made
love against the wall.’ This could well have explained why she had some of his
skin flakes under the fingernails of her one hand. Surely if she had had to
‘fight him off’ she would have had skin and blood under the fingernails
of both her hands? Christian shook his head in bemusement at the
prosecutor’s conclusions.
With regards to Victoria Stadler, on whose jeans his semen was allegedly found,
van Rooyen had told Botha and Els that she had given him a ‘hand job’ before
she dropped him off outside Hornlee. This had resulted in some of his semen
ending up on the outside of her jeans.
But quite apart from that, the evidence could have been planted on her jeans
after she had been killed. Her naked body was not found for five days, and her
clothes were not found for a further four. This makes it nine days that her
clothes had, allegedly, been outside in the weather under the bushes near her
body. Would it be possible that a fluid as fragile as semen would still be able
to be tested and verified so long after the ejaculation, in the heat and that
week’s worth of constant rain?
Els, who was at the first criminal hearing in November 2007 in Knysna,
gives his take on it:
‘The trial itself was flawed and the judgement was based solely on
circumstantial evidence which is to say the least, very, very dangerous.
‘The trial judge, Nathan Erasmus, was the same Erasmus who had been involved in
the Erasmus Commission that had handled the Delmas Four’s trial. He was not
known to be soft on criminals. He was also very pro the State and
continuously interrupted the defence advocate, Terry Price, often making sly
remarks aimed personally at Price. At one stage this led to Price
requesting Erasmus to recues himself from the case.
‘Erasmus took this in his stride and, after ordering counsel to meet him in
Chambers, remained on as trial judge.
The two female visitors, who had been visiting Jessica Wheeler’s flat mate on
the night of her murder, were never called as witnesses by the State and their
statements as recorded by the initial investigating officer were never supplied
to the defence team of Price and attorney, Lunen Meyer.’
The question now is, why was this information withheld by the state?
The judge also accepted as evidence the identification of Heinie van Rooyen by
truck driver, Mr. Minnie, which took place in a highly irregular manner.
This involved Director X* showing a single photograph of van Rooyen to truck
driver Minnie and enquiring from him as to whether ‘this is the male you saw
sitting on the church wall and talking to the late Jessica Wheeler?’
One further irregularity was that there are witnesses who can testify that
Erasmus, as the trial judge, was seen entertaining Director X*, the main
investigating officer of the case. This is unheard of in professional
circles and is highly irregular.
Another factor in this case too, was that in a previous murder case, already
tried, Byron Moses and Aubrey Tali Kemoetie were convicted of the murder of
Peter McHelm.
This led Christian to believe that if the modus operandi between the
murders of McHelm and Stadler were carefully taken into account, van Rooyen
would not have been convicted of the murder of Victoria Stadler.
Christian knows very well that everything isn’t always what it seems. More than
twenty years in the investigative field has taught him that. He always keeps an
open mind and examines the evidence minutely. He does not want to hear anybody
else’s theories on a crime before he has worked out his own. Often his
innovative thinking solves the matter and helps him to come up with the right
suspect. But in this case the judge was having none of his or Els’s
interpretations or findings. They wanted a killer, and they were determined
that they had caught one. Right or wrong. Botha and Els both feel that the
investigation was badly flawed, just as Fred van der Vyver’s was proven to have
been.
Might it have made a difference to Heinrich van Rooyen’s case if his family
could come up with millions to do a proper investigation before an impartial
judge and discredit a deliberately misleading and possibly corrupt cop,
Director X*, as Fred van der Vyver’s parents could?
Christian Botha was sure it would.
But in the meantime Heinrich van Rooyen, at only 23 years of age, with his
whole life before him, was sentenced to rot in jail for two life sentences
without the possibility of parole.
The residents of Knysna thought they could now sleep well in their beds and get
on with the business of wooing the tourists. How wrong they were. Out there, in
the woods, still stalking other young girls who are sweet and beautiful, prowls
a deadly predator. Shantelle Zeelie, 28,
could vouch for this, if she could speak. She was murdered and her body
left under bushes near the Heads in Knysna in 2007, shortly after Heinie was
locked away for all of his productive life.
‘Has Heinie escaped?’ was the common cry on everyone’s lips at the time. No he
hadn’t. He was still behind bars and was going nowhere for a long time.
Now it has to be considered whether Heinrich van Rooyen really is guilty of the
murder of Jessica Wheeler and Victoria Stadler or if there is another murderer out
there. Most killers escalate the frequency of their crimes, needing
more deaths to keep them satisfied, more frequently.
Has Judge Nathan Erasmus and SAPS
Director X* locked away the right man? We have our theories.
You be the judge.
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