Showing posts with label 2005. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2005. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Why I No Longer Support Heinrich van Rooyen


FRAMED 

I think that I owe my readers the reason why I have withdrawn from everything to do with Heinrich van Rooyen.  He was a man who was convicted of killing two girls in Knysna in 2005.  I did a lot of research and trawled the court records as well as the police dockets and am convinced that he is NOT responsible for the crimes that he is being punished for.

I have spent three years working on this case, visiting Heinrich in prison, helping out with money, getting him things he needed, spent thousands on telephone calls and hundreds of hours discussing the case with people who are qualified in forensic science and so forth.  I have even had death threats because I have stood up for him and wanted justice done, not only for Heinrich to be released but that the real murderers are put behind bars so that there is justice for the two murdered girls as well.    Heinrich is innocent.  He did not murder those girls.
However, I have withdrawn from him because over time, I have found him to be extremely arrogant, demanding, unbelievably manipulative and a liar.   And as he was manipulating me into giving in to his demands, especially for money, he was doing the same to my Facebook friends who were coughing up without me knowing but thinking that I knew about it.   My true friends know I do not have money so were happy to put the money into the Heinrich basket because of their love for me and not because of their love of Heinrich.     I found that I was pouring water into a leaking glass and trying to empty the sea with a bucket.
I will not allow myself to be made unhappy or used by anyone and certainly not by one who is being helped for nothing.  I am particularly saddened by the fact that my friends have been taken in by him as well – which just shows how intelligently he manipulates situations.
The rumour mill within his Justice for Heinrich van Rooyen Facebook group is very busy with Heinrich implying that I have taken money that belongs to him, that I am causing problems in prison for him and that I am the one who is stopping him from contacting his girlfriend because I have stopped every way possible for him to get a mobile phone in prison.  These are all lies. 
Again, I state that I do not believe he killed those girls, but I do not like him as a person and am happier to not have him in my life to upset me in any way.    I have other fights to win which are far more important than to me than his.   My fight for my own health is far more important than Heinrich’s predicament.   I am not surprised now that the judge called him arrogant and that his sentence was made heavier than would have happened if he were not so arrogant.
I have been a fool to have been taken in by him.  But once bitten, twice shy.   I am sorry if any of you have been used by him in any way. 

Monday, June 12, 2017

Heinrich van Rooyen says he danced and played pool with Victoria Stadler the night she was killed

"You know what Dianne?", said Heini, "Victoria came into the club (Stones) at around 6pm the night she was killed.  She had asked me the day before what time I get to the club and I had said around 6 or 7.  She had a "kind of" boyfriend that she needed because she needed accommodation for another week in Knysna before going to visit her grandmother in George.  Anyway, there was the ou that does various things in the club and it was only Victoria and I there so we decided to play a game of pool.  While we were playing, believe this or not, but Christian Botha and Daryl Els walked into the club to ask about Jessica's murder.  They were there, the same time and we discussed who could possibly have wanted Jessica dead".  "Fuck Heini ... you serious?" I said while I thought how the web of conspiracy surrounding the murder of Jessica and Victoria wrapped itself around Heini, while the police fingered him from the start and then contaminated evidence to tie Heini to the murders.   
"We danced that night together and at the end of the evening she drove me to the garage at the entrance to Hornlee.  I told her I would walk the rest of the way because it was not safe for her to drive in Hornlee on her own", he told me.   "And that was the last time I saw her", he said.  
I was visiting Heinrich yesterday, Sunday, and he had been very down the week before.  His family had come to visit him the previous week and he had seen his two boys and his mom and dad.  There was this big build up to see them and then suddenly nothing - nothing to look forward to.  If I had to crawl, I was determined to see him because I knew that he would be feeling flat and low after his family visit. 
If you have read my previous blog on The Chilling Details of Victoria's Last Hours, you will know what happened after Heini walked away from her car when a witness saw three men get into her car.  There was a witness to her last hours and the evidence was given to the police. The self-same policeman, Potje of the new evidence that came to light in 2012 stated that the matter had to go back to the courts, while the Judiciary stated that the police had to investigate the matter.  Three years later, Potje stated "The matter is therefore considered concluded".   No investigation was done into the perjury of the police nor the fluffing of evidence to frame Heinrich when Potje at that time said an unofficial investigation would take place but it was a matter for the courts. 
In fact, the police and the judiciary are doing and have done nothing about the injustice of putting an innocent man in prison for life for a crime he did not commit.    
Below is an article written by Yolande Stander for Herald Live on 14 November 2015.  
WHILE police and the justice system are satisfied that former Knysna DJ Heinrich van Rooyen murdered two girls in Knysna 10 years ago, there are those who still believe their killers are still at large.
A decade ago tomorrow, the partially burnt body of Victoria Stadler, 20, was discovered near the Noetzie forest outside the holiday town. She had been strangled.
About a month earlier, the body of Jessica Wheeler, 19, was found in the St George’s Anglican Church grounds on October 13 2005. She had been suffocated and raped.
The killings became known in the press as the “waitress murders”.
East London-based private investigator Christian Botha, who was hired by a Knysna businessman in 2005 to look into Wheeler’s murder, said this week he had never been convinced that Van Rooyen was the killer.
Botha was hired as the businessman believed the crime would have a negative impact on the town’s festive season.
Van Rooyen was arrested, tried, convicted and handed two life sentences for the murders in 2008.
This followed damning evidence linking him to the two girls, including the discovery of his DNA in semen found on both victims.
But Botha said he was one of the last people to see Van Rooyen and Stadler together.
“I was there in Knysna before Stadler was murdered. I questioned Van Rooyen at the nightclub where he worked about Wheeler’s death and Stadler was sitting right there at the bar. I can’t believe that while knowing he was a person of interest in a murder case he would go out and kill another young woman hours later,” he said.
Botha has also come across information which suggested the two murders were not related at all and that others were responsible.
In Wheeler’s case, Botha is convinced a man he believes was known to Wheeler killed her and that his footprint – a Hi-Tech boot – was left behind at the churchyard.
Botha said this footprint had never been lifted by police.
He said he had also come across a petrol attendant who said she had seen Stadler – after dropping Van Rooyen off in Hornlee on the night of her murder – with three other men in her car. “She asked for R50 of fuel and drove off.” Botha says he believes these men killed her.
While Van Rooyen has enjoyed significant support over the years, the girls’ families are “100%” convinced the right man is behind bars.
Both victims’ mothers, Dusty Wheeler and Hannetjie Stadler, said that they had no doubt Van Rooyen had killed their daughters.
They shared how they were still battling to come to grips with the horrific way in which their children had been taken from them.
“It is 10 years, but we have not forgotten our lovely daughter. She never had the chance to live the life she deserved. We still love and miss her terribly,” Dusty Wheeler said.
Stadler’s mother said every time the murders made headlines, she relived the pain of losing her daughter.
On November 10 she shared a poignant message on her Facebook page: “Time has flown. Today, 10 years ago, I started looking for you and I couldn’t find you. The sun set for you before the moon rose. Victoria, I miss you. Rest in peace.”
Van Rooyen has maintained his innocence, both throughout the trial and over the last 10 years in St Albans Prison in Port Elizabeth.
There have been several attempts to secure his release. Claims of new evidence surfaced when author Alan D Elsdon was researching the murders for a book he plans to write.
He spent three months going through evidence gathered during the initial investigation and trial.
He claimed to have tracked down a witness from the night Wheeler was murdered who revealed that the killer was someone who had testified against the DJ.
Elsdon did not want to discuss the details of the evidence.
He said he had spent another few days in Knysna looking into the murder last week and had gone to see Van Rooyen last Sunday. He said he planned to continue his efforts “in search of the truth”.
Police spokesman Captain Malcolm Pojie said a decision had been made not to reopen the case.
“The information handed in [by Elsdon] is old and was taken into account during the initial investigation . . . The matter is therefore regarded as concluded,” Pojie said.

Wednesday, June 7, 2017

Heinrich van Rooyen - The Don Juan


We have the affidavits and the eye-witness reports proving that Heinrich van Rooyen is not guilty of the murders of Jessica wheeler and Victoria Stadler in Knysna in 2005 (see diannelang.blogspot.co.za for details – Horrific Details of Stadler’s last hours show Heinrich van Rooyen is NOT the murderer).
The Judiciary say that we must get the police to investigate.  The police say we must go back to court.  And in the meantime, an innocent person has been in prison for 12 years.   The ineptitude of both the police to investigate their own corrupt police who framed Heinrich and the judiciary who gave him 2 life sentences and 28 years without leave to appeal is beyond belief and completely unacceptable. The 28 years was for malicious damage to property and rape, neither of which Heinrich is responsible.  He did not rape anyone and nor did he set the vehicle of Stadler alight.
However, it is we, the public, who are the ones who can make this change by shouting loudly from the rooftops that the behaviour of the police and the justice system is corrupt and incompetent.  It is our taxes that pay for this service and we are the ones who must call the shots.  If we say nothing and do nothing, then we are saying that their behaviour is acceptable and that it is fine for innocent people to be imprisoned.   Heinrich was framed to protect drug lords, cops and businessmen in Knysna.  
It has been said that he was not like by a few men before he was put into prison.  Let me explain why this idea is being promulgated.   Heinrich van Rooyen was a Don Juan.  He was a DJ at a popular nightclub and as such, he was constantly in the face of the young population of Knysna and the many tourists.  He was (and still is) charming and could charm that panties off any woman he pleased.  Why would someone who was constantly being solicited and offered kisses, oral sex and intercourse on a plate, rape and murder one or both girls. 
It makes no sense at all for a man who is offered sex at every opportunity to have to rape someone, or even bother to murder the female afterwards. All the young women, including Jessica and Victoria, were constantly vying for his attention.   It is my opinion that the men who said they did not like him before he went to prison were most likely jealous of the attention he was paid by young females.   

Being a Don Juan does not make you a murderer!

Tuesday, June 6, 2017

Horrific Details of Stadler's last hours show Heinrich van Rooyen is NOT the murderer

...A teenager serving a sentence for theft and housebreaking has come forward with horrific details of what he claims were Stadler’s last hours on 10 November 2005.  He says he was present when the terrified young woman was gang-raped, chocked, doused in petrol and stabbed …
And he claims her attackers were not van Rooyen, but three men, one of whom was a drug lord for whom he was a runner.
The inmate’s statement to a magistrate could exonerate van Rooyen of one of the murders and implicates the prominent drug lord currently serving 20 years for murder.
During the trial, van Rooyen maintained his innocence of both murders and fingered two other Knysna men and an alleged gangster as the likelier suspects.
Christian Botha, the private investigator on the case said that not only did the police fail to investigate the murders thoroughly, but built a case around van Rooyen, having decided he was guilty from the beginning.   He also visited the inmate and said that the youngster showed knowledge of facts related to the crime that were never made public.
The young inmate was standing at the garage to the entrance to Hornlee on the night of Victoria Stadler’s murder.  He saw van Rooyen kiss and hug Victoria, that he got out of the car and walked away.  Three men then approached Victoria for a lift to Knysna and she agreed.  Sometime later, the care returned with three men but Victoria was not with them.  They bought a can of petrol and asked him to join them.  They took the Noetzie road.  Throughout the trip he heard noise from the back of the car and later discovered that the noise had been made by Victoria, who was tied up in the boot.
Parked in the bush, all four of them smoked druges.  One opened the boot, pulled Victoria out and the three others took turns in raping her.  They partly strangled her, shoved her into the car and then poured petrol over her and the car.
Southern Cape Police Spokesman, Captain Malcolm Poje, said the statement was not being treated as a confession but police were investigating its validity.  Poje says though the statement was being investigated, it was up to the van Rooyen family to appeal to the judiciary for the case to be re-opened.  The investigation was not a formal one, as the murder case had been concluded, he said.
State Advocate Christhenus van der Vijver said any allegations would have to be investigated by the police first.  He would not speculate on whether the matter would return to the courts.  Everything relies on the outcome of the police investigation”, he said.
(Information taken from Weekend Argus (Saturday edition) 24 April 2010 and written by Thandanani Mhlanga)
It seems to me that the police and the judiciary are totally inept and corrupt.  Someone makes a confession that they were an accessory to a crime, but the person is not charged.  He makes the same confession to the magistrate, exonerating Heinrich van Rooyen from this murder but nothing comes of it.  The police spokesperson says it is not a valid investigation and that the family are to appeal to the judiciary but the judiciary say that the police must first investigate.  Everyone is passing the buck, while Heinrich sits in prison for a crime he did not commit. 

I am aware that the family approached the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) with evidence that Heinrich was framed, together with affidavits and proof how Heinrich could not possibly have been the murderer of either Victoria Stadler or Jessica Wheeler.  Alan D Elsdon has worked on this investigation for three years and submitted his findings on behalf of the family and nothing has come of it.   It is a disgrace and a travesty that we cannot trust our judiciary or our police to do what they are tasked to do.   They do as they please with impunity and they protect one another.  With Director Trollip dead, perhaps the IPID won’t mind doing what they are supposed to do and that is to investigate crimes committed by police.  Perjury by police is a crime.  And it is criminal to frame and innocent person. 

Monday, June 5, 2017

Heinrich van Rooyen - A Travesty of Justice

I met Heinrich van Rooyen’s children and parents last week.  They had come from Knysna to visit Heini, bringing his two sons with them.  They then came to meet me at my home.  What a privilege … what an honour.   Now that I have met the people who parented Heini, I am no longer surprised by the kind of person Heini is; soft, gentle, compassionate, honest, strong …
Heini’s father was the Head of Correctional Services for Knysna, now retired.  His brother, Franklin, is a warden there.  Heini’s youngest brother is in his final year at Police College.  His eldest son is going to the South African table tennis championships.   His mother is the kind of woman who will work her arse off to see that her family are cared for.   He has an amazing family – so traumatised by Heini’s wrongful imprisonment and yet, so humble, kind, compassionate and gentle.   When you look a little deeper you can see the damage that has been done.  They have been broken.
Although our afternoon was filled with laughter, it was not without private tears shed in my bedroom with his mother.   Through the cops who framed Heini, the van Rooyen family lost everything; including their home and all that money went into the pockets of Advocate Terry Price and his minions.   They are tired, they are broken and they are living a nightmare that they never wake up from.
The fact that Price did not ask or even mention important facts that would have played a major role in the outcome of the case, or question the validity of the so-called ‘eye-witness’ is criminal.    The legal costs for this case to defend Heini came to one million, eight hundred thousand rand. 
How could Terry Price do such a shoddy job of defending him?     Not only did he lose the case when it was so easy for him to have changed the course of justice in the favour of real justice, but he pocketed hundreds of thousands of rands for his pathetic defense of Heini.   That is thievery, in my opinion.   Who to blame?  The lawyers who did not give him the information he needed to defend, or is he just a useless advocate.  The justice system is flawed and corrupt.   I would not employ him to defend me against a peg on my washing line.
Herald Live reports Terry Price thus: “His presence is somewhat larger than life. His booming voice can be heard in the corridors of the courthouse before he is seen…He is hot-headed, cocky and a bit bullish, but his colleagues and clients will tell you that he has a heart of gold and will go to the ends of the earth to prove someone’s innocence”. (Really – I know of two he did not go to the end of the docket, let alone the ends of the earth)… Price was a junior advocate on the team representing Stellenbosch murder accused Fred van der Vyver, who was tried for the 2005 murder of his girlfriend, Inge Lotz.
While the evidence against him seemed overwhelming, his lawyers managed to turn the tables on the police, accusing them of fabricating evidence”.  (So why did he not do the same for Heini?  Is it because he was only the junior and he did not contribute much?)
“In 2007, Judge Deon van Zyl acquitted Van der Vyver of Lotz’s murder”.
Interestingly, the cops who investigated the murder of Inge Lotz and pinned her murder on Fred van der Vyver, were the same cops who investigated the murder of the two girls in Knysna in 2005.    In both cases, they used the same kind of shenanigans.  
Why did Price not turn the tables on the police when it was blatantly clear to everyone that the cops had framed Heinrich van Rooyen?  Terry Price was Advocate in both cases.  Was the defense different for both cases because the van der Vyver’s had more money than the van Rooyens?
Heinrich was sentenced to 2 life terms and 28 years.  He has now served 12 years.   He was arrested on 10 December 2005 and sentenced on 14 May 2008.  
Because he was sentenced after October 2004, he can only ask for parole after 25 years. But, in sentencing Heinrich van Rooyen’s to thirty (30) years imprisonment with no parole, the judge also refused leave to appeal.    The Constitutional Court did not overrule the Supreme Court’s decision.
In Heini’s case, the police committed perjury, broke the chain of evidence, took eye-witnesses who could not possibly have seen anything, let alone Heinrich and planted or failed to find clothing at the crime scene that was only found days later by the cops who were involved in the Fred van der Vyver case.  If cops can plant evidence with impunity, fail to follow accepted investigative techniques and frame an innocent man, under the conditions of his sentence, he becomes a political hot potato.  The police are not going to investigate thoroughly their own, are they?  Are they not going to cover up for their colleagues, particularly since Director Trollip was leading them?  It is not without sadness that Director Trollip has died, but at the same time, without him – who can we blame?   The police who followed his direction MUST be taken to task so that we can right a very bad wrong.  An innocent man is spending his life in prison because of crooked cops.
Who murdered Jessica Wheeler and Victoria Stadler?   They are still walking the streets of Knysna.