De Wet Potgieter - Gruesome: The Crimes and Criminals That Shook South Africa

Published by Zebra Press
an imprint of Penguin Random House South Africa (Pty) Ltd
Company Reg. No. 1953/000441/07
The Estuaries No. 4, Oxbow Crescent, Century Avenue, Century City, Cape Town, 7441

www.zebrapress.co.za

First published 2015

Publication Zebra Press 2015
Text De Wet Potgieter

Cover images Alison: De Wet Potgieter;
Scott Ayton & Shelly Hanson: De Wet Potgieter;
Olga Macingwane: Moeketsi Moticoe/ The Times ; Barend Strydom: Doug Lee;
Eugene de Kock: Gallo Images/ Beeld /Leon Botha;
Andr Stander: Gallo Images/ Rapport /Media24

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.

PUBLISHER: Marlene Fryer
MANAGING EDITOR: Ronel Richter-Herbert
TRANSLATOR: Louise Vorster
EDITOR: Lisa Compton
PROOFREADER: Ronel Richter-Herbert
COVER DESIGN: Monique Cleghorn
TEXT DESIGN: Ryan Africa
TYPESETTER: Tessa Fortuin/Monique van den Berg

ISBN: 978 1 77022 908 2 (print)
ISBN: 978 1 77022 909 9 (ePub)
ISBN: 978 1 77022 910 5 (PDF)

Early in January 2012, South Africans were shocked by the events that instantly landed the tranquil village of Modimolle, formerly known as Nylstroom, on newspaper front pages. On 3 January 2012, Johan Kotz and three black men, whom he had hired, lay in wait for his estranged wife, Ina Bonnette, and her son, Conrad, at Kotzs Modimolle home. He had wilfully lured them there.

Kotz then ordered the three men to repeatedly rape Ina. For two and a half hours she was tortured and brutally assaulted. Her breasts were also mutilated. Ina had to listen how Conrad unavailingly pleaded for his life before being shot dead by Kotz.

The media promptly dubbed Johan Kotz the Modimolle Monster, and the name stuck to the dismay of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, who appealed to the media to stop calling Kotz a monster: He may indeed be guilty of inhuman, ghastly and monstrous deeds, but he is not a monster. We are actually letting him off lightly by calling him a monster, because monsters have no moral sense of right and wrong and therefore cannot be held morally culpable, Tutu wrote to The Sta r . He added that Kotz remained a child of God with the capacity to become a saint.

A full-scale debate erupted around Tutus letter. It was this debate that reminded me of the countless times my path as a journalist had crossed with those of violent people. Each of them had been driven by a different force that compelled them to commit their horrendous deeds. Would it be fair to call them monsters, even though some of their acts were downright gruesome and inhumane?

I dusted off and reopened the files to have another look at what these people had done. It was interesting to see who had shown remorse and who had not, and I was once again confronted by the question, Who are we to judg e ? Did Jesus not say that the one who is without sin should be the first to cast a stone?

And that is how Gruesome came about. The book recounts how I became involved in 10 cases that kept people speculating for a long time. In some of these cases the culprits were never brought to book. In others they were caught and put in jail. What was the result? Was there remorse? And what good is this remorse?

Join me as I retrace the paths that these offenders have walked and revisit each of their cases. Just as Johan Kotz and his gruesome deeds appalled South Africans, the acts of the main characters in each of these recounts, with the exception of Andr Stander, had everyone asking in horror, How could they? How can one human being do this to anothe r ? In each of the stories, you will be surprised by facts that have never appeared in print before.

DE WET POTGIETER
PRETORIA
NOVEMBER 2014

Even now, 17 years later, South Africans are filled with horror when they think back on the events of that bloody night in Noordhoek, the rough part of Port Elizabeth, when the headlights of a good Samaritans car became a beacon of hope for the woman who lay bleeding to death on the road.

The attractive young woman had crawled to the road after being repeatedly raped and having her throat slit, like an animal being slaughtered, by two young men who had earlier abducted her at knifepoint. The brutal attack was their attempt to sacrifice her to Satan.

The womans name was Alison and for years that was how she was known to the public. Upon recovery, Alison preferred not to disclose her surname, until about three years later, when she got married and started using her husbands surname, Botha.

Tiaan Eilard was driving on a quiet road, feeling relaxed as he chatted to his friends in the passenger seats, when his cars headlights fell upon a moving, bloody mass. Something resembling a human was crawling across the road.

It was a human. A woman. Her one hand desperately reached up in a wordless plea for help. She appeared to be nearly decapitated, as her throat was cleaved from ear to ear and her head flopped backwards.

She was lying there in the middle of the road, Tiaan later recalled. She was naked, not a shred of clothing on her body. When I reached her, I realised in horror that her throat had been cut. He immediately took off his shirt and asked one of his friends in the car to pass him his, too. We covered her naked, broken body, while looking to see what else was wrong with the woman.

Fortunately for Alison, the 20-year-old Tiaan was a first-year veterinary student whose basic knowledge of physiology stood him in good stead when making the critical decisions that would save her life.

Tiaan and his friends were on holiday in the Eastern Cape, and on that ill-fated night, they were driving to their nearby campsite. It was the last day of their holiday and the young men were in a party mood when they unexpectedly happened upon Alison.