Police dig up beach for Gert van Rooyen's victims

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Durban – A team of forensic specialists are excavating a number of sites around the Blythedale Beach, north of Durban where notorious paedophile Gert van Rooyen is believed to have buried his victims. Van Rooyen is alleged to have kidnapped and killed at least six young girls between 1988 and 1989. According to a source the team of forensic specialists came from Pretoria and had marked off a number of sites to be dug up. The beach has been closed to bathers "There is also an investigating officer from Pretoria at the beach and he is pointing out spots. They have brought in heavy machinery and are busy digging up sites. Apparently they are following up on leads and they should be here for a few days. They have a lot of work ahead of them," he said. It's not the first time police has zeroed in on a north coast beach looking for the remains of Van Rooyen's victims. In April 2007 massive storms that lashed the North Coast uncovered skeletal remains at Umdloti Beach.

Van Rooyen was known to have visited the area before his death, but the bones were less than ten years old and police concluded that it could not have been those of the missing girls.

Van Rooyen and his lover, Francina Johanna "Joey" Hermina Haarhoff kidnapped girls aged between 9 and 16. In 1979, van Rooyen abducted two girls, aged 10 and 13 and took them to Hartbeespoort Dam where he reportedly punched him in the face and forced them to strip naked and perform sexual acts. He then released the girls in Pretoria the next day.

He was arrested and served only three years imprisonment despite being sentenced to four years for abduction, sexual assault and common assault.

In the early 1990s, after the pair's latest victim managed to escape, van Rooyen killed Haarhoff before turning the gun on himself. The bodies of his victims were never found – for this reason van Rooyen and Haarhoff were never formally convicted for the deaths.

Tracy-Lee Scott-Crossley, 14, disappeared on her way to Cresta shopping mall in Randburg.

Two months later Fiona Harvey, 12, of Pietermaritzburg, disappeared. On June 7, 1989 Joan Horn, 12, of Pretoria, disappeared.

A 16 year old Durban girl, Janet Delport, escaped the couple's clutches after she was abducted in a mall in July 1989.

On September 22, 1989, Kempton Park girls, Odette Boucher, 11, and, Anne-Mari Wapenaar, 12, went missing.

The saga, which gripped the nation's attention finally came to an end in January 1990 when their final victim escaped from their home in Capital Park.

Joan Booysen, 16, was handcuffed, drugged, indecently assaulted and locked up but managed to escape. A few days later Van Rooyen shot Haarhoff, then himself during a police chase.

Daily News