Durban – Police, digging for the remains of paedophile Gert van Rooyen victims, brought in two more excavators to Blythedale Beach in Ballito north of Durban to help them in their search.
Van Rooyen and his girlfriend Joey Haarhoff were accused of kidnapping six young girls over 30 years ago but some of their bodies were never found. The site currently being excavated is where Van Rooyen is thought to have buried some of his victims after spending a weekend there. A police forensic team had located a stormwater pipe they believe is key to solve one of South Africa's oldest mysteries.
On Thursday they are expected to focus on the pipe and its immediate surroundings in the hope of finding any skeletal remains of the bodies. One of the missing girl's family is at the site in Ballito.
Police dig up beach for Gert van Rooyen's victims
In 1990, Van Rooyen shot Haarhoff and committed suicide at his home in Pretoria. Thursday’s search is a result of a 15-month investigation by the SABC programme Fokus, led by executive producer Alet Wright, who said information about the search would be revealed in the Fokus broadcast on Sunday night.
A team of forensic specialists from Pretoria and had marked off a number of sites to be dug up. The beach has been closed to bathers.
National police spokesman, Brigadier Vishnu Naidoo said they did not give "a blow by blow" account of their investigations."In this case ... for more than two and half decades we have been receiving information which the media advanced raising the hopes of family, relatives and even people of South Africa only to have it dashed later. On this backdrop I will not comment at all on (what) our investigators are doing in this case or any other case whatsoever," he said.
It's not the first time police have dug up a beach on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast looking for the remains of Van Rooyen's victims.
In April 2007 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.