Cape Town - While the Cape medical fraternity mourned the murder of Dr Louis Heyns on Thursday, a top team of police investigators sought to understand why he was killed.
The Stellenbosch University medical professor’s body was removed from a shallow pit in a dune, where it had been covered with only a sprinkling of sand, in the forest of milkwood trees between the beach and Beach Road in Strand.
Three Malmesbury men have been arrested.
Among the questions asked by residents and friends on Thursday were:
* Was Heyns hijacked, and killed for his car, a dark grey Peugeot 308?
* If so, where was he hijacked? If at the Strand beachfront, what was he doing there?
* If he was not attacked at the Strand beachfront, why would his hijackers have driven to a brightly lit main road, then dragged him for 50m to the dunes under the potential gaze of residents of dozens of flats, given that spotlights line the Strand beachfront?
* How did he die?
On Thursday night, detectives were continuing their investigation in Malmesbury, where Heyns’s car was traced to a chop shop, and at other sites, gathering crucial evidence against the three suspects.
Heyns’s wife, Dalene, his daughter, Eldalè Swart, and his sons, Charl and Daneale, were informed of the discovery of his body shortly after 8am on Thursday.
He had last been seen on Wednesday, May 22, when he had dinner with his brother Christo in Somerset West.
Christo Heyns said Heyns had left about 8.30pm, saying he had to get home to Welgelegen in Parow as he had to prepare for a lecture he was giving the following day.
Dalene Heyns, Heyns’s wife of 33 years, told the Weekend Argus that when he hadn’t arrived home by midnight, she sent him an SMS.
As a paediatrician, Heyns often worked late, but he let her know by SMS when he was on his way home, she said.
He hadn’t responded an hour later, and she sent him another SMS, saying: “I’m getting very worried now.”
There was still no answer, so she phoned him, but his cellphone had been switched off.
Dalene Heyns said she had then contacted other relatives, and they reported him missing at the Parow police station.
The search initially focused on the area between Somerset West and Heyns’s home, and possible alternative routes.
His brother Christo said: “We knew that to go home he’d have to take the N2, the R300 and then the N1. But we found nothing.”
Instead, it was in the town of Malmesbury, late on Wednesday night, that a police team swooped on three suspects.
Detectives, including Warrant Officer Hannes Niemand from Somerset West, were backed up by members of the police’s hostage negotiating unit and the Tactical Response Unit.
Police spokesman FC van Wyk said: “Police officers worked around the clock and traced the dark grey Peugeot vehicle belonging to Dr Heyns to a chop shop in Malmesbury. They arrested three suspects from Malmesbury aged 32, 37 and 43.”
The Cape Argus was told the trio would appear in court on Monday. The police are allowed to hold suspects for 48 hours before they have to appear in court.
Cape Argus