Johannesburg - After abandoning the search for notorious gangster Ralph Heyns two years ago, police have reopened the case to investigate his disappearance.
Heyns, known as the “Godfather of the West Rand”, disappeared in 2011 amid fresh charges of corruption, intimidation, fraud and blackmail.
He was last seen boarding a helicopter at the Kitty Hawk aerodrome outside Pretoria on January 22.
A missing person’s docket was opened following his disappearance. However, police were unable to track him down and the search was abandoned.
Police have now reopened the case and have instructed Colonel Luke Enslin of the SAPS West Rand branch to head the investigation.
Private investigator Mike Bolhuis has also been hired by the Heyns family to investigate the disappearance of the underworld boss.
The gang boss, who had lost a leg, was the last member of a gang run by jailed apartheid hit man Ferdi Barnard, who murdered Wits academic Dr David Webster in 1989.
The gang was known in former years for ruling Joburg, particularly Hillbrow.
The former death row inmate was a bodyguard for Afrikaans singer Steve Hofmeyr. Heyns was also involved in racketeering.
Bolhuis, who has been investigating Heyns since 1996, believes that the gangster was murdered on the day that he was reported missing. He also believes that the last people to have seen Heyns alive could explain his disappearance.
Tycoon Frikkie Lutzkie, Heyns’s former right-hand man, Dawie Lotter, and former detective warrant officer Drummond Hommand were the last men to see Heyns before he boarded a helicopter at the airstrip. The three men have denied any involvement in Heyns’s disappearance.
“My assumption is that he was injected with a poison and thrown out of the helicopter into a sludge pond or empty mine shaft,” Bolhuis said.
“We do not believe that he was assisted in disappearing or that he is in hiding.”
Heyns’s family were convinced he had been killed as it had been his practice to contact them every day without fail.
A year before he disappeared, Heyns agreed to help police take down underworld kingpins.
Saturday Star