Cape Town - In a shock twist in the 10-year-old Inge Lotz murder case, her parents are taking legal action in an attempt to force an author, who publicly blamed the killing on a sordid family secret, to give up the evidence, or retract the statement.
But author Alan D Elsdon, who investigated the case privately and plans to write a book about his findings, is standing by what he said – that “a dark family secret was the motive for the murder”.
Elsdon first made the statement at a book launch at the Stellenbosch Woordfees last weekend. Inge’s mother Juanita Lotz was among the 100-strong audience that day.
Speaking exclusively to Weekend Argus this week, Inge’s father Jan Lotz said the couple were now prepared to go to court to ensure the retraction of any false statements about the murder.
Monday marked 10 years since Inge, 22, was found murdered in her Stellenbosch flat, with wounds to her head and stab wounds to the chest.
Her boyfriend Fred van der Vyver was arrested for the killing a few months later, but was subsequently acquitted in the Western Cape High Court.
The Lotzs are trying to get hold of a bloodied towel found in her flat, which they believe is key to solving her murder. The authorities have yet to comment on its whereabouts.
This week, Lotz suggested that several graphic accounts of the motive for his daughter’s murder, including that she had been impregnated by a relative who was then involved in her killing, were the work of someone trying to tire out the couple so they halted their bid to see Inge’s murderer finally jailed.
“To me it feels like Satan just walked into our house 10 years ago, killed my child and we can’t get rid of it. I cannot stand it as a father. They’re murdering my daughter again… I thought to myself, let me just leave it. But now that it’s in the public forum, I can’t live with it any more,” he said.
Johan Jordaan, representing the Lotzs, wrote in a letter to Elsdon this week that if he did not either retract or back up the statement he made last Saturday, the couple would seek court action.
The lawyer gave Elsdon until Saturday to either retract the statement, or until Tuesday to provide the relevant evidence to the police.
He added that the Lotzs viewed the remark as “defamatory, humiliating and in extremely poor taste”, especially since it was made in a public forum.
People at the Woordfees said Elsdon also suggested that Inge had been pregnant.
“This ties in with previous rumours that the late Inge Lotz was pregnant from a family member. This rumour has been dealt with and investigated in the past, and was found to be unsubstantiated,” the letter said.
Asked to respond, Elsdon denied saying Inge was pregnant at the time of her murder.
But on the issue of the family secret, he said he would not retract the comment because it was correct. He also believed there was no basis for relief to be granted in court.
He also denied mentioning anything about being in possession of evidence.
Lotz told Weekend Argus earlier in the week that if there was evidence, he wanted to know about it.
Cruel theories about Inge’s murder started surfacing months after she was killed, and had continued for years, he said.
“These people (peddling the theories) are the pawns. Behind them is a desperate person with a strategy,” Lotz charged.
“Even if I have to deal with them one at a time, I will. I won’t stop.”
Lotz provided Weekend Argus with a copy of an unsigned affidavit, dated 2011, from a private investigator who had probed the case and who suggested a relative may have played a role in her murder.
The affidavit said the investigator wanted to know more about a “compromising position” in which the relative’s ex-wife had discovered him and Inge.
But in another document Lotz showed to Weekend Argus, the ex-wife denied seeing the two in any such situation.
Lotz also provided Weekend Argus with a copy of a 2012 e-mail from the same private investigator to Lotz’s legal representative, in which he said he had found the only witness to Inge’s murder.
The investigator’s e-mail said the witness described in a statement seeing her killer bite out a chunk of her flesh, then cut around the wound to excise the teeth marks.
His e-mail said Inge had either been in a relationship with her killer, who was sterile and had an ex-wife, or he had raped her.
Lotz said other allegations were also levelled at them via telephone calls.
About five years ago his wife got a call at 2am from a man who said he was from the Eastern Cape, and that he had DNA evidence proving who was Inge’s ‘real father’.
Lotz said he was worried about his wife.
“We aren’t coping. My wife and I aren’t young anymore. We should have grandchildren. We should be in the golden years of our life. We’ve got nothing.”
It was a misconception, he said, that a parent dealing with their child’s murder was the most horrific thing the parent could go through.
“It can get much worse,” he said.
Weekend Argus