Police in Cape Town are searching their archives for unsolved crimes in the southern suburbs going back 20 years after a man believed to be responsible for attacks including rape, sodomy and armed robbery was arrested at the weekend.
A 49-year-old retrenched racehorse groom, walked into Milnerton police station on Friday and said he wanted to confess his part in a series of attacks, which he claimed included the notorious 1980s rape of a young woman in a rose garden on the grounds of the elite Kelvin Grove club in Newlands.
The man, who is married with two young children, also gave police detailed accounts of an attack on a couple in their double-storey Constantia home, and a burglary at the Newlands home of Marius Barnard, the brother of heart pioneer Chris Barnard.
Piet Viljoen of the major crimes management team said police were at first sceptical of the claims, but a 50-page confession handed in at Wynberg Court on Friday and several interviews with detectives were "overwhelmingly convincing" evidence that his story was true.
"We are 99,9 percent certain the guy is telling the truth. I grilled him over the weekend and was especially looking for signs suggesting some psychological problem, but nothing emerged," said Viljoen.
The man gave an account, in graphic detail, of how he and his brother - since deceased - driving a stolen Datsun, picked up a woman hitchhiker near the Good Hope Centre and repeatedly raped her at secluded spots, including a "sandy road" in Milnerton, before dropping her on the West Coast Road.
He told Viljoen he felt scared when his crimes made the front pages of newspapers, especially reading the "rose garden rape" headline the day after he stalked a 19-year-old woman dressed in a white evening dress as she emerged from a dance in Kelvin Grove.
He allegedly dragged the woman at gunpoint into the rose garden where he raped her.
He also confessed to the rape of a teacher at her car in Rondebosch and a burglary at the synagogue in Rondebosch, where at the time he was employed as a caretaker.
One evening he broke into the synagogue with his gang and removed a large safe.
Viljoen said the man claimed he was one of a gang that broke out of the Wynberg Magistrate's Court in 1983, after he was arrested for an armed robbery at a Kenilworth cafe.
At the time he wore his hair in a distinctive afro style, which was accurately depicted in an identikit broadcast on Police File, a television programme at the time.
After watching the programme in 1983, the man gave himself up.
He was eventually convicted and sentenced to seven years in prison from 1983 to 1990.
Viljoen said at the time police could not link him to other crimes and he said he had turned his back on crime after his release in 1990.
The man allegedly looked up his old "crime buddies" after losing his job in August this year, but his old way of life started haunting him and this prompted him to hand himself over on Friday, said Viljoen.
He pointed out six crime scenes to investigating officer Harold Meyer, and was scheduled to appear in the Wynberg Magistrate's Court today.