Cape Town - Crime fighters are calling on the State to reopen the investigations into the 21 unsolved cases of the Station Strangler and put together a task team on the mystery.
The South African Human Rights Commission’s Reverend Chris Nissen has also suggested that families of victims be given the opportunity to sit at a round table with Norman “Afzal “ Simons, the man dubbed The Station Strangler, to perhaps gain answers and closure on whether he was responsible for more than one killing.
Last week, prison rights activists, crime fighters and the SAHRC called for Simons to be released on parole after 28 years behind bars and said he must come clean on whether or not he was involved in the 21 unsolved cases.
Crime fighter and activist Michael Jacobs has called on the State to reopen the cold cases.
“I am calling on all of those 21 unsolved cases, which must be reopened as you cannot claim that the person who is in custody for almost more than three decades, is the Station Strangler and put that into people’s minds,” he said.
“In order for our communities to find some form of closure, for the victims and the families, the State needs to reopen those cases. They must put together a task team that will investigate these cases, which have been laying dormant since the arrest of Norman Afzal, like everything was solved.”
Jacobs previously indicated that no DNA found at the various crime scenes could be linked to Simons and claimed that the identity parade he was part of following his arrest was flawed.
Jacobs has yet to confirm whether a formal application will be made to reopen the cases.
Nissen told Weekend Argus last week that the SAHRC believed Simons had paid for the crime he had committed and called on him to be granted parole and to reveal any knowledge he had about the unsolved cases.
He said families needed answers: “Even if we can meet with victim’s families and Simons, him as the accused…there must be a spirit of forgiveness and he must be ready to speak out.”
Nissen also called for a wall of remembrance to be erected for the victims.
Weekend Argus also approached the department of jstice and the National Prosecuting Authority this week about whether they would be considering revisiting the cold cases and if a task team would be formed, but they have yet to respond.
Candice Van Reenen, the spokesperson for the Department of Correctional Services previously said it would not be commenting about Simons’ parole status.
The Station Strangler became a household name in Cape Town after the bodies of 22 young boys, some of whom were never identified, were found in various shallow graves between 1986 and 1994.
The bodies were all found in the same position, face down, in a shallow grave with their hands tied behind their backs and their pants tied around their necks.
The victims were strangled and sodomised.
The serial killer’s reign of terror began near Modderdam Station in Bellville South and the killing fields were mainly in parts of Mitchells Plain.
Simons was a school teacher at Alpine Primary and a patient at a local psychiatric clinic in April 1994.
He was arrested in 1994 and was convicted and sentenced for the kidnapping and murder of ten-year-old Elroy van Rooyen in 1995.
Forensic DNA, hair, semen, blood and the handwriting of some of the 21 victims were no match to Simons.
During an appeal at the Supreme Court, his sentence was increased to 35 years.
In 2006, Simons’ lawyer advocate Koos Louw held a formal inquest at the Mitchells Plain magistrate’s court into the deaths of Elino Sprinkle, 11, Jeremy Smith, 12, Marcellino Cupido, ten, Donovan Swartz, 11, Fabian Willmore, eight and Neville Samaai, 13, and the magistrate said Simons might as well have been the Station Strangler.