The alleged Station Strangler has already been tried and convicted by the NP, the media and the public, writes Justin Pearce
THE man outside the magistrates court wasnt going to wait for a verdict. With the words Ek sal jou vrek doodmaak (Ill kill you dead), he pronounced his own sentence on Norman Afzal Simons, who — in the minds of the public, at least — is also known as the Station Strangler.
Simons appeared in court in connection with the murder of nine-year-old Donovan Swartz, the second of two charges of murder that have been put to him. So far he has not been asked to plead to either charge. The first charge related to the murder of Elroy van Rooyen (10) — a charge which itself was enough to convince a substantial sector of the public that Simons was the serial killer of 22 boys over a period of eight years.
Simons was granted R1 000 bail in the Kuils River Magistrates Court soon after completing a 30-day period of psychiatric observation and after the court rejected evidence which formed the basis for his arrest. Forensic tests showed that semen found on Van Rooyens body was not Simons, while the evidence of witnesses who said they had seen Simons with the boy was found inconclusive.
In a reversal of earlier police confidence that Simons was indeed the Strangler, police liaison chief Colonel Raymond Dowd admitted that police were investigating the possibility of other killers being responsible for some of the Strangler murders.
Simons was released, then rearrested in connection with Swartzs death. Appearing in the Mitchells Plain Magistrates Court on August 13, his bail was extended. Police announced then that they were investigating charges against Simons arising from 10 other murders in 1994 — but also conceded that charges relating to another 10 murders between 1986 and 1992 might never be laid.
This suggested diminishing confidence in the notion of a sole killer responsible for all 22 murders. In fact, identikits issued in 1987 bear little resemblance to those issued this year.
Continual threats while he was out on bail led to Simons requesting, and being granted, protective custody — usually only offered to witnesses at risk. This unusual move was an acknowledgement by the court of the extreme anger which has accumulated around the Strangler murders — and the publics desperate need for a victim.
The Station Strangler notion captured public imagination early in 1987 after the bodies of a number of Cape Flats boys who had been strangled and sodomised were found over a period of months. The spate of murders began in October 1986; by February 1988 eight boys had been murdered in similar manner. Another followed in October 1992. Between January and March 1994, 12 more bodies were found — and also attributed to the Strangler.
Frantic Cape Flats parents formed vigilante gangs. Tensions rose. At one point, an angry crowd besieged a house where they believed the Strangler was hiding, breaking windows and trying to enter by forcing a hole in the roof.
Just before the April elections, Simons was arrested in connection with the murder of Van Rooyen, whose body had been found on March 19. Quoting reliable sources, news reports said police were convinced that they finally had their man.
Then there were media reports that Simons had confessed to being the Strangler. An article headlined I slept next to the Strangler reported that a man who shared a ward with Simons when he was in voluntary psychiatric care had said: He smelt like the queen of England and admitted he was homosexual. Another report claimed that Simons, a trained school teacher, would pinch children on their inner thighs as punishment and that his hands shook a lot, especially when he was with boys.
People who knew Simons were incredulous, but life on the Cape Flats returned to normal. At the last National Party rally before the elections, premiership candidate Hernus Kriel cashed in on the mood of relief by boasting: We (the NP) caught the Station Strangler.
It wasnt the first time the NP had tried making political mileage out of the case. When granting the vote to prisoners became an election issue, Simons had yet to be arrested. The NP, wooing the coloured vote, ran an advertisement in Cape newspapers with the latest identikit of the Strangler under the headline: Can you imagine the Cape Strangler having the vote? The ANC and the DP can.
It was only after the elections, on April 30, that the validity of Simons confession was called into question. The Cape Supreme Court heard that Simons had been interrogated by police while still under psychiatric observation. He claimed to have been allowed little sleep since his arrest and to have become desperate enough to admit to anything. A court order forbidding police from further interrogating Simons was issued.
For anyone to be interrogated while under psychiatric observation is bizarre, comments associate professor Wilfred Schurf, director of the University of Cape Towns Institute of Criminology.
While Dowd denies that police were serving any political agenda, both Schurf and Simons attorney, Numaan Long, note the usefulness to the NP of Simons arrest.
Says Schurf: I think the timing of the arrest of a Strangler suspect to coincide with the election campaign raises questions about the connection between the two, especially when the police are deeply embarrassed that their initial claims that they had the Station Strangler were not as near to the truth as they wanted them to be.
Long blames irresponsible reporting for the hysteria surrounding Simons. Simons is finished, he adds. He has no life outside. Where is the concept that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty?
The police taskforce probing the case has been scaled down since Simons arrest. Colonel Leonard Knipe, chief investigating officer, this week condemned hysterical and unfounded reporting, which is more damaging than anything else to the investigation.