Eight-year-old Tazne Van Wyk who was found dead in a drainpipe outside the town of Worcester. (Jaco Marais)
Judgment in the case of eight-year-old Tazné van Wyk’s murder is expected in the Western Cape high court on 24 October.
Moyhdian Pangkaeker, 54, faces 27 charges, including three counts of common assault, two of kidnapping, 12 of rape, one of murder, as well as charges for sexual assault, child exploitation, grooming of children, intimidation, incest and violating a corpse.
Pangkaeker was arrested on 17 February 2020 following the disappearance of Tazné near her home in Elsies River 10 days earlier. Her body was found in a stormwater pipe outside Worcester after Pangkaeker told the police where it was. The child had been raped, beaten to death with a blunt object and one of her hands was severed.
Since the start of the trial in May this year, the court has heard further allegations against the accused, that he had sexually assaulted, raped and exploited children — including committing incest with his daughter — after he was placed on parole on 3 April 2013.
Pangkaeker was convicted in 2001 in the Bellville regional court after he was found guilty of kidnapping and culpable homicide when he took his wife Rosetta Petersen’s two-year-old son from her. He kept the boy, who was not his biological child, for about three months.
On Monday his lawyer Saleem Halday submitted final heads of arguments, arguing that the relationship between Pangkaeker and his daughter was consensual. He submitted that the daughter had several opportunities to report the illegal relationship but “chose not to”.
Halday told the court the accused must be acquitted of charges one to 22 due to
“material discrepancies” and unreliable state witnesses. The only charge the state conceded “the evidence did not support a conviction” was count five for sexual grooming because the evidence given by minor witnesses was not satisfactory.
In terms of charges relating to the rape and murder of Tazné, the defence says the accused gave a plausible explanation as to how his DNA came to be under the nails of the young girl.
Pangkaeker stuck to his account of events which was that the child had scratched his forearm when their alleged kidnappers wanted to take her from the back of a bakkie.
During his evidence in chief, Pangkaeker testified that he and Tazné had ended up together in a taxi with four foreigners — who he alleged were drug dealers — who kidnapped them in Ravensmead, dropped them in Worcester, only to kidnap them again after midnight near Hexpark, a suburb in Worcester. It is this same group of people, one woman and three men, who Pangkaeker said killed Tazné.
State prosecutor advocate Lenro Badenhorst described the accused’s evidence as “pure fantasy” and submitted that “the only reasonable conclusion for the presence of the DNA
of the accused under the nails of the deceased was that she resisted him when he raped and attacked her”.
Halday argued the state did not produce sufficient evidence in relation to the rape charge, and the violating of a corpse charge, to sustain a conviction.
“The body was left from 7 to 19 February 2020 before being discovered. Anything could have happened during this time,” said Halday.
Badenhorst upheld that the injuries to the deceased’s pelvis were trauma caused while the accused was “violently raping” her near the N1 in Worcester.
The defence says the state only produced circumstantial evidence in the charges relating to Tazné.
“Should the honourable court find that the version of the accused is reasonably possibly true, he ought to be acquitted on these charges too,” said Halday.
Last week, Badenhorst characterised the behaviour of Pangkaeker as that of someone who “ticks all the boxes” of a child molester. He cited a study from the University of Southern California titled Child Molester: A Behavioral Analysis.
It states: “For this individual, the sexual abuse of children is simply part of a general pattern of abuse in his life. He is a user and abuser of people. He abuses his wife, friends, co-workers. He lies, cheats, or steals whenever he thinks he can get away with it. He molests children for a simple reason: His primary victim criteria are vulnerability and opportunity. He has the urge, a child is there, and so he acts.”
Shortly before the trial concluded on Monday, Judge Alan Maher asked the defence lawyer if his client had shown himself to be credible.
Halday conceded that the accused did not come across as a good witness but asked the court to bear in mind that the assault on Pangakaeker in a police van enroute to Pollsmoor in June had “affected his ability to remember things from the past”.
Pangkaeker pleaded not guilty to all counts against him.
He did, however, concede that he knew he had to inform his parole officers when he moved from Ladismith to Johannesburg, but had not done that. He admitted that he knew absconding from parole was a crime.
Judgment is expected on 24 October.