On the Devil's Trail: How I hunted down the Krugersdorp Killers

ABOUT NICKI GULES

Nicki Gules is Assistant Editor for News, Investigations and Projects at the Sunday Times. She began her career at the newspaper 23 years ago and covered a variety of beats, the most notable of which was Organised Crime and Criminal Justice. For the past 15 years, Nicki has edited news, features and, for the past eight years, investigations at City Press and Sunday Times. She dedicates her work on this book to her husband and two children.

CHAPTER 1

TAKING ON THE DEVILSDORP CASE

This is just an ordinary story.

I definitely have other stories to tell that are probably even more interesting than this one. Like the one about the time I spent three days following a truck’s transponder data to find a hijacked trailer. Or the time I took a week to solve the murder of a newborn baby, killed by a cop. But the story about the Electus per Deus cult, otherwise known as The Krugersdorp Killers, who murdered 11 people, seems to be the only story people want me to talk about. This story takes place in Krugersdorp, a gold-mining town on Gauteng’s West Rand. For more than a hundred years, the town has been known as Devilsdorp, a name it earned during the late 1800s because its crime rate was far worse than anywhere else on the Reef. Back then, its inhabitants used to beat and murder each other.

They still do.

For some, Krugersdorp is a town of plenty. In certain suburbs, people live in houses worth up to R15 million, with sunset views all the way towards the Magaliesberg to the west, and towards Sandton to the east. It is also home to the poor and working class, who stay around the town’s centre, living in blocks of run-down flats and century-old houses, where there are no walls to separate their cardboard-covered windows from the streets outside.

I have lived in Krugersdorp for most of my adult life. It is the place where I met my wife and my rock, Christelle – a fucking good cop and the love of my life – and where my four children were born. It is also where I live on the side of a mountain on the town’s northern edge, where Satanists still gather in the surrounding caves to do their deals with the devil.

I stepped into this story on 6 June 2016, a week after the cult performed their final murder. The previous month, over a period of just 20 days, three people – two men and one woman – had been killed. The victims, two financial advisors and an estate agent, had all gone to meet prospective clients in what would become known as The Appointment Murders.

The police investigation was going nowhere and the town’s residents were in a total state. After the third murder, that of estate agent Hanlé Lategan, who lived less than a kilometre away from me, everybody really began to panic. Many didn’t want to go out at night any more. Those who usually met their clients after hours stopped doing so, and most of the appointments they did make were held in secured areas, not in private homes. The newspapers were full of stories about the murders. Everyone was freaked out, believing that a serial killer – or serial killers – was out there.

The Station Commander of Krugersdorp Police Station was given a whole lot of crap by the community. It was an embarrassment to the police that this was happening – there were still no suspects or arrests. As a result, the provincial commanders appointed a task team under Brigadier Manie Victor from the Gauteng war room to solve the crime.

So, the police went to the rough areas of town, to Krugersdorp West and Burgershoop, near where the bodies of financial advisors Anthony Scholefield and Kevin McAlpine had been found in their car boots, and started interrogating people. Under pressure to prove they were doing something, they went all out to demonstrate that they were doing their jobs and, in the process, arrested people who hadn’t even been involved in the crimes.

Eventually, a captain I had worked with told Brigadier Victor that the case was going nowhere, and that he needed a good cop. He apparently told him, There’s only one person you have to have on this case … and that’s Ben Booysen. Ben ‘Bliksem’ Booysen. It was a Friday night when the Brigadier called me. I had just taken my sleeping pill, something I’ve had to do nightly ever since I was involved in a life-changing car accident about 25 years ago. Already half asleep, I stumbled out of bed and went to sit on the steps leading down from the passage to my bedroom. I agreed to take on the case … and then promptly forgot about it.

The next morning, my wife Christelle asked me, Do you remember you spoke to a brigadier last night?

No, I replied. Brigadier? What brigadier? I wasn’t speaking to anybody last night!

You agreed to take over the Krugersdorp killings case!

I called him back that morning and told him that I had taken a sleeping tablet and couldn’t quite remember what we had discussed. I probably spoke a lot of shit. I’m not known as a person with good manners. If something happens and I don’t like it, I’ll say so. Where others will usually keep quiet, I won’t. As a result, I don’t have many friends.

We arranged to meet that Monday at Krugersdorp Police Station, where I explained that I would take on the case, but I would only work if I could do it alone. That’s not to say that the guys on the task team weren’t any good. It is simply the way I was trained and how I have always worked.

I had been part of the Hawks’ anti-corruption unit until I was chased away after I demanded action be taken in a case involving a relative of my then-commander, who was alleged to have taken a R900 000 bribe. Since the beginning of 2016, I had been sitting at my wife’s office in the provincial police headquarters in Parktown, working on a few investigations and helping out on others.

The day after the estate agent Hanlé Lategan was killed, a policeman acquaintance of mine summed up how the town was feeling when he posted on Facebook: I am embarrassed, I hope now after the latest murder, someone will wake up and give the case to someone who can, and who wants to do his work.

I immediately replied: I would like to investigate those three dockets.

Someone should have told me to be careful what I wished for.

CHAPTER 2

CHOSEN BY GOD

Electus per Deus, Latin for Chosen by God, had its roots in a 2007 meeting between Christian do-gooder Ria Grunewald and a self-proclaimed occult survivor she had been asked to help – a young mother called Cecilia Steyn. In a statement I later obtained from Ria, Cecilia claimed to have left the Satanic church, where she had apparently been a victim of ritual abuse since she was a baby. According to Cecilia, her evil father and the witches who surrounded him were now trying to force her to return.

Ria and her group, Overcomers Through Christ, made it their mission to save Cecilia. One of their duties was to help Cecilia on so-called high nights – dates on the Satanic calendar when their power was at its strongest. On these nights, a hapless Ria and her band of believers would gather around Cecilia’s bed in her tiny two-bedroom apartment in Cosanna Flats, on the corner of Kobie Krige and Burger streets, and wait for all hell to break loose.

Cecilia, who told them she was an intergenerational Satanic witch, would writhe around on the floor, spitting blood as demons appeared to take over her body. Videos taken of these evenings show her young children screaming and crying, begging Satan not to take their mommy while the women gathered around her praying hard, placing their hands over her ears, nose, mouth and even her vagina in an effort to prevent the rapes she claimed she’d endured from Satan himself.

But it all turned out to be a total lie. The blood she spat out had been drawn by herself from her own body. She stored it in the fingers of latex gloves that she kept in her mouth, biting them open when the time was right. The multiple personalities she said she had because of trauma inflicted at the hands of her Satanic high priest father were all an act. And, boy, was Cecilia a good actress.

Ria developed a training course on Satanism called Know Your Enemy, using Cecilia for research. But it would later emerge that it, too, was all bullshit, containing information found on the Internet.

When Ria and Cecilia parted ways, some of Ria’s students would leave her and go on to become members of the cult of Cecilia Steyn. These people included Zak Valentine, who had graduated cum laude with a finance degree from North West University; Valentine’s wife, travel agent and student pastor Mikeila; Marinda Steyn, a respectable English teacher at Hoërskool Jan de Klerk; and Marinda’s two children, Le Roux and Marcel.

These five people became the core of the cult that went on to murder 11 people. They became totally enslaved to Cecilia, swallowing all her bullshit and doing everything she told them to do. Educated people, clever people, all danced to the tune of a woman with a Grade 9 education. Ria’s story, which I asked her to write down when we first met in 2017, shows how much Cecilia’s bullshit baffled everybody else’s brains.

Cecilia … gave me a marriage certificate between her and Satan. Cecilia had implants all over her body, little chips with which they controlled her, she wrote.

When Cecilia was small she was locked up in cupboards for many days, was bathed in hot water and scrubbed with scouring pads. She was chained outside with the dogs, without food, while her parents went on holiday … She was locked up in cages with snakes and forced to kill people. She was buried alive with just a little pipe for oxygen, in a coffin full of insects. She was addicted to human blood and ate raw liver when I met her.

Ria went on to explain, I truly believed her life depended on me and if I left her, she would die, and it would be my fault.

Ria wrote of one high night when Cecilia was lifted from the ground and thrown against the wall. When she went for x-rays the following day, they showed she had broken her back.

I couldn’t see the break, wrote Ria, but she said the doctor said if she made one wrong move, she would be paralysed for life.

Of course, the following night, unseen forces started throwing her around again and she fell on the floor, paralysed. I was lying next to her on the floor, continued Ria, crying, begging God to heal her. A little while later she said that feeling had started to come back into her body, and eventually she was able to get up, and all her pain was gone. She was totally healed, she said. I was very glad for her and told many others about this wonderful miracle.

Cecilia also convinced her followers that she had an orphanage in the United States that housed about 200 children of witches who had been smuggled out to prevent them from becoming human sacrifices to Satan. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to recognise what complete crap this all was, but Ria and her people fell for it, and they fell hard.

By 2012, Ria had spent so much time rushing to Cecilia’s side each time she needed help to fight off Satan that she had lost everything. Her flat, her ministry, her job, and even her relationship with her children. She had reached a very bad rock bottom and realised that she just couldn’t do it any more.

Rejected by Ria, a furious Cecilia wanted revenge. She got her lackeys, Marinda and her children, together with Zak and his wife Mikeila, to bomb the cars that stood outside a house in Krugersdorp where Ria and her group were holding a meeting. A second petrol-bomb attack followed, this time at the Lighthouse Full Gospel Church, where another of Ria’s allies was a pastor.

Soon after the bombings, Ria met Cecilia at the coffee shop over the road from Cosanna Flats where Cecilia lived, and told her that she could no longer look after her.

Cecilia was beyond furious. Well, then people are going to die, wrote Ria. She said if I thought the bombs were something, what was coming would be much worse. And people did die. Cecilia made sure of that.

CHAPTER 3

THE 2012–2016 KRUGERSDORP KILLINGS

The first to be murdered, on 26 July 2012, was Ria’s ally and group member Natacha Burger. Cecilia had accused Natacha of saying a prayer that caused the deaths of 171 children in the orphanage. That was bullshit, of course, but Cecilia wanted revenge and she knew that Natacha’s death would hurt Ria deeply – which is exactly what she wanted.

Zak and his wife Mikeila used Natacha’s elderly neighbour, Joy Boonzaaier, to lure her to her house with a handwritten note that read, Natasha [sic], please come and see me urgently!! Tannie J. Zak then killed them both. Mikeila, who Cecilia had ordered to murder them to prove herself, couldn’t take it, and she ran away to the couple’s car.

Pictures of the crime scene and autopsy photos show just how gruesome the murders were. Natacha, dressed in dark blue jeans and a black hooded coat, was photographed lying on the floor of her neighbour’s neat sitting room-floor, in front of the floral curtains. Her face had been slashed with a knife, leaving gash marks across her chin, cheeks and nose. Her eyes and mouth remained open in terror, her hair blood-soaked. Gashes on her fingers showed how much she had tried to fight for her life, Tannie Joy’s note still clutched in her hand.

Later, Cecilia would boast that Natacha had begged and squealed like a pig before she died.

Crime-scene photos show Tannie Joy lying on her stomach on her bedroom floor, in front of her neatly made bed and neatly packed laundry basket. Her throat had been slit and there were numerous gashes in her head. Nothing else was out of place in the room. Cecilia later referred to her as collateral damage.

The next to die, less than a month later, on 13 August 2012, was Ria’s mentor, Pastor Reg Bendixen. Cecilia was furious with him, blaming him for Ria’s rejection of her. After making an appointment with him to ensure he would be there, Zak and Marinda arrived at his home, both dressed in police uniforms. Zak smashed the old man’s head in with an axe while Marinda, the respectable school teacher, stabbed him again and again with a knife. The two had brought along Marinda’s daughter Marcel – only 14 years old at the time – to film the murder because Cecilia wanted to watch him die. Just before the killing, Ria received an SMS from a number she didn’t recognise. Hi Ria, the message read, have you said your goodbyes to Reg? I hope you did. The attack on Reg Bendixen, who looked like a sweet old uncle in his grey pants, blue shirt and navy patterned jersey, was even more savage than the attack on Natacha. Crime-scene and autopsy photos reveal gashes all over his head and face. The right side of his head had been smashed in and there were chunks of flesh missing from it. But now there was a problem. Shocked by the brutality of the murders of Natacha and Joy, Mikeila decided she wanted to leave the group. After sharing this with her husband, Cecilia and Marinda hatched a brutal plot to kill her. Her husband Zak was completely in on it.

It was decided that Marinda and Marcel would do the deed. It was time Marcel learned how to kill.

On the morning of 4 October 2012, a little before 8am, Marinda parked a short distance away from the Sunset View complex in Ruimsig. She and Marcel walked to Zak and Mikeila’s home, Marinda carrying the spare keys and garage remote Zak had provided her with, as well as a serrated knife and a hammer. When they arrived, they let themselves in through the garage.

To make the killing a bit easier, Zak had put sleeping pills into his wife’s morning coffee. As Mikeila lay sleeping, Marinda hit her on the head with the hammer. The blow woke her up, so Marinda then stabbed the 23-year-old victim a total of 64 times, and only stopped when Mikeila stopped praying for her life.

Crime-scene photos show a neat, face-brick unit with clipped lollipop trees and two white steel chairs out front, where Zak and his wife may have sat in happier times. Mikeila had written Bible verses on her walls, maybe hoping for God’s protection. Matthew 28:6 was one of them: But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run and not be weary; and they shall walk and not faint. Police photographs show the couple’s cats sitting under the entrance-hall table and a takeaway Debonairs Pizza box lying on the kitchen counter. The couple’s basic furniture and décor gave an indication of just how much money they were handing over to Cecilia each month. They were deep in debt, another reason Mikeila wanted to leave Electus per Deus.

It was clear that there had been no forced entry because the locks of the sliding glass door and security gate were intact. The scratches Zak pointed to on the gate were nothing more than damaged paint.

Mikeila’s body was found under their red-, gold- and black-striped duvet. She was wearing Hello Kitty pyjama pants. Deep gashes on her fingers showed that she had tried to defend herself. Pictures of her left hand showed that she had Zak’s name tattooed onto her ring finger. Her Bible was on her bedside table, on top of which lay a book, In die Skuilplek van die Allerhoogste, and a packet of Kent menthol cigarettes. Blood was found smeared on a towel in the bathroom.

Before Mikeila was killed, Ria had been the number-one murder suspect. After the killing, which had been committed at a time when Ria was out of town, police were forced to conclude that Ria could not have done it.

It was then that they began to consider Electus per Deus as suspects.

*

More than three years passed between Mikeila’s brutal murder and the next spate of killings. After dropping Ria as a suspect, the police failed to catch the real killers – even though Cecilia and her Electus per Deus group were on their radar and they had strong evidence against them.

By 2015, Zak’s foreign-exchange trading business had tanked and he had lost a lot of cash belonging to other people. Cecilia’s group decided they needed money – big money. Cecilia reminded them they had to pay for the orphans, as well as her weekly sessions with her shrink, each costing R5 000. This was also bullshit. Zak was Cecilia’s bank and the money he was earning as a broker at Discovery Health just wasn’t enough for her any more.

Enter John Barnard, a man who bought drugs from Cecilia and who lived with Marinda in her one-bedroom flat. He suggested they rob Peter and Joan Meyer, the wealthy owners of the printing shop where he worked. At 7pm on 27 November 2015, Marinda, Zak and Marcel arrived at the Meyers’ triple-storey house in Noordheuwel for an appointment they’d made with them. Marinda had already introduced herself to Peter as Gloria from the Department of Trade and Industry. She had said she wanted a million-rand bribe to smooth the way for a government investment they needed in order to build a multimillion-rand waterpark in KwaZulu-Natal. Peter had already saved R46 million for the family’s dream project and the members of the cult expected there to be a lot of cash at home.

But there wasn’t.

The gang only found this out after they had held the couple at gunpoint and tied their hands behind their backs with cable ties. After being told there was no money at home, Zak lost his temper. He stabbed Peter and then began stabbing Joan. As he was stabbing Joan, Peter started reciting Psalm 23. This only made Zak more furious and he went wild, stabbing Joan and Peter in alternating blows.

The trio