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mind game
When a murderous shrink moved to a trusting coastal town, both had a surprise in store.
BY CARL ELLIOTT
FPO
why. At the time, Bowers was and said, “It will be good
only three years out of training. to get all this settled, espe-
“I was feeling insecure about cially since Annette had
what was going on,” he says. “I accused Colin of trying to
was thinking, Is there anything murder her.”
that I’m missing?” His insecu-
rity colored his interactions
with Colin Bouwer, who, as
head of the Department of Psy-
I
n most medical schools,
it is not hard
to identify the stars, the
chological Medicine, was sev- charismatic figures whose
eral notches higher than Bow- charm and enthusiasm
ers in the academic hierarchy. draw in students and resi-
Annette was discharged for dents. It’s not just that
the third time, on Christmas they radiate energy and
Eve. Early on the morning of excitement about their
January 5, 2000, Bowers got a work; it’s that the excite-
call at home. “Annette is dead,” ment seemingly extends to
Bouwer told him. He asked the you, personally. Colin
internist to come to his house Bouwer was this sort of
and sign the death certificate. figure. “He was a brilliant
This was an unusual request. Dr. Colin Bouwer dazzled and deceived his colleagues with ease. doctor,” a former patient
Signing a death certificate is says. “He had this way of
normally a job for the patient’s general Mann, and at one point Annette’s closest embracing his patients. He made me
practitioner, not a hospital consultant. friend, a South African expatriate living in feel important.” The psychiatric resi-
When Bowers arrived, it was clear that Auckland, spoke movingly about the faith dents (or “registrars,” as they are known
Annette had not died peacefully. The in Jesus that she and Annette shared. in New Zealand) found him dazzling.
bedroom was a mess, and Annette’s body Later, Annette’s body was cremated. “He made each one feel they had some
was splayed across the bed. The bed- Bowers was not the only person puz- special knowledge or intelligence that
clothes were soiled with vomit. Bowers zled by Bouwer’s behavior. The Reverend was not being recognized or put to full
suspected that she had undergone a sei- Mann prepared for a number of funerals use,” Dr. Jubilee Rajiah, a Dunedin psy-
zure. Yet Bouwer said that he had no- that week, but says that her visit to the chiatrist who trained in Bouwer’s de-
ticed nothing out of the ordinary until he Bouwer house was unlike anything she partment, says.
found Annette dead early that morning. had ever experienced. “It felt like a chem- Bouwer was born in Bloemfontein,
“We slept in different rooms,” Bouwer istry laboratory,” she says. “Sterile, as if it South Africa, in 1950. He graduated
later explained to the police. had been disinfected.” Mann usually talks from medical school at Pretoria Univer-
Bowers wanted to order a postmortem to the children of the deceased, because sity in 1975, and spent a number of
ANDREA VENTURA
exam to find out why Annette had died so they often have stories that she can use in years in South Africa as a general prac-
unexpectedly, but Bouwer objected. Both her eulogy. But, when she tried talking to titioner. At a meeting of Mensa, the
he and Annette were Jewish, he said, and, Colin and Annette’s two teen-age chil- high-I.Q. society, he met Annette
according to Jewish law, Annette’s body dren, Greg and Anthea, they sat silently Langford, who was then working as a
THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 6, 2010 37
physical therapist, and they married in the coast among steep, intensely green himself to what people want to hear.” He
1981. Later, Bouwer specialized in psy- hills, which swoop down unexpectedly to was often willing to experiment with
chiatry at Stellenbosch University, the reveal sandy white beaches. The effect is a higher doses of drugs and non-standard
most illustrious of the country’s Afri- cross between Ireland and Fiji. The Bou- combinations. His research was on anxi-
kaans-speaking universities. Dr. Sarah wers lived in a cliffside house overlooking ety disorders—social anxiety, panic disor-
Romans, a former head of Otago’s De- St. Clair Beach, known as the best surfing der, post-traumatic-stress disorder.
partment of Psychological Medicine, spot on the South Island. “Colin had this fascination with things
remembers meeting Bouwer at a con- Bouwer was hired by the University of that terrify people,” Romans says. “People
ference in Spain: “Here I am, an aca- Otago, New Zealand’s oldest university, being suffocated, being exposed to water
demic head of department, looking for as a senior lecturer in psychiatry, and he torture, or drowned.”
good staff, and here is this unpolished swiftly rose to the top administrative post. Some colleagues may have thought
diamond. He seemed like a great catch.” When I spent a sabbatical at the universi- that this was the result of Bouwer’s own
Dan Stein, Bouwer’s research partner at ty’s Bioethics Centre, in early 2000, his experiences. Bouwer told them that he
Stellenbosch, now head of the depart- office was across the street. Our paths had been involved in the South African
ment of psychiatry at the University of never crossed, but I knew several of his resistance struggle during the apartheid
Cape Town, sent an enthusiastic letter colleagues. They describe him as an ebul- era—joining the African National Con-
of recommendation: “On a personal lient, down-to-earth rugby fan who was gress in the nineteen-sixties, as a teen-
level, I regard Dr. Bouwer as a man of always good for a laugh or a story. He had ager—and had even counselled Nelson
enormous integrity. He has a wonderful decided to emigrate, he said, because of Mandela when he was released from
sense of humor and ability to commu- worries about violent crime. Bouwer had Robben Island. Bouwer described how,
nicate with others, so that he is held in a paunch and a bushy beard, and though when he was a young man, the South
warmest esteem by patients from all his hair was thinning on top, he wore it African police had detained him with-
walks of life.” long and unkempt; it gave him, as one out a trial for six months and tortured
In early 1997, Bouwer arrived at colleague said, “rather an Einstein look.” him for his political beliefs. He would
Dunedin; Annette and the two children He came across as deeply caring. “He’s the bring up his torture casually, at confer-
soon followed. The town was founded in sort of guy where you’d let your child sit ence receptions or over a beer, and then
the nineteenth century by Scottish set- on his lap and open a present,” a former provide graphic details. A doctor who
tlers. Its streets are named for those of Ed- assistant in his department told me. “He’s had seen Bouwer as a patient gave this
inburgh, and at its center is a statue of sort of a cross between Santa Claus and testimony: “He said the torture con-
Robert Burns, looking wistfully out to- your old uncle.” sisted of standing naked with a brick
ward Otago Harbor. When Mark Twain By all accounts, Bouwer was an excel- being hung from his testicles, sleep de-
visited Dunedin, in 1895, he wrote, “The lent psychiatrist. “He has this amazing an- privation, exercised to exhaustion with a
people are Scotch. They stopped here on tenna,” Sarah Romans says. “He can reach hessian bag over his head, then dunked
their way from home to heaven—think- out and just size people up and know in water until drowning, electric shock
ing they had arrived.” It would have been where their vulnerabilities and their administered to the penis and anus, sod-
an easy mistake to make. Dunedin sits on strengths are, and, chameleon-like, adapt omized and being confined to a single
cell.” The doctor added, “He said he
communicated to others by Morse code
at night and practiced meditation and
self-hypnosis.”
Few of Bouwer’s colleagues knew An-
nette. This was unusual in a city as small
and friendly as Dunedin, but Bouwer
rarely brought her with him to social
events, and told some colleagues that she
had social phobia. Still, he seemed de-
voted to her, and also to his two children,
whom he spoke about with obvious
warmth. One colleague told me that she
once spotted Colin and Annette walking
together down the street, holding hands,
and she remembered being moved by
their quiet affection.
On September 15, 2000, nine months
after Annette’s death, the Dunedin police
arrested Bouwer on murder charges. By
this time, the police had been tapping his
telephone and bugging his house for
“How about, for God’s sake, this one?” nearly three months. His genial air was so
convincing that his colleagues were terribly sorry about the delay in getting
stunned. Just about the only person who the final draft to you. I have been in East
wasn’t surprised was Andrew Bowers, the Timor doing volunteer work for Doctors
internist. Despite pressure from superiors Without Frontiers during their riots and
to drop the matter, he had worked quietly elections.” When he was at Stellenbosch,
with the police for months. Bouwer reportedly told his colleagues that
Bouwer’s method of murder was sim- his first wife had committed suicide after
ple. He had written prescriptions for glu- killing their two children. Later, he told
cose-lowering drugs, ground them up them that Annette was being treated for
with a mortar and pestle, and given them breast cancer at the University of Cape
to Annette, most likely in her food. (Al- Town and, as a result of metastases to her
though Annette was tested for such drugs brain, had become psychotic. None of this
in the hospital, the test was only sensitive was true, of course.
enough to detect the drugs shortly after Despite all the stories of having been a
they had been administered.) The day be- brave political dissident, Bouwer had ac-
fore Annette died, Bouwer picked up a tually been trained as a doctor by the
prescription for a thousand-unit vial of South African military. A press photo-
Humalog insulin, a dose large enough to graph from the time shows him standing
kill her. alongside his fellow medical graduates
The legal proceedings against Bou- with a slight smile on his face and a grad-
wer left his colleagues wondering what, uation robe draped across his shoulders,
if anything, they knew about him. Who wearing sunglasses and a military uni-
was he, really, and why had he killed his form. He was commissioned into the
wife with such methodical precision? South African Defense Force on Septem-
ber 22, 1975. Records show that he served