One of the accused was a criminal freed from jail after socialite killing.
|||Cape Town - One of the men accused of murdering Stellenbosch University professor Louis Heyns is a career criminal who was recently released from jail after serving time behind bars in connection with another murder in 2007.
The suspect, who worked as a male prostitute according to Malmesbury residents who knew him, was previously jailed for involvement in the murder of a well-known Stellenbosch socialite. The man’s half-naked body was found 30m down a cliff in Gordon’s Bay in October 2007.
And it emerged during a bail hearing at the time that the suspect, who cannot be named until he appears in the Somerset West Magistrate’s Court on Monday, had a string of previous convictions for crimes dating back to 1995. These included convictions for car theft and burglaries, along with two convictions for escaping, according to the record shown to the magistrate in the 2007 case, Du Toit Malherbe.
The court also heard the accused murdered the socialite a day after the two had had sex.
The body of paediatrician Heyns, a much respected professor at Stellenbosch University’s health sciences faculty at Tygerberg Hospital, was discovered in a shallow grave among milkwood trees at a wellknown gay pick-up spot, dubbed Lover’s Lane, at the Strand beachfront.
Heyns went missing a week ago en route to his home in Welgelegen, and his body was recovered at 4am last Wednesday. Investigators are looking at the possibility that Heyns may have been hijacked and his body dumped in the Strand.
The location of the body was apparently pointed out by one of the three men arrested in connection with the murder.
The three include the alleged male prostitute and his brother, as well as the owner of the chop shop in Malmesbury who allegedly bought Heyns’s car..
A Malmesbury resident told Weekend Argus on Sunday that the younger brother, whom he described as “the bad one”, spent several years in jail after the Gordon’s Bay murder.
In that case, the accused were caught after their victim’s car, a Toyota Conquest, was traced to a service station.
Heyns’s murderers are alleged to have sold his car, a grey Peugeot, to the chop shop. Heyns went missing after leaving his brother’s house in the car, apparently en route to his home. He never arrived.
Questioned on Saturday about whether the younger brother had been paroled or released after serving his full sentence,
Department of Correctional Services spokesperson Koos Gerber said it could have been either.
Meanwhile, various Malmesbury residents, who refused to be named, claimed to Weekend Argus yesterday that the brothers were drug addicts who both worked as male prostitutes.
“They slept with men for money. And they used the money they got for drugs,” one said.
Another resident believed the one brother may have been “lured” into the business by the other.
He also said the elder brother had stayed in The Haven night shelter, situated next to the Malmesbury chop shop, until about a month ago. He had also worked there part-time.
“His younger brother is the real crook… The younger one is the one who came out of jail recently. He sat there for murder,” the man said.
The man alleged that the brothers had come from a wealthy Upington family, “but they lost it all”.
When Weekend Argus visited the chop shop on Saturday, there were 17 car wrecks among heaps of tyres and a truck without back wheels.
Western Cape police spokesperson Captain Frederick van Wyk and Malmesbury police spokesperson Captain Henri du Randt both declined to answer any further questions about the murder on Saturday. They would also not say how Heyns was killed, nor exactly when.
Van Wyk said the suspects were aged 32, 37 and 43.
Heyns is survived by his wife Dalene, his daughter Eldalè, and sons Charl and Daneale.
The two brothers and the chop shop owner are due to appear in the Somerset West Magistrate’s Court on Monday. - Sunday Argus