Family of Vandekeere’s alleged victim wants justice, closure

Almost seven years after Jurgen Vandekeere – accused of raping and murdering 20-year-old Chantelle Barnard – skipped bail and disappeared, her family has a glimmer of hope that justice may finally be served.

Vandekeere turned himself in to police this week.

According to a source close to the case, he flew into the country from Europe earlier in the week, and handed himself over at the Benoni police station on Wednesday.

Barnard’s aunt, Marina van den Bergh, said yesterday the family hoped he would reveal exactly what happened that fateful day.

“All Chantelle’s mother knows is that her child was brutally murdered… She wants to know – how long did she lie there before she breathed her last breath?

“It won’t be easy to hear but once she knows, she can make peace with it. It can’t come to an end until he says exactly what he did to Chantelle,” Van den Bergh said.

She said the entire family was overjoyed at the news that Vandekeere was back in police custody.

“I think I received about 33 messages in total. My cousin, whom I had messaged, called me from a hospital bed in Cape Town. Everyone is just so grateful that this has happened.”

Van den Bergh said it must have taken guts for Vandekeere to come forward after all this time.

“Especially knowing that he could spend the rest of his life in prison for this. But he deserves that, for what he did to Chantelle,” she said.

Barnard went missing on April 1, 2011. Later that day, her mother, Suzette Barnard, found her body in a Benoni townhouse. She was naked and her throat had been slit.

“Why did he have to slit her throat?” Van den Bergh said yesterday. “My stomach turns when I think about it.”

She described Chantelle as the apple of her eye and said her death had left the family in turmoil.

“It has been difficult for her parents to accept that Chantelle is no longer with them. Suzette still doesn’t say Chantelle is ‘dead’. She says she’s ‘gone’. Chantelle’s brother doesn’t talk about it at all.”

Vandekeere, whose father was Chantelle’s landlord at one stage, went missing just before his trial was due to start in late 2013. He was placed on Interpol’s red list but – aside from a reported sighting at an airport in Mozambique later that year – he disappeared without leaving a trace.

He appeared in the dock of the High Court in Pretoria yesterday looking significantly thinner than at previous appearances. His lawyers indicated there was a “medical issue” which would be addressed at a later stage.

Vandekeere’s case was postponed to March, when the matter will again come before the court in Pretoria. It is, however, expected to be transferred back to the court in Delmas, where it was originally enrolled.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

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