A SAPS forensic team yesterday began excavating a site on Blythedale Beach thought to be a burial site for girls kidnapped by paedophile Gert van Rooyen in the 1980s.
Also read: BREAKING NEWS: Blythedale search for paedophile Gert van Rooyen’s victims
As day two of the excavation continues, Editor of The Courier, Bruce Stephenson, interviews Alet Wright, the executive producer of SATV programme, Fokus, who initiated the latest dig.
Van Rooyen and his girlfriend Joey Haarhoff were accused of a spree of child kidnappings over 30 years ago.
In 1979 he abducted two girls aged 10 and 13 and forced them to perform sexual acts but released them a day later in Pretoria.
He was arrested and convicted on charges of abduction‚ sexual assault and common assault of the girls. He served three years of a four year sentence.
This is the second time police have excavated in Blythedale, after they found out that Van Rooyen and Haarhof had spent a weekend there.
In 2007 there was renewed interest after a set of adolescent bones was found on the beach near Umdloti, about 500m away from a holiday resort that Van Rooyen and Haarhoff were known to have visited.
However DNA testing did not identify any of their victims.
In 1990, Van Rooyen shot Haarhoff and committed suicide after another of their victims escaped in Pretoria.
The bodies of their victims were never found.
Wright said full details about the search would be revealed in the Fokus broadcast on Sunday night.
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