Second body found in Knysna
2005-11-16 08:13
Tisha Steyn
George - The half-naked body of another young woman was found in the bushes outside Knysna on Tuesday afternoon, five days after she went missing.
The body of Victoria Stadler, 20, who went missing at about 02:15 on Thursday, November 10, was found near the Noetzie dirt road close to Hornlee township east of Knysna.
It is the second murder of a young woman in this quaint tourist town along the Garden Route within a month.
This has raised questions about the possibility that a serial killer might be on the loose in the area.
Captain Eddie Cronje, police spokesperson, didn't want to confirm or deny that police are investigating the possibility the murders could be the work of a serial killer.
Burnt car wreck found
Mike Bolhuis, a private investigator from Pretoria, said on Tuesday that the possibility of a routine murderer is being investigated because there are so many similarities between the two murders.
Bolhuis said Stadler's mother, Hannetjie Stadler, had approached him to investigate the case. He stressed they were co-operating with police.
Jessica Wheeler, 18, was found in the garden of St George's Anglican church in Main Street, Knysna, on the morning of October 13. She was last seen alive in the Zanzibar club in the same street in the early hours of that morning. It was also the last place where Stadler was seen alive.
Stadler apparently left the club just after 02:00 and took an acquaintance, Heynie van Rooyen, who works at Stones club across the road from the Zanzibar, home.
She dropped Van Rooyen about 100m from the N2 in Hornlee "because I didn't want her to drive too far into the coloured township", he said on Tuesday.
Isaac Swarts, a Hornlee resident, led police to Stadler's car on Tuesday morning after he spotted the burnt wreck the previous day.
When he heard about the missing Stadler on the radio on Tuesday morning and read a report on her in the newspaper, he realised the car could possibly belong to the missing woman. He informed the police.
Police found the burnt wreckage at about 13:00 on a dirt road that turns off the Noetzie road. The body was found about 100m from the car at about 13:30.
Mrs Stadler travelled down from Makhado in Limpopo to Knysna on Monday.
Devastating loss
"There is still a 50% chance that my child is alive," she had said earlier. She took her daughter's dogs to Stadler's grandmother in Mossel Bay, "because Victoria would want me to look after the dogs", she said.
On her way back to Knysna, she heard that her daughter's 1993 VW Golf had been found. Later on Tuesday, she said that she was devastated but had accepted her daughter's death. She said she was sitting next to the sea near Plettenberg Bay and didn't want to speak to the media.
Stadler studied law in Port Elizabeth last year but ended her studies and enrolled for law and graphic design at Unisa this year, her friend, Gabriel du Toit, 19, said on Tuesday.
Two weeks before she went missing, she moved in with him in his flat in Knysna Heights. She planned to live there until she and a friend, Bronwyn Stopforth, moved to Mossel Bay.
Bolhuis asked on Tuesday that anyone with information that could solve this case or prevent another murder contact him on 082-447-6116 or Inspector Riaan Meyer on 044-302-6600.
- Die Burger