Part 2 of the Unsolved South African Crime of the Missing Schoolgirls
Who is Gert Van Rooyen?
There is not much to be found Online regarding the early years of Van Rooyen, so I am sticking to the Basics of what I can find.
Cornelius Gerhardus Van Rooyen, better known as Gert Van Rooyen, born in 1938 and Died January 15th 1990. He was commonly known as Gert or by his Nickname “Bokkie”. As a Teenager Van Rooyen once lived in the Shadow of the Pretoria CBD, in a small house on Bloed Street. This was in the 1950s. In the 1950s Bloed Street was far different from what it is today. There were rows of lower to middle income houses that lined the Street. The Neighborhood was rough, Violence was common and there were murders that spilled onto the Streets.
Leon Vermaakt was a boy who was born just a block away from the Van Rooyen’s house in 1945. He says that later in his childhood he would walk past the Van Rooyen house daily on his way to School. He recalls that the Van Rooyen’s always had the front door closed. Considering the violence that occurred in the Neighborhood I don’t Particularly think that’s too odd. What is odd though is that Leon and his brother were actually forbidden by their parents to play with the Van Rooyen children. The brothers were friends with one of Gert’s younger brothers, Johnny. Johnny told the brothers that there were 8 people who resided in the Van Rooyen house. Leon says he didn’t have much to do with Gert, there was an incident he recalls that involved Gert though. It was a Saturday and Leon was playing on the Banks of the Apies River. He was suddenly hit on the forehead with a bolt that was fired from a Catapult. Leon still has the scar to this day. Leon continues to say that when he looked up he saw Gert and two other boys. It is said that in his teenage years, Gert already had a reputation of someone to be feared.
Gert did get married around 1960 to a woman named Aletta, they had six children – Anne Marie, Judith, Hannes, Flippie, Gerhard and Adriaan. He also started earning a legitimate living where he ran a Building Construction Business together with his brothers. In August 1983 Gert and Aletta divorced. In 1988 Gert started dating a Divorcee Francina Johanna (Joey) Hermina Haarhoff, who became his accomplice in his horrific crimes. The Couple started dating the exact same year that the first schoolgirl was abducted.
Gert Van Rooyen’s first crimes were various thefts. He was sent to a Reform School in 1954, after stealing a car which he used as Transport to get to Pretoria to visit his mother who was dying of Cancer. It is said he was traveling at this stage from Cape Town. In 1960, Gert was convicted of stealing motor spares and clothing. The next criminal conviction was the one I mentioned in Part 1 of my story where he abducted two young girls and physically and sexually assaulted them. His prison sentence was 4 years for this Crime. Gert’s most infamous crimes began in 1988 when he started abducting the schoolgirls.
Not much is known about Gert Van Rooyen’s Female Accomplice, Joey Haarhoff. According to Articles she was younger than Gert, a divorced woman. I can’t seem to find any explanation as to why she would help a monster like Gert abduct young girls. The only conclusion one could come to is that she is purely just evil herself, and one can assume she wanted to make her partner happy by giving him what/who he wanted. When their crimes were discovered people had described Joey as a loving person but that she had changed when she Gert Van Rooyen. I have found that Joey has a daughter of her own (probably from her first marriage), Amor Van Der Westhuyzen who has written a book about her childhood that involves emotional, physical and sexual abuse. The name of the book is in Afrikaans titled “Mishandel, Misbruik, Misken”. The English Translation being Mishandled, Broken and Misunderstood. The Author of her book is Carla Van Der Spuy.
I found a YouTube clipping that seems to be a short Journalist Made Video with Amor and Carla titled “The Unknown Victim”. At the time this story was done with Amor she was 53-years old and had moved to a small Town called Tabazimbi in the Limpopo Region. Although claimed to be a loving person until her relationship began with Gert, Amor states that her mother was always a “very hard woman”. A woman that allowed Amor to be abused and never protected her. Amor has memories of her childhood where she received beatings in her cot/crib, meaning she was a baby or at the latest a toddler. Amor claims to have been beaten by her mother throughout her childhood, mostly at night when she couldn’t see her mother coming. Joey would use her fists to punch the wind out of her own daughter. Joey was also emotionally abusive to her daughter, basically telling her things like she would never amount to anything in her life. She even told her daughter at one point she wished she was dead. Amor claims her sexually abusive began with her biological father. Amor is adamant her mother knew of this abuse and just decided to ignore it.
Amor recalls when her mother and Gert were wanted by the police in 1990. Amor was with her husband visiting his relatives in Klerksdorp. Amor and her husband arrived at their house in Pretoria and saw a broken window. Inside their house they found Joey and Gert, who appeared to have been sleeping. Amor and her mother went into the kitchen where Joey told her daughter they were wanted by the police, but for some reason she told told her daughter they were wanted for Kidnapping a Policeman’s child for Ransom money and that this child had escaped. Amor told her mother that her and Gert should go turn themselves into Police, to which her mother replied to her – “you don’t understand, they (the Police) will kill us”. Shortly after this conversation Gert and Joey left the house, and that was the last time she saw her mother. Once her mother had left Amor phoned her mother’s sister who went by the name Poppie. Poppie told Amor that Joey and Gert were the ones behind all the kidnappings.
It’s been established through witness accounts that Joey was the one who would approach the young girls and lure them back to Gert’s vehicle. Because Joey was a woman the schoolgirls felt safe with her. If only they knew she was taking them to a monster.
True Crime Stories 