Devil is in the detail in solving Krugersdorp Killers case

• Published date: 30 April 2022
• Publication title: Weekend Argus

By the time Booysen took over, 11 people had been murdered by a group calling themselves Electus per Deus

The son of a miner who was all too fond of the bottle and the fist, nothing about Ben’s bleak upbringing put him in stead to crack one of South Africa's biggest murder cases. Yet driven by a deep sense of justice, Booysen made headlines when he arrested Cecilia Steyn, the mastermind behind the heinous killings, along with her five accomplices.

His book, On the Devil’s Trail: How I Hunted Down the Krugersdorp Killers, written in collaboration with journalist Nicki Gules, Booysen divulges shocking details of massive police incompetence, while exposing sensational new information around the killers, their crimes and life in prison, in this twisted tale that’s kept the nation on edge for a decade.

The following is an extract from the book.

A Conundrum of Cops

One of the things that I had asked Ria about at our meeting at the hotel was a video that was made of Reg Bendixen’s murder. I had received information about this tape from Cecilia’s father.

Oom Piet Brand had phoned me and claimed that there were videotapes I should take a look at, which had allegedly been given to Cecilia’s sister’s husband, Phillip Jacobs, to destroy. I had hoped that they were the tapes of Reg Bendixen’s murder. Cecilia had apparently sent Marcel along with Zak and Marinda to film the killing with a small hand-held camera.

Marcel never confessed to filming the murder, but at the time I thought it was likely the only reason for Marcel being there – so Cecilia could see how he died. Zak and Marinda were in police uniform; they didn’t need a child to be there to encourage the pastor to open up for them, as they had testified in court.

Oom Piet said he believed that the video was with Jacobs, his stepdaughter’s husband, whom they call Flippie. I told him that if he managed to get me that video with such a damning piece of evidence, I would put a big claim in for him to get reward money. Eventually he called and said he had the tapes but that they had been badly burnt. Piet told me that Flippie had sent his children to bury them and then one of them went and dug them up afterwards and gave them to Oom Piet. Flippie didn’t even know that Oom Piet had the tapes.

The casings of the tapes had been badly melted, but the reels were still intact. I went to the police forensics headquarters in Pretoria and asked them to extract the information for me. At first, they said it would be...