All language subtitles for BOETIE.BOER.S01E03.720p.SMAX.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.x264_track3_[eng].1

(ominous music)

(birds chirping)

(Derrik) I once asked some
psychologists,

so if a serial killer committed
his perfect fantasy murder

and it went absolutely
according to plan

on his first killing, would he stop?

And the answer I got was no.

As every human being fantasises and
grows, he would develop and grow

and he would evolve.
So, Wilken is no different.

When he starts off killing,
strangling.

It's all about the control.

Later, he becomes more aroused,
more brazen.

(dramatic music)

♪ Beware of the wolves my baby ♪

♪ They're spying for love ♪
♪ From the porch tonight ♪

♪ And as the light begins to dim ♪
♪ They'll start the skinning ♪

♪ Of your innocent body ♪
♪ Naked in the night ♪

♪ So come and shine your light ♪

♪ Ooh, ooh ♪
♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh ♪

♪ Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh ♪

♪ Shine your light ♪

(bell tolling)

(Giada) Stewart Wilken was, for me,
one of the first prominent cases.

In that batch with people
like the Station Strangler

Moses Sithole, the Norwood Rapist.

He was very much part of
that cluster,

and killed in a way that
had quite bizarre elements.

Wilken's uniqueness as
a serial killer,

starts in one very specific place
and that's with his victimology.

So Wilken was the only serial killer,

at the time that
took two groups of victims.

Generally,
a serial killer would focus,

or fixate on one sort of victim,
either maybe females or prostitutes,

children if he's a paedophile,

or then homosexuals,
males, if he's gay.

I'm being sexist in saying that, but
I mean, most serial killers are men.

(dramatic music)

So, his victimology was
two categories of people.

Taking of children, boys,
sodomising them, murdering them.

Again,
doing to them what was done to him

and then also
the hatred towards women,

which he festers
around his first wife, Lynne.

You know, it's the desertion,
the prostitution on her part

which made him feel like
he wasn't good enough.

The constant theme
in his statement of...

the fact that these prostitutes
are charging him money for sex,

and he believes that
the fact that he was given a penis

and they have a vagina, constitutes
that he should have sex for free

from any woman he wants.

If a woman asks him money for sex,
she's stealing from him.

(indistinct chatter)

(Gérard) So, it's now January 1991.

Wilken is at the Red Lion Hotel
which is a well-known,

infamous bar hotel
in the north end of Port Elizabeth.

And he meets 29-year-old,
adult female,

coloured, sex worker,
Mercia Papenfus.

(tense music)

(tape cassette player whirring)

(Gérard) And at one point,
as they're cutting through the park

he says to her,
he wants to have sex here.

(Gérard) She then decides to demand
the payment up front for the deed

which he then decides
he's not gonna do.

(Gérard) And he actually says,
in a statement

I'm not going to pay a whore
money for sex with the vagina

that God gave her,
and a penis that God gave me.

And essentially, what he does,
is he forces her down

takes off some of her clothing,
and strangles her.

(choking/gasping)

(Gérard) And only once she's dead,

does he then end up
having sex with her.

And by all accounts,
this is the first time we know that

Wilken actually commits necrophilia,
which is something that

will become synonymous
with many of his future victims.

(melancholy music)

(Veronica) This is the midday news,
with Veronica Fourie.

Another body has been found
in St George's Park

in central Port Elizabeth.

This time, a woman was found
naked and strangled to death.

Local authorities are asking
the community not to panic

amidst growing concern
of a serial murderer

aptly known as the
St George's Park killer.

The body is yet to be identified.

(ominous music)

(Derrik) St George's Park.
So much history.

I never picked up on that,
at that time.

I mean, we picked up on it later

but there was two murders
which took place and they--

It seems at some time,
that it would have been,

the first time that
two murders had been conducted

in a very close proximity
to each other.

And obviously, the press jump on that

and start looking at it
as a possible copycat murders

or same person killing
in the same area.

And that would have led to
the name St George's Park killer.

(Brett) The 1990s was a remarkable
time to be living in South Africa.

I will never forget it,

simply because there were
these incredible events happening,

almost every week, every month.

You had the euphoria
of the successful transition

to democracy, the release of Mandela,

and the democratic elections.

And then, of course,
in 1995, the Rugby World Cup,

which was an incredible time.

The sense of cohesion
among South Africans of all cultures,

was incredible.
There was absolute joy.

There was so much to be thankful for,
and so much to be happy about.

And things were changing
in our country.

We weren't the pariahs of the world.

We were this nation that
had made a success out of evil.

And here we were.

But in fact,
there was a layer of evil remaining.

And this was very evident,

in some horrible crimes that
were taking place.

There were these mass killings.

And it was quite incredible to
think that at this time where

the country was celebrating so
much there was a state of euphoria,

over so much to be
thankful and happy about.

And yet,
there was this underbelly of horror.

And this came out in various ways.

Certainly with the Station Strangler,
and Moses Sithole, the ABC killer.

(Anchor) Police arrested
Mr Sithole after they staked out

an industrial area
in Benoni late last night.

(Gérard) Around about 1994,
as a result of

the Station Strangler series
in Cape Town,

where young children
were being murdered,

and the Moses Sithole,
well at the time,

called the ABC serial murders
in Pretoria and Johannesburg,

that the police started to
bring in a capacity

to assist with investigations of
a more psychological nature.

(Giada) Was serial murder
a new phenomenon in the '90s?

There's two schools of thought.
The one says, well, it was.

And there's sociological theory
around change

and what was going on politically.

But what we also noticed
during Apartheid

there was a focus on
certain kinds of activities,

which meant that cases of
serial murder might have been missed

because it wasn't the priority for
policing agencies in the country.

(Gérard) Law enforcement,
probably across the world

wasn't seen as this
forward thinking entity.

So the idea of bringing in,
sort of, psychology

to understand crime scenes and
offenders, was very alien.

(Derrik) So the Station Strangler
case had taken place.

Top-notch guys,
but we weren't trained in

serial killing investigations, so,

at the end of the day,
they only got him on one case.

But I think by then the
phenomena of serial murder

and serial homicide, had
showed its face in South Africa

and we needed to-- to catch up.

So General "Suiker" Britz took
over the unit from,

I think it's General
Krappies Engelbrecht at the time.

Except every general always
brought his own new standard

or his own new thing into the units.

"Suiker" Britz brought in
Dr Micki Pistorius.

(Micki) I'm never really
very far from it.

Um, it's never bothered me.
It's interesting.

I'm a scientist,
I look at it scientifically.

Even still in lots of law enforcement
agencies in the world today,

there's no such thing as
a profiling unit like, you know,

we've had since the mid-90s.

So in that sense,
it was quite forward thinking

that we need a different way to
understand these types of criminals.

Maybe parallel to that was the
times changing in South Africa

you know,
that we need to be more modern.

And, you know, Micki just decided
that this is something worthwhile.

(Derrik) So, at one point,
Micki chose 28 guys.

Most of the guys they picked were
advanced, experienced investigators,

but she'd also heard of
this murder case

so, my name had somehow
ended up on her desk.

I was one of
the 28 that were initially trained.

(Micki) Psychological profiling.

Getting into the mind of
the serial killer. That is your goal.

(Gérard) At the time,
Dr Pistorius was the head

of the Investigative Psychology
section, which, of course,

is intimately involved
in serial murder cases.

They realised they had to
have some kind of a capacity

to help understand
these types of criminals.

(Micki) Now how to build the profile.

(Gérard) How these types of
criminals think typically,

how they behave, what can we
expect from them in the future,

what kind of person would be
committing these crimes?

(Micki) You need to
become the serial killer.

Because that leads us straight
to behavioural analysis.

(Derrik) The training with Micki
was something to behold.

I understood psychology.
My mother loved it.

It was never my forte
when I was younger.

So, now to be suddenly
subjected to these things like

Freudian psychosexual development
as a cop. We were like, "Jeez".

Some of the guys were like,
"This is a lot of kak."

"How's this ever gonna help
us catch anybody?"

But I think, personally,
I was quite in awe with it

because there was stuff there, I
knew no one in my division or unit,

had ever spoken about.

With Micki's training it was really
the first time in our lives

we had the FBI stuff
that was introduced to us.

In the case of the ABC Killer,
Moses Sithole,

there was an incredible urgency

which is why Micki Pistorius
got the help of someone like

Colonel Robert Ressler,
who was a former FBI agent,

who had been involved in
serial killer cases

in the United States,
like Jeffrey Dahmer, and Ted Bundy.

You know, when does this FBI
agent come and help out

with catching a
South African serial killer?

(Robert) In the States, probably the
top one would be the John Gacy case

who killed 33 young men
over a period of five years.

The Jeffrey Dahmer case.

The young man that was cannibalising
people in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,

and David Berkowitz
the Son of Sam Killer,

and I guess you could name
a few more, you know.

(Derrik) Colonel Robert Ressler was
a former military police officer

who, in his own career,
had come across serial killing.

So, he went to the FBI,
and at one point became part of

the FBI divisions and he brought
this phenomena of serial killing

to the attention
of the FBI authorities.

Behind that thin facade is
a very dangerous individual

who is a charmer, a manipulator.

(Derrik) They didn't understand
enough about it,

and they wanted to learn. So, they
went into the prisons and they

started talking to the serial
killers that had been convicted.

Edmund Kempers,
Bundy's, Jeffrey Dahmer.

Asking them questions,

trying to gather as much
information and intelligence.

So in 1995,
after our training took place

the big case at that time
was Moses Sithole.

(Derrik) The guys were
battling to catch him.

So, it was decided to
bring him over to profile

and to just talk to
the investigation team

and give them some tips and ideas
on how to actually catch Sithole.

(Robert) What is a serial killer?

(Gérard) So when Ressler came back

after assisting with
the Moses Sithole case

he came back to present training
to the South African Police.

Derrik, who was stationed at one of
the Murder and Robbery units

in Port Elizabeth, was then selected
to be one of the representatives

to join that initial training.

And of course, just exposed them to
I think, sort of, a lot of

mind-blowing stuff for a South
African detective at those times.

(Derrik) So the training in '96
took place in Paarl, in Cape Town,

South Africa,
with Robert Ressler and Thomas Miller

who was FBI in Europol.

And basically it was intense
because they were teaching us

how to assess crime scenes from their
perspective. Showing us real cases.

Cases where he'd been called into
by the local police, to consult on.

So, the thing that
we really liked about it was

they were cops,
they weren't psychologists.

They had the psychological element

but they were looking at things
from a different perspective

and giving us intel like, distances
from where the guys would kill

what to look for,
entrance into the crime scene.

(Robert) ..victims and he
approached them at their condo.

(Derrik) There're two types
of killers, like your organised

and your disorganised guy.

So your organised killers are more
a Ted Bundy type personality.

He can live amongst the community.

He could be married,
he's got a family, he's got a job.

And then you get
your disorganised guy,

which we would basically call insane.

So he's one of the guys that
goes into a place,

kills three women,
chops them up, puts them in the pots

cooks them,
and then eats some of them.

I think for me, the highlight of
the training was I got to--

Because I met Ressler in '95 in
Joburg when he was doing the

profile for Sithole, I got to drive
him around a lot and take him--

So after, he wasn't presenting

when Thomas was presenting
some of the time

I would take him and drive him
around to places in Cape Town.

So the one story,
he went into the prisons

and he was speaking
to different serial killers

interviewing them and getting
information for the VICAP system.

And he had Edmund Kemper. So Edmund
Kemper, is like, a six foot six guy.

I think he killed his grand-parents
when he was about 11.

Murders his mom, his aunt,
cuts their heads off,

buries them under the windowsill,

and then kills quite
a few other students, etc.

But he's a big, big guy.
So Ressler is interviewing the guy

and then at one point the shift
change in prison takes place

and then Kemper says to him,
"Mr Ressler, do you realise

the guards are gonna be gone
for about 30 minutes to 45 minutes

before they come back?

Just think about it, I mean,
if I rip your head off,

you're the Head of the FBI
Behavioural Science Unit,

and I kill you,
and when they come back,

they find your head on,
like, the chair stuck over there.

Think how funny that's gonna be.

Ressler says he went from being
interrogator or interviewer,

to hostage negotiator,
negotiating for his own life.

It was quite a funny anecdote,
but it's...

it's just the way it is
with these guys, you know.

You like, if--
At one minute you're on top

and the next moment you could find
yourself at the bottom very quickly.

So what we find with the overwhelming

majority of
serial murderers in South Africa

is that their preferred method of
killing their victims,

is by strangulation.

Whether that be, manual
strangulation with their hands

or using an item of clothing
belonging to the victim.

So that begs the question,
why is it that, at least

South African serial murderers choose
that particular way of doing it?

And I think, it's probably mostly

got to do with that personal sense of

literally power and control
over someone else's life.

There's nothing in between you
and the person that you're killing

if you're using your hands,
or manual strangulation.

(Giada) It's also quite a
prolonged way of killing someone.

It's not instant, like with a bullet
or even a lethal stab wound.

So the individuals that choose it,
really want to enjoy it.

And it's almost wanting to
prolong that moment

of having control over life or death.
Because at any point,

he knows he can stop
and the person will live.

(Gérard) Wilken definitely said
that he felt in power, in control,

he felt like God,
while he was strangling his victims.

And very much linked to that was
the sexual arousal it gave him.

When you would see the person's
eyes like, sort of popping out

or their tongue starting to
sort of stick out

and he called it the
"jelly bean effect".

Also,
what he did admit to doing is

very often going back to
the crime scene

once the police
had discovered the body

and being in the crowd,
observing what they're doing.

So, that's often, also for us,
we say a sign of power and control,

that I'm right here.
I killed this person.

Everybody's here because of me,
right now. The bystanders, the police

but I'm the one that
did it and nobody knows.

(Derrik) I'm sure they fought back,

but he was able to
overcome them quite easy.

You know, put control over them
get them down on the ground,

and basically throttle the life out
of them, breaking their necks,

or throttling them to death,
which takes real human strength.

(Sidney) When I met him the
first time in the cells,

you could see he had that
presence about him that says,

"I know I can handle myself.

You know, I'm not scared of you
because you're a policeman."

During the years with Narcotics
branch my experience was,

you had the soft users the people
that could use, and he'd enjoy it

in the sense that it took him to
a happy place and that was it.

But quite often,
we also dealt with people

that if you were to wake him up
from his,

let's call it,
drug-infused stupor or whatever,

you could see, this person
doesn't know where he is now.

And it took quite a while to
start recognising

but not really remembering
what happened before that.

(Sidney) Very often,
you're dealt with a person that

the use of it simply enhanced
the aggression in him,

the strength of that person.

Long users, obviously,

it breaks down a lot of
your abilities

and you can quite possibly become
a real, real mean piece of work.

(groaning)

(laughing)

(Sidney) I can quite easily believe
that in the case of Mr Wilken

he, because of the using,
engaged in certain acts that,

either he doesn't remember it
or which normally,

he wouldn't have had the ability
or the-- I don't want to say guts,

but maybe guts is a good word,

he would not have had
the guts to do it otherwise.

(Derrik) From Wilken's killing spree,
we see that in the 1991 murders

from St George's Park, to 1995,
there's a clear cooling-off period.

So these cooling-off periods are
synonymous with serial killers.

Generally, when they're finding
themselves in a happy space.

On the 27th of July 1995,
Wilken kills again.

This time, he takes his
depravity to the next level.

(indistinct singing)

(ominous music)

(dramatic music)

(indistinct arguing)

(indistinct shouting)

(dramatic music)

(Derrik) This is the renowned
Red Lion Hotel.

In its heyday, it was the place to be
for the industrial employee.

Midday we had really good bar
lunches, and a nice game of pool.

So we would, from time to time,

frequent this place for a beer,
or so.

So if you were in for a fight or
you wanted to test your strength,

you were in the right place.

We'd fight regularly here and it
was quite a tough environment.

The ladies of the night would
use this as a launching pad

or a place where they would
frequent and stand around here.

I once actually asked what
was the going rate at the time

and I think they said 100 or 50,
or something to that effect.

Some of the girls a bit more,
but I think it would have been

probably his ruse at
R50 for a street child

or a woman that's prostituting
herself or on drugs.

It's a lot of money
if you've got nothing to eat.

So easy pickings for
someone with his intentions.

Maybe offer them food,
alcohol,

get a bottle of booze to go with it,
some drugs.

That would have been the way
he was able to easily manipulate

people that are at the bottom end
of the food chain and

suffering to survive.

In the pre-'94 disposition, a woman
would be arrested for prostitution.

So generally, when you're
talking about victimology

taking a prostitute is probably
one of your safer bets.

Because they're not
going to go to the cops.

In the Zweni case, we know that
she was working around this area

when Wilken took her,
and she was with a friend.

(ominous music)

-(Prostitute) Hello.
-(Boetier Boer) Hello, hello.

-Okay.
-(Boetie Boer) I'll take care of you.

(Prostitute) No, just do your thing.

(Derrik) At some point, the one
prostitute feels uncomfortable

with the situation,
and decides she's leaving,

but poor Georgina is
suffering from a gimp leg

from a vehicle accident she'd had,

some time earlier
and she can't get away.

-(dramatic music)
-(Georgina) Let go, let go!

(indistinct chatter)

(Georgina) No, no, no.
I don't like this.

I need my money.
Give me my money. Give me my money.

(Derrik) A fee is discussed for
the sexual deed,

and Wilken eventually
gives her the money.

Um, on arrival in the park,
when the sex is about to start

she takes the money and
lays it underneath her body

and then lies down
to avail herself for sex.

(sinister music)

(door opening)

(Officer) I need him to come down
to the Mount Road police station.

(Officer) We need him to come down,
as soon as possible.

(sombre music)

-(Georgina groaning)
-(Boetie Boer panting)

(Boetie Boer grunting)

which literally means,
"I really enjoyed it

as her body started to shudder,
as she was dying."

But then he does something,
that he hasn't done

in any of his previous cases.

He always carries a knife
with him, being a fisherman,

and he decides in this particular
instance to cut off the nipples,

on both breasts and
the external part of her vagina,

and he eats them,
at the actual scene.

(sinister music)

(tape cassette player whirring)

So, there can be various
reasons for cannibalism.

In this case,
it's not 100 percent sure.

He said for example,
that he just wanted to see

what these things tasted like.

So was it again a bizarre
form of experimentation?

Perhaps one could psychologically
argue the organs that

represent the female, you know,
the breasts and the vagina.

(Giada) There's also something
around,

wanting to take that person in,
in some way.

It's almost per se, saying,
it's not enough that I kill you.

I'm actually gonna chew you up,
and break you up into bits.

Not only feeling like they've
got power over life and death

but that they are not subject to
social buy-in and conventional--

The rules of society that
enable us to live together.

That's positioning themselves as
outsiders, and beyond the rules.

And we can go back to this idea that,

you know, they become
the gods of their own world.

(ominous music)

(Derrik) The next morning,
a young student,

which would have been
a college student,

on his way to one of the nearby
colleges walking through the park,

tranquil thoughts, discovers this
woman, lying naked, body parts cut.

I mean, just think of
a young student now walking there

contemplating writing a test,
or an exam,

thinking about his day ahead,
and then

being faced with this tremendous...

tremendous, horrific scene.
We have words like "evil",

and we use those kind of words to try
and explain this sort of phenomena.

But I don't even think "evil"
captures it properly.

It's a life that's completely empty.

Who just hates society,
hates his life, hates his existence.

He's able to then,
do whatever he wants to someone

that's incapable of defending
themself or helping themself.

(ominous music)

(sombre music)

(dramatic music)

(dramatic piano music)

(Gérard) So, now we find by
the end of the '80s,

things are not going well for Wilken.

His, sort of marriage to Lynne,

has sort of unravelled to
a large degree.

He's already started up
a second family with Veronica,

a young coloured woman from
Helenvale area, in Port Elizabeth,

and he literally seems to be
bouncing between the two families.

Sometimes he's staying here,
sometimes he's staying here.

(Derrik) So,
Wilken told me privately, that

the reason he changed from a white
woman, Lynne, to a coloured woman,

was he was scared that
he would meet his sister,

come across her in public life

and fall in love,
and have sex with her.

So to prevent that from happening,
he went to a woman of colour.

(Derrik) The reality of the truth
might be that these people that

he was mixing with, were in much
lower socio-economic groups,

and he could manipulate them a lot
easier and be able to do more,

and move around freely,

leave them on their own
for long periods of time,

which gave him the room to kill,
murder,

and do what else he was up to.

(Derrik) So Wilken's family dynamics
were of such a nature that

his first wife Lynne had a
child from her previous marriage,

and for all we know,
the initial relationship

with her was good
and favourable.

But once Wuane was born,
it seems that the focus on Wuane

was everything for Stewart

and he almost forgot about
the other little girl.

(film camera whirring)

(dramatic music)

(melancholy music)