Original subtitles

GROANING

GRUNTS, EXERTIONS

It's really important that we look at the past in this country...

..that we dig deep into all of the occurrences

during the apartheid era and try and bring it into the light.

INDISTINCT SPEECH

Apartheid means separation, being separate.

Whites, blacks were all separated...

..but ultimately the losers

were black people.

Pushed into areas through forced removals,

kilometres and kilometres and kilometres away from

any kind of economic hub where they might have any hope of finding a job.

And the winners were white people who benefited massively

from this entire policy,

which was set up to dispossess black people.

The apartheid government operated violently, very violent.

Black people were disappearing during apartheid.

Black people were being murdered with impunity.

There are an inordinate amount of apartheid era killers

who have walked free

and they will never, ever be punished.

I've been working on the van Schoor case for more than 20 years.

He certainly is one of the most prolific killers

in South Africa to this day.

And I have been looking for evidence

of more shootings and killings,

because the rumour was that van Schoor had shot

over 100 black men and boys.

Hi.

We're trying to look for the location

of a place where a murder took place.

So we're trying to see if there's a wall like this.

This could be it.

- I don't know, you can ask the manager. I'm not sure. - OK.

Where's the manager?

Did you hear about this at all?

I mean, did you know that there'd been a killing on the road or...?

- I heard about Louis van Schoor,

but I've never, ever sort of...

..went into the deep details about it. - Yeah.

It was a bit of a hunting ground of his.

Hot spot, he would call it.

- So, the image that you showed me, there it is, right there.

- OK!

- That bit with the wall, that's the exact spot.

It's literally identical.

- Wow, thank you.

I would never have got in here otherwise.

- Um...

You know, it's stuff you see on TV.

You know, when...

And when you see it in real life,

it's like, "Gee, I know this place."

Um...

It gives you goose bumps, doesn't it? - Mm-hm.

- That someone so prolific was... Yeah.

- STUDIO: - 39-year-old Sybrand "Louis" van Schoor

has been found guilty in the East London Supreme Court

on seven counts of murder

and two of attempted murder.

Initially, the accused faced a total of 43 charges -

19 of murder,

21 of attempted murder

and three of assault.

During the eight-month trial,

the state withdrew 11 of the attempted murder charges

and dropped all the assault charges.

- They were biased towards him.

It was essentially a country governed by apartheid laws,

and everybody in the justice system

who could adjudicate were white.

He walked free after 12 years in prison.

Louis van Schoor was a security guard

guarding white-owned businesses.

He had these special alarms

and alarms usually make a sound,

but his was silent...

..and so that meant he could surprise any intruder.

They would not know he was coming.

These were intruders who were, in a lot of cases, pretty desperate.

Digging through bins,

maybe stealing some food...

..maybe some clothing.

You know, petty criminals.

Some were even children.

He was a kind of vigilante killer.

He was a dirty, hairy character.

You know, this great saviour

of the white community.

Every single one of the killings,

that we know of,

were black people.

DOG BARKING

INDISTINCT CONVERSATION, PIPE BUBBLING

- Yeah.

- HE SOBS

WOMAN SINGS INDISTINCTLY

- Edward is my brother.

I am his sister.

Edward was killed in 1987

by a man called Louis van Schoor.

When we heard about Edward's death,

he was already buried

in an unmarked grave.

It was devastating for the family.

We couldn't get his remains.

We believe that his spirit is roaming around here

and is looking for...

..for home.

He's not with his ancestors.

He doesn't know where he is.

He's not resting in peace.

He's searching somewhere, maybe watching.

It feels like we failed Edward.

If we could succeed in bringing him home,

it would help heal us.

We want Raymond to have a place to point that his dad is somewhere.

A place that would heal our hearts.

A place where we can say, "Here lies Edward Soenies".

- DOG BARKING

HE IMITATES GUNFIRE

- It's... Yeah.

Ah, but...

- VAN SCHOOR LAUGHS

DOG BARKING

- Where's the monster?

Here's the monster.

- CHILD LAUGHS

INDISTINCT CONVERSATION

- My family is based on love.

I want my children to know they're loved.

I want them to know that their father loves them

more than anything.

I want them to know that I love them more than anything.

- CHILD: - And I met this...

- EXHALES

- That's me.

All the little ones are me.

I remember the ones with my father

because I was always very close to him when I was young.

And I know my father as being firm and being strict.

As a child growing up, we were never told, "I love you."

We were never shown emotion

because I don't think he knows

how to show that emotion.

My father was raised very harshly.

It was an all-white neighbourhood.

The whites didn't mix with a different race.

They could come and clean your house and go.

That's... That's it.

His childhood, his friends,

his family, the people he worked for...

..they weren't raised to see

a black person as a human being.

It's the same with Hitler, the Nazis.

They indoctrinated children from a young age.

If your skin was dark, you were a criminal.

What my dad did was...

..motivated by white society.

He had the whole police force,

the whole legal community,

he had everyone behind him.

When he shot someone, they would say, "Well done, Louis.

"Good job, keep up the good work," you know?

It made him think that what he was doing is right.

They had "I love Louis" bumper stickers.

And the heart would have a hole, a bullet hole through.

They enjoyed what he was doing.

All of the murders were signed off as justifiable.

My father was a serial killer,

but the law enforcement was backing him.

The judicial system was backing him.

He's not the only person to blame for those murders.

- Before becoming a security guard,

van Schoor had been a policeman

for more than a decade.

He represents the psychology of apartheid.

OVER MEGAPHONE: - We are asking you people to disperse...

- Black people, black bodies

were essentially dehumanised.

This unknown, unnamed threat...

..was about enforcing racism.

It was used to break up riots.

To break up any form of resistance to apartheid.

- You people must get out now very quickly, OK?

Because you people are the ... cause of this now. So get out.

- He was part of the Dog Squad,

a terrifying unit of the police force

in South Africa.

DOGS BARKING

They had Alsatian dogs that they would set on people...

..and they didn't really care what those dogs did.

SHOUTING

SHOUTING, WOMAN SCREAMS

I think a lot of those guys really enjoyed what they did.

I think that they got a kick out of it.

Because, essentially, they could do what they wanted, you know?

They could operate on their own and get away with it.

That period, that unit,

that would have formed him.

South Africa created him.

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

HE EXCLAIMS

THUNDER ROLLS

Cambridge Police Station,

that's where a lot of these cases

were being reported.

It's also the place where a lot of tortures were taking place.

He would not have been able to get away with it

without the help of the police force in East London.

The reason why I knew that there were case files

was because I'd seen them myself.

And then they disappeared.

Within these boxes,

each one contains multiple killings and shootings.

The scale of van Schoor's reign of terror

has not actually been fully investigated.

One, two, three,

four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

11, 12, 13, 14, 15,

16, 17, 18, 19.

Then, according to

other records, there were...

..another one, two, three, four, five,

six, seven, eight, nine, ten,

11, 12, 13, 14.

He was convicted for only seven counts of murder

and two of attempted murder.

But we know that he was responsible for 41 acts of killing.

This is Edward Soenies' file,

and you can see there's evidence missing.

I mean, there are no photographs of Edward,

alive or dead.

And this is the only representation we have of him.

Two bullet wounds.

SHE SIGHS

Van Schoor would radio in that killing to the police.

In many instances, we know that the police arrived

very soon after the killing.

They would take a quick look

and essentially rubber-stamp these as justifiable homicide.

No real genuine investigation

was ever performed.

It seems to me

that whoever arrived on the scene

was not trying to do their job.

And so what does that really mean?

That, you know, they were

intentionally covering up for van Schoor?

Were they friends with him?

Were they...? Did they see something wrong that they didn't want to report

and so, conveniently, decide not to take photographs?

I mean, all in all, it amounts to collusion.

We know that van Schoor was not tried for at least 20 killings.

The apartheid state essentially gave him a licence to kill.

NEWSREEL: - There's Mr Mandela, Mr Nelson Mandela,

a free man taking his first steps into a new South Africa.

- Here.

No, it's not clean.

Then you're going to eat the dirty one.

For me, it feels like the van Schoor family has been cursed.

With my father having gone to prison

and then me following in his footsteps,

it was like a curse for me, because I was so afraid

that it would happen to my children as well.

- It's one o'clock. I'm Shadley Nash with the latest news.

A prominent Queenstown businesswoman

has been found stabbed to death in her home.

In a surprising twist in the murder

of Queenstown businesswoman Beverley van Schoor,

police have arrested her daughter in connection with her death.

- An Eastern Cape woman who hired two men to murder her mother,

because she disapproved of her black friends,

will be sentenced in the Grahamstown High Court today.

- I hired someone to murder my mother, and...

Yeah, um...

I called it off twice before it actually happened.

And the day I actually collected him myself...

..from the graveyard to bring him to the house,

and I let him into our house

while my daughter was sleeping.

And I took my daughter from my mother,

and I put her in my room

and I locked us in the room, and... - SIGHS

- ..he went to my mother's room and he murdered her.

And then he left.

And that's when I phoned the police.

- Sabrina van Schoor testified

she helped to kill her mother

because she was a racist.

- 22-year-old Sabrina van Schoor

was sentenced to 25 years

at the Grahamstown High Court.

- I often think of how differently life would have turned out.

Not for me, but for my family, my brothers,

their children, my children.

Um...

I also know that I robbed my children of a grandmother.

They often ask me, "Where's Granny Bev?"

And I can't explain to them.

If I could take it back, I would, in a heartbeat.

I know that there is a big difference between me and my father.

I know what I did was wrong.

I have asked for forgiveness from everyone,

whereas my father doesn't feel like he needs to apologise...

..because he doesn't feel anything.

He doesn't feel the pain.

He just wants to believe what he did was right.

- The irony of the van Schoor murders is that Sabrina went to prison

for almost the same amount of time as her father

for killing one white woman,

when her father was responsible

for killing more than 30 black men and boys.

The Soenies family couldn't afford

to have Edward's remains exhumed

and reburied.

And I desperately wanted to help them to do this.

And I found someone who could.

Her name is Charlene Craig.

She was part of a team who helped to get van Schoor stopped

and put behind bars.

LINE RINGS

INDISTINCT

Hey! - Hello.

- Oh, sorry. - Hello! - You need to see Marlene.

- Hello. - Hello.

- How are you? And I'm so glad that I've actually seen you.

Now, at least I...

When I think of you, I'll have a picture of you.

We wouldn't have imagined that one day, after 35 years,

we're going to bury Edward.

But now, through your funding and through Isa, we have hope.

And I'm sure many families,

this is going to give them hope

that their prayers, too, will be answered.

- I'm very pleased, Marlene. Very pleased.

- What happened to Edward affected Raymond's life a lot.

Growing up, he was very angry all the time

because he didn't know where his father was.

And then came the word that his father was actually dead.

It gave him a little bit of peace that he was not abandoned.

- I never... I didn't know that about him. And I didn't...

To think that there was a little boy that thought that... - There was.

- ..he'd been abandoned by his father, you know,

and he hadn't been.

And I can only... I can't even imagine

what he went through at that age.

And I had no idea about that.

And now I'm just wondering how many other...

- Yes. - ..stories there are like that

with the other victims,

that we'll never know about,

and how many family members or children would have been affected.

There's a lot more that we'll never, ever know.

You know, that's the part

I'm really struggling with at the moment.

All the stuff we'll never know.

- He's done a lot of damage to families.

- DOG BARKS

SHE SOBS

There's a lot of pain in this country.

I think we feel it the whole time.

Trauma from apartheid era South Africa.

HE SOBS

These dead bodies, they were human beings with lives ahead of them.

As white South Africans, there needs to be some reckoning.

Van Schoor was a serial killer.

He was a serial killer because there was a system

that allowed him to be one.

And there are so many people like him walking free.

Apartheid-era killers, torturers who are leading normal lives.

I do want to have the opportunity to say what I feel to his face...

..to see if I can extract any humanity out of the guy

and any more truth.

There are victims whose lives were taken by him...

..and if he was more truthful, it might help them.

One of the reasons why he was willing to talk to me

is because I'm a white South African,

because he feels safe with me,

and I want him to know

that he shouldn't feel safe with me any longer.

It's a horror show.

Horror show. It's a bloodbath.

This is a 12-year-old.

Do you remember describing to a journalist that...

..you had shot over 100 people?

So there were 19 of murder, 21 of attempted murder,

and three of assault.

Would you say you're responsible for more murders than that?

Because you're naming bigger numbers.

Yeah. You said 40-something counts.

- OK?

- Because the police were complicit.

Well, I happen to know at least one,

and I can cite a few more from the Black Sash records,

where you weren't charged for shootings

that are on record as having been attributed to you.

A lot of evidence went missing, and in the end...

Your job was not to kill.

Your job was to apprehend.

You are a serial killer, you know?

These are serial killings.

You know what? In the end...

..there are a pile of bodies,

a pile of bodies attributed to you.

Many of those families have never recovered

from the deaths of their loved ones.

And that's what you're left with.

That is your legacy.

Is there no...

Nowhere in you that feels some shame at all for this?

HE SIGHS For these atrocities?

- How do you want people to remember you?

- SINGING

- We should rejoice.

We should cry happy tears.

- THEY SING

- We are rejoicing.

Van Schoor has taken nothing from us...

..because we are getting Edward back.

A father, a brother, a good man, is coming home.

I have so much joy in my heart.

So much joy, so much peace...

..and also lots of love.

I don't think van Schoor knows anything about that.

He never felt the warmth.

He's like an empty shell.

He doesn't have a heart.

He doesn't know anything about family.

- I think a lot of white South Africans feel

a lot like Louis van Schoor.

"It wasn't us. It was the system."

We were all complicit.

Absolutely, we were all complicit.

I think that we only know

a small percentage

of the killings that occurred in this country.

And the terrifying thing is,

time marches on.

People who hold the truth in their minds,

who know, are dying.

You know, the longer we wait,

the harder it will be to have that truth revealed.