Every country has their infamous criminals. The UK has Jack the Ripper, Harold Shipman, and Amelia Dyer – the Angel Maker. The US has Ed Gein, John Wayne Gacy, Ted Bundy, H.H Holmes, and many more. And South Africa has Daisy de Melker, the ABC murderer, the Phoenix Strangler, Andre Stander, and Gert van Rooyen.
Active in both Pretoria and Johannesburg during the late 1980’s, Van Rooyen’s crimes shocked the nation, leaving deep scars on the collective psyche of an entire generation. The fates of at least six of his victims are still unknown, and their stories have often been described as “the tragedy that won’t die.” But although Van Rooyen is the first person that many think of whenever The Missing 6 is mentioned, there’s another name linked to his – that of his fiancée, Joey Haarhoff, who was not only his accomplice, but his last victim as well.
Their crimes were never solved, so this story doesn’t have a happy ending, but according to some experts, this was the first confirmed case of a serial killer couple in South Africa.
The End of Innocence
There’s a lot of nostalgia about the 1980’s. Most of it goes on and on about how life seemed so much simpler back then. The internet wasn’t a thing yet, phones weren’t cordless, you had to carry a boombox around if you wanted music on the go, going to the mall was the best thing ever, and the Apartheid regime still ruled South Africa with an iron fist.
Everyone goes on and on about how safe the world around them was – at least for white people. The white kids from the suburbs were able to ride their bicycles in the streets and play outside until the sun went down, go to the corner store for ice cream, and walk to school without having to look out for possible abductors or child molesters.
But as we all know, serial killers and rapists have always been among us, and when they go hunting, it is often the innocent who are the first to fall victim to their dark fantasies. And the tree-lined suburbs of Pretoria were filled with naive innocents who believed themselves safe from the dangers of the outside world.
On the 11th of January 1990, the 16-year-old Joan Booysen was running late for school. By the time she finally reached the bus stop in Church Square, Pretoria, the school bus had already left. Church Square, an open-air market-turned-park that made up the historic center of Pretoria, was already buzzing with people, and a few passers-by smiled at her as they made their way to work.
Deciding to wait for the next bus, Joan placed the brown cardboard suitcase she used for school down next to her, and calmly watched as the morning traffic flowed past her. Within minutes, a white Ford pickup-truck – known as a bakkie in South Africa – slowed to a stop in front of her, and a blonde, nicely-dressed, middle-aged woman lowered her window. Smiling, the woman asked Joan whether she would be interested in a job.
De Wet Potgieter, a journalist who wrote a book called Gruesome: The Crimes and Criminals that Shook South Africa, would interview Joan soon after, and she told him that: “When I told her I was still at school and not looking for a job, she started picking up a conversation with me.”
Joan explained that she’d missed her bus, and was waiting for the next one. The woman politely asked where Joan was headed, and then offered to give her a ride to school. Joan didn’t think much of the kind offer from the older lady.
Years later she would admit that yes, her parents had taught her that you didn’t get into strange cars with strange men – but that didn’t include well-dressed, middle-aged ladies who could have been your grandma, did it? So Joan accepted, gratefully got into the truck, and made the same mistake that Hansel and Gretel made by underestimating the old lady who lured them into her house with promises of all the sweets they could eat.
At first, all went well, and then the woman asked Joan whether she would mind if they made a quick pitstop at her house first. Despite her anxiety about being late for class, Joan didn’t want to be rude and agreed, and the woman drove the 3 kilometers to 227 Malherbe Street in Capital Park, one of oldest suburbs in Pretoria. After parking at the end of the long driveway, the woman turned to Joan and explained that she had to meet with someone first, and Joan was more than welcome to come inside and wait with her. Once again, Joan’s manners won out, and she politely followed the older woman into the house, accepting the woman’s offer to make her a cold drink.
As they were making their way down the long, darkened hallway to the kitchen, a balding, pot-bellied, middle-aged man stepped out of one of the shadowed bedrooms and loomed over the startled Joan.
“I will never forget those evil eyes of his cutting right through me, and that cruel expression on his face when he slapped me. When he pressed that huge gun into my face, I instinctively realized, Joan, today you listen to this man, or you are dead.”
And listen she did. The woman appeared at the man’s side and handed Joan a glass of water and a handful of pills. Joan would be forced to drink the pills at gunpoint before the woman led her into a darkened bedroom. There, Joan was stripped of her clothing and shoes and handcuffed to the bed.
The woman then left the room, leaving a tearful and terrified Joan alone with the older man. She would be violated before he released her, and then forced into a wardrobe before the man flicked a catch on the door, locking her inside.
Joan and her father often watched MacGyver together, and she recounts how she was looking for anything that would help her escape her current situation. Heart beating wildly, she felt around in the dark until her fingers found an old polystyrene cooler box. The cooler had a thin plastic handle attached to it, and Joan tore it off. She pressed against the wardrobe doors, managing to open it a bit, and used the cooler box’s handle to flip the catch on the door, freeing herself.
She got dressed in her clothes, her heart racing, and peered out into the darkened hallway towards the kitchen. The house seemed to be empty, and she slipped down the hallway. She noticed that the blonde woman was outside in the garden, and quietly made her way to the lounge where she found a phone. She called her cousin, letting her know where she was and what had happened to her, and then made her way back to the front door.
With the handcuffs still dangling from her wrist, Joan then crept out of the house, and, satisfied that the older woman hadn’t noticed her, started running barefoot down the long driveway towards the closed gate, her heart pounding in her ears. She barely made it halfway down the driveway before she heard a startled cry behind her, and realized that the blonde woman had seen her.
A car was slowly driving down the street when Joan burst through the gate, and Joan ran into the road, waving her arms to get the car to stop. The blonde woman made a grab for her, urging her to head back inside, but Joan managed to jerk away and ran towards the slowing car.
The 26-year-old Ernst Vermeulen had noticed the blonde, barefooted girl running into the middle of the street, arms waving frantically, and came to a stop. He noticed the older woman coming up behind her and got out of his car, wanting to find out if anything was the matter and how he could help.
The woman made another grab at the girl, but she jerked away, and ran up to Ernst’s side. “Please rescue me. They’re trying to kidnap me!”
Ernst turned to the blonde woman, thinking that maybe there had been some kind of misunderstanding. The woman had once again grabbed the girl by her arm, and was apologizing to Ernst for the girl’s behavior, telling her to return to the house so that they could talk it out.
That is when Ernst noticed the handcuffs and realized that the girl was indeed in trouble. He told the woman that he didn’t mind being stopped, that he only wanted to make sure that the girl was okay, and that he would be escorting her back to the house himself. He placed a protective arm around the girl and pulled her away from the older woman. The woman studied the two of them for a moment, then nodded, smiled politely, and said that she’d meet them back at the house.
Ernst watched as the woman returned to the driveway of 227 Malherbe Street before he helped the shaking girl into the passenger side of his car. When he got into his car, Joan burst into a panicked explanation, telling him what had transpired that morning as he drove off, keeping an eye on the rearview mirror to make sure that they weren’t followed, intent on getting the girl somewhere safe as he listened to her horrific tale.
Joan became lethargic as the adrenaline coursing through her body subsided and the drugs she’d been forced to swallow kicked in, but Ernst managed to get her home address out of her and took her there. She calmed as they drove down the familiar street, and then she passed out.
Vermeulen would carry her to the front door of her parent’s house, and he had to explain to a panicked Ansie Booysen what her daughter had been through as he placed her down on her still unmade bed. Soon the house was swarming with police, and wheels would be set in motion to capture the two people who had abducted and molested the 16-year-old girl.
The Monster of Malherbe Street
Gert van Rooyen was born on the 21st of June 1937 in Pretoria, and was the eldest of four children. His mother ran a boarding house in what was called Bloed or Blood Street, and his father managed a construction business when he wasn’t gambling their money away or spending it on alcohol. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that his father was abusive. Not much else is known about Van Rooyen’s earlier years, but at the age of 17, he stole his first car, and as punishment, his dad gave him eight lashes with a whip – a standard punishment for the time, because remember – the past was the worst.
Van Rooyen’s parents sent him to a reform school, hoping that it would straighten out his behavior since his parents couldn’t handle him anymore, but he escaped, and a year later, he’d steal another car as well as a gun. Once again, Van Rooyen was shipped off to a reform school, this time in Cape Town. He would steal another car and some clothes a year later and made his way back to Pretoria, where he was once again captured, and sent to a rehabilitation center. Once he was released, Van Rooyen got a job working alongside his brothers in his father’s construction business, and he seemed to put his rebellious ways behind him.
Soon after he turned 20, Van Rooyen would marry his first wife, despite his family’s insistence that she was “a cheap slut.” Allegedly, his mother even insisted that the girl should wear a grey dress to their wedding, since virginal white was too good for the likes of her.
They would have four children together before getting divorced, and Van Rooyen handed his children over into his mother’s care, not bothering to keep in touch with them after that. In 1967 the 26-year-old Van Rooyen met the 19-year-old Aletta and got married to her within 3 months. Aletta claimed that it had been love at first sight for her, and she felt charmed by the smooth-talking Van Rooyen.
They would have two sons together, and to the outside world, they seemed like your average middle-class couple. Aletta was the devoted if somehow neglected housewife and raised their sons with care and devotion, even making an attempt to get to know Van Rooyen’s older children and building a relationship with them. Van Rooyen was a respected deacon in the church, sang in the choir, made a decent living working with his brothers, and after almost 16 years of marriage, he and Aletta could afford to purchase 227 Malherbe Street – the spacious 3-bedroom house in Capital Park that soon became his fortress.
But behind closed doors, their marriage was falling apart. Van Rooyen had lost all interest in having a sexual relationship with his wife and would openly conduct affairs with younger women. Whenever Aletta confronted him about it, he’d beat her, and she learned to turn a blind eye to his goings on.
His acquaintances didn’t particularly like him and would later describe him as a violent man who was quick to settle differences with his fists. He also discussed his interest in young girls during social gatherings, and was quoted as having said that “[the perfect girl’s] feet should not touch the ground when [she is] sitting on a chair.”
And in 1979, it became clear to everyone who knew him that Van Rooyen wasn’t just talk. Two young girls, just 10 and 13 years old, had been playing in the garden at the front of the 13-year-old’s house when a car stopped outside their garden gate. A man called them over to his car and asked them whether they wanted some cake.
When they refused, he grabbed them and stuffed them in the back of his car, driving off with the two girls screaming and crying in the back seat. He drove them 50 kilometres to Hartbeespoortdam, pulled over in a secluded spot, and assaulted them before forcing them to strip down. He would molest the two girls for hours before bundling their naked bodies back in his car in the early hours of the morning and taking them back to where he’d found them.
Their parents would later relate how the two crying girls had come stumbling back into the yard, covered in blood and bruises.
The two girls described Van Rooyen and his car in detail, and their parents realized that the monster who’d taken their children lived only a few houses down the road from them. They reported the molestation to the police the next morning, and Van Rooyen was arrested that very same day.
During his trial, Magistrate J Bouwer told Van Rooyen that “You have committed a beastly, disgusting and loathsome crime,” and sentenced Van Rooyen to four years in prison for the kidnapping and sexual assault of two minors. He would end up serving only three years of his sentence.
Aletta would finally divorce him in 1983, taking their sons with her, and Gert would go on to live the life of a well-off and eligible bachelor. He would start corresponding with women who responded to the ads he placed in Lonely Hearts corners in national newspapers, and according to Gordon Harris, the photographer who often took portrait photos for Van Rooyen, he would turn into a wannabe Casanova in the years following his divorce, becoming a sleazy womanizer who wanted professional and flattering photos to send to his many ‘girlfriends.’
But in November 1989, it was a changed man who walked into Harris’s studio. He was dressed in a suit and tie, his hair had been combed, and he looked like he’d just returned from church. At his side was a smartly dressed, middle-aged, blonde woman, holding the hands of two toddlers, as well as a younger couple. They wanted family photos, with Van Rooyen and the woman playing the part of the doting grandparents, and Harris was surprised by the abrupt turn that his client’s requests had taken.
“That day it was the typical good-natured-gentleman-down-the-street type of photos.”
Gordon Harris would take the photo that would later immortalize the Monster of Malherbe Street – one of a respectable looking Van Rooyen next to the woman who’d seemingly helped him to turn his life around – Joey Haarhoff.
The Fiancée
Joey was born Francina van Staden and grew up in the eastern suburbs of Johannesburg. She married her first husband, Jaap Strydom, when she was 18, and fell pregnant soon after. According to Joey’s daughter, Amor van der Westhuyzen, Joey’s first husband was abusive, and after a particularly bad beating, she lost the baby. Joey would divorce Jaap within weeks of the death of her baby, but all her future relationships with men would be influenced by the abuse she’d experienced during her first marriage.
Her second husband, Japie Haarhoff, was a Sergeant-Major in the army. They had four children together – three sons and a daughter – and lived in Valhalla, a suburb on the southern edge of Pretoria, close to the army base where her husband worked.
In her memoir, Battered, Abused, Shamed: Joey Haarhoff Was My Mother, Amor explains that Joey wasn’t a loving, caring mother. Friends and neighbors would later describe Joey as being a strict parent, but according to Amor, the punishments she would dole out bordered on abuse. Amor remembered being punched in the face as a toddler for making too much noise, being locked up alone in the house while her parents went to parties, and when she got older, Joey would tie Amor to her bed before beating her, covering her daughter’s body in bruises.
Amor speculates that at some point during their marriage, Joey had started to refuse to have sex with her abusive husband, and his attention turned to his underage daughter. Joey would often take the boys to her parents for the weekend, leaving the teenaged Amor alone with her father. Once her mother confronted Joey about her belief that Haarhoff was molesting Amor, Joey blamed her daughter, saying that if her dad was abusing her, it was her own fault for tempting him.
Haarhoff’s ill health would cause him to retire early, and he, Joey, and their youngest son moved to Winburg, a small farming community in the Free State. When Haarhoff eventually passed away, he left Joey his sizeable pension, which – according to Amor – was enough to keep her mother living comfortably for the rest of her life.
But Joey had started writing to a charming, rich man who she’d met through a Lonely Hearts corner ad. She would brag to her friends that the only way she’d ever get married again, was if it was to a rich man, and her new suitor definitely suited the bill. He convinced her to move to Pretoria so that they could be together, so in 1987 Joey sold all of her belongings and moved to Pretoria, initially staying in the same apartment complex that Amor shared with her husband.
Within a few weeks she introduced Van Rooyen to Amor, and told her daughter that she’d met him through a mutual acquaintance. Joey’s family and friends who met Van Rooyen got an immediate dislike of the man, describing him as “A know-it-all, overcritical and snobby bastard.”
Within three months, Joey moved into 227 Malherbe Street, and everyone started noticing a change in her demeanor. She changed her entire wardrobe to please him, lost some weight, dyed her dark and greying hair blonde, and soon wore a diamond engagement ring that he’d bought for her, showing it off to her friends. Acquaintances of Van Rooyen allegedly warned Joey that Van Rooyen wasn’t as well-off as he seemed, and that she had to ensure that she protected herself financially in case he died or left her.
Joey shrugged off their concerns, and she started to avoid her family and friends, spending all her time with Van Rooyen, joining him on week-long holidays in Durban and Warmbaths. The money she’d inherited after her husband’s death seemed to evaporate into thin air, and she even sold her new car and handed the money over to Van Rooyen.
Almost overnight, she changed from an independent, strong woman into a meek woman who was firmly under Van Rooyen’s thumb, and she would often tell her daughter that she felt that she couldn’t break off her relationship with Van Rooyen. Her friends became concerned for her once bruises started appearing on her face, and recounted how she’d sneak off to call them from a phone booth, anxious at the thought that Van Rooyen might realize what she was up to.
“Joey reminded us of a child in the presence of a strict grownup. It was as if she’d gotten the order to only speak when she was spoken to…There were times when he spoke cruelly to her in front of her family, as if he wanted to belittle and isolate her.”
Amor recounts how bizarre her mother started acting, and at one point, Joey had allegedly tried to convince the 24-year-old Amor to leave her husband and marry Van Rooyen instead, so that she could “give him children.” Since he already had 6 children of his own, this request didn’t make sense to Amor, but after that discussion, Joey ensured that Amor was alone in a room before sending Van Rooyen in to “convince her” to change her mind. He pushed Amor up against a wall and started kissing her, but Amor managed to break free and escape. She and her husband never visited 227 Malherbe Street again.
The last time Amor saw her mother was on the evening of the 14th of January 1990, after she and Van Rooyen had broken into Amor’s house and told them that they needed a place to hide out for a few days. Joey confessed to her daughter that they’d kidnapped a police officer’s daughter for ransom, and that they were now being hunted by the police. Amor tried to convince her mother to hand herself over to the police, but Joey refused, telling her daughter that “You don’t understand. They’re going to lock us up.
They’re going to kill us.”
Once Van Rooyen and Joey left, Amor and her husband called Amor’s Aunt Poppie to let her know that Joey and Van Rooyen were in trouble with the police. Poppie wasn’t surprised, and what she said next would change Amor’s life forever: “My child, don’t you understand? Your mother and that man are the ones who kidnapped those girls.”
The Missing 6
According to Potgieter, the newly formed Child Protection Unit of the South African Police force started looking into child molesters and the disappearances of minors in 1988. The pedophiles that became targets of the CPU used to prey on the runaways who haunted the inner-city streets, but these children rarely made the news.
Much like today, the missing children who did make the news all came from privileged backgrounds, and when several blonde and blue-eyed children started to go missing, the public took notice, and their photos began to appear on the back of milk cartons, so that their smiling faces now haunted families all over the country.
On the 1st of August 1988, the fourteen-year-old Tracey-Lee Scott-Crossley stayed home from school. She had the flu and an eye infection, but later that morning she decided to go to Cresta shopping center, a nearby mall in Randburg, Johannesburg. She asked her older brother, the 21-year-old Mark, whether he would take her, but he told her that he had things to do, and she ended up walking the short distance to the mall on her own.
Their mother, Noreen Scott-Crossley, explains that she started worrying about Tracey at 11:30 that morning, and since they didn’t have a landline, she took the rest of the day off and headed home. When she got home, she found shopping bags on Tracey’s bed, including a pair of ballet tights that Tracey had bought that morning, but she was nowhere to be found.
Later, witnesses told the police that they’d seen Tracey get into a Volkswagen Beetle with a blonde-haired woman just outside Cresta, and the police started searching for the teenager. She never returned home.
In Pietermaritzburg, Eve Harvey sent her eleven-year-old daughter, Fiona, to the corner store to buy some milk on the 22nd of December 1988. When she didn’t return home, Eve went looking for her, and was told that Fiona had been approached by a man in a white Ford Bantam truck, and that she’d willingly went along with him. Witnesses recalled that the truck had the logo and contact details for an unknown construction company on its doors.
On the 7th of June 1989, the 12-year-old Joan Horn and a group of her friends were heading to a dog show that was hosted at their school in Westpark, Pretoria. A blonde woman in a white truck pulled up alongside the group of girls and asked whether one of them would be interested in helping her look for someone in a nearby shopping center. She offered to pay them R20 for their time – almost equal to R180 today, a fortune for a 12-year-old – and Joan agreed, telling her friends that she would catch up to them later. She never did.
In Kempton Park, Johannesburg, 12-year-old Anne-Marie Wapenaar and 11-year-old Odette Boucher left school grounds on the 22nd of September 1989. They’d planned on spending the day swimming at Anne-Marie’s house, but witnesses saw them getting into an unknown vehicle with a blonde woman. They were never seen again.
And on the 3rd of November 1989, another girl from Kempton Park would go missing when the 13-year-old Yolanda Wessels was picked up from school by a blonde woman driving a green Volkswagen minivan. The other schoolchildren were able to provide police with her full description, and sketches of her were placed in both local and national newspapers. Speculation soon followed that the description matched that of Yolanda’s aunt – Joey Haarhoff.
The disappearances of these missing girls would all be investigated separately, but it wasn’t until the 16-year-old Joan managed to escape from 227 Malherbe Street that the police would finally be able to link their cases together.
The Chase
Barely two hours after Joan Booysen’s mother called for help, the police swarmed 227 Malherbe Street – but the house was empty. An investigation was immediately launched, and the inhabitants were identified as Van Rooyen and his fiancée, Joey Haarhoff. Evidence was collected, and the police started looking for the couple.
Sources later informed the police that Van Rooyen and Joey were seen driving down to Durban in a white truck matching the description provided by Joan Booysen, and the police decided to wait. In the meantime, local media was buzzing with the news that the police were on the lookout for two people in connection with the kidnappings of various missing girls in Pretoria, and friends and family members slowly started linking Joey and Van Rooyen to their crimes.
On the evening of the 14th of January 1990, Amor would call the police to let them know that Van Rooyen and Joey were back in Pretoria and had just broken into their home, begging for sanctuary. Amor and her husband would both be questioned by the police, and that evening her husband noticed that the house had been placed under surveillance.
On the morning of the 15th of January 1990, Van Rooyen and Joey would head home – maybe they thought that the worst of it was over – but as soon as they neared 227 Malherbe Street, blue lights started flashing, and the chase was on.
But Van Rooyen and Joey had prepared for this. The couple knew that they only had two choices – die, or allow themselves to be caught, and end up having to explain what had happened to the Missing 6. They certainly knew what they’d done to the girls, and at this point, South Africa still had the death penalty – so either way, the end result would be the same.
According to Detective Don Chandler, one of the police officers who took part in the chase, during the Apartheid era, the South African Police had the authority to shoot to kill any criminal or suspect who was fleeing the scene of the crime. But in Van Rooyen’s case, General Chris Serfontein, one of the founders of the Child Protection Unit, had issued strict instructions that no one was to shoot either Van Rooyen or Joey Haarhoff. He needed answers, and in order for him to get that, he needed Van Rooyen alive.
As such, the police chased the white truck for almost three kilometers – first down Malherbe Street, up Paul Kruger, taking a sharp left, then down Flowers Street, over the Apies River bridge, around the intersection, and up the M1 motorway, heading north. From there, it was an open road, and once Van Rooyen gained enough speed, any of the slipways that branched off into the suburbs of Pretoria North could grant him an easy exit. To keep him from doing exactly that, Detective Chandler shot at the white truck and managed to hit one of the tyres.
The white truck swerved and came to a sudden stop on the left side of the motorway. Colonel Rudi van Olst and Detective Chandler came to a stop behind the white truck, their tyres skidding on the loose gravel, and they jumped out of their vehicle, service pistols in hand. Colonel van Olst describes what happened next: “When we heard the first shot, we immediately knew that he had shot her through the head right there on his lap. We were still running towards the bakkie when he pressed the gun against his own head and blew himself into eternity.
It played out before us like scenes from a movie.”
And just like that, the Monster of Malherbe Street was dead. On the 30th anniversary of their death, Detective Chandler would tell Jacaranda FM, a local radio station, that “It was one of the biggest cases in South Africa that I’ve ever investigated…and it was taken out right from under our noses.”
“Working on a case like that, on those children – you know their whole history. You talk to their family, their friends, their school friends and playmates. And at the end of the day you almost feel like they were your own child. And we really wanted to solve that case. There was no doubt in our minds that we wanted to catch them and get to the end of this and find out what had happened to those children.”
The police searched every corner of the truck that had haunted the streets of Pretoria, and came across two wills written by both Van Rooyen and Joey, as well as a letter that Joey had addressed to her mother, asking for her forgiveness.
“Remember me as the child who once upon a time loved you very much. I don’t have money anymore, but please accept this rose in my memory. Don’t grieve for me. I loved Gert very much. He gave me the kind of love no one else would give me.”
“My bible taught me that there is no forgiveness for someone who takes the life that God had given them. Just know that I didn’t have a choice. Don’t judge Gert for his actions, because we’re leaving that up to the Almighty God.”
Joey wanted to be buried next to the man she’d claimed to love, but they were both cremated, and it is anyone’s guess what happened to their remains.
Investigations and Theories
Following Van Rooyen and Joey’s death, 227 Malherbe Street was all but torn apart in an effort to find any information regarding the missing children that the CPU were still looking for. Spectators and the media crowded Malherbe Street with their cars and bodies, and soon the house was dubbed The House of Horrors.
The garden surrounding the house was dug up and the swimming pool removed, all in an effort to see if the girls had been buried there. Some of Anne-Marie and Odette’s belongings were found in the house, along with their addresses. Witnesses in Pietermaritzburg were shown photos of Van Rooyen’s white truck, and the logo on its doors linked it to the disappearance of Fiona Harvey.
A letter that Joey had left for her daughter confirmed that they’d kidnapped Joan Horn in an attempt to blackmail her father. And Yolanda Wessel’s friends confirmed that Joey Haarhoff was indeed the person who’d kidnapped her, confirming Joey’s family’s suspicions that she’d handed her own niece over to Van Rooyen in a misguided attempt to keep him satisfied. Tracey-Lee Scott-Crossley was the only one who couldn’t directly be tied to either Van Rooyen or Joey.
Aletta, Van Rooyen’s ex-wife, would move back into 227 Malherbe Street for a while, but in 1996 the bank confiscated the house and handed it over to the police. On the 13th of May 1996, the House of Horrors would be dismantled piece by piece – the roof was removed and inspected for any spores or hair or DNA evidence that might confirm the presence of the girls at any point in time. The walls and floors were scanned in an effort to find any hidey-holes that Van Rooyen might have created. The garden was dug up again, properties that Van Rooyen had worked on was overturned, and any bones that were found were established to be animal bones.
But there still wasn’t a sign of the missing girls.
Over the years that followed, multiple theories surrounding their deaths would raise further interest in the case. Van Rooyen’s own son, Flippie van Rooyen would testify that the girls were all killed in satanic rituals. He also claimed that their bodies had been dissolved in acid. While spending time in a mental institution, he allegedly told a fellow patient that at least three of the girls had been buried in Kwa-Zulu Natal at a resort his father used to frequent.
He would be imprisoned for 6 years for providing false witness and the trauma he’d caused the Missing 6’s families.
Some speculated that Van Rooyen had owned a green trunk that was filled with photos of children, along with monetary values attached to them. This trunk was allegedly dropped off at the home of one of his accomplices with the orders that it was to be destroyed. Its existence could never be proven.
One of the more pervasive theories is that top officials in the Apartheid government were somehow involved in a pedophile ring, and that Van Rooyen sourced girls for them. This theory never had any concrete evidence linked to it.
Others speculated that Van Rooyen was part of a human-trafficking ring, and that he would transport the girls to Durban where they would be loaded into shipping containers heading for Mozambique. Allegedly there were reports that he’d once been fined for speeding while on his way to Durban, and that the traffic official who wrote his fine noted that there were two sleeping girls in the back of his vehicle. However, no concrete evidence could be found to suggest that he was in fact, smuggling children.
Lieutenant-Colonel Mike van Aardt has been investigating the Missing 6 on and off for over 10 years, and he claims to have files upon files filled with the conspiracy theories that have been looked into over the last 30 years – and they still don’t have any answers.
But Lieutenant-Colonel van Aardt is sure of one thing – if Van Rooyen hadn’t met Joey, he wouldn’t have been able to abduct those girls. Otherwise, girls would have started disappearing long before he met her.
“Back in those days, we didn’t have a term like ‘serial killer’. I think this was definitely a serial case. Not one of those children were abducted with the knowledge that [Van Rooyen and Joey] would be releasing them later. Whatever happened to them, Gert was the main culprit. Joey got a kick out of it, I think. Not necessarily in the use and abuse of the children. She wanted to keep him happy…And look what it brought her. His ‘love’. I think it was important to her. She did [it] for him.”
But 30 years on, some progress has been made, however little. Detective Chandler is still part of a team of volunteers who are looking into the disappearances of the Missing 6, and even though they hadn’t found a trace of the missing girls, some arrests have been made of people thought to have been involved in their disappearances.
But many of the girl’s families have accepted the fact that their daughters are never coming back. Some of them have passed away. Some are still looking. And that little spark of hope is the reason why the case of the Missing 6 has been dubbed “the tragedy that won’t die.”
So, in remembrance, here is the list of girls again: Tracey-Lee Scott-Crossley, Fiona Harvey, Joan Horn, Anne-Marie Wapenaar, Odette Boucher, and Yolanda Wessels.
Aftermath and Legacy
South Africa did have the death penalty – up until the 6th of June 1995. If Joey and Van Rooyen had been convicted, it is possible that they wouldn’t have been executed at all, since President De Klerk issued a moratorium in 1990, placing all executions on hold for the next five years.
227 Malherbe Street doesn’t exist anymore. The entire house has been demolished, and the House of Horrors is now nothing more than an empty lot in the heart of Capital Park, and the gate through which Joan had escaped is covered in green handprints in memory of the Missing 6.
The property was officially handed over to the Child Protection Unit with the idea that their new offices would be built there. However, the Department of Public Works never green-lighted the project, so in 2019, a monument was raised on the lot in memory of the Missing 6, showcasing a billboard with 6 blooming flowers instead of the girl’s photos.
Allegedly, Joey had applied multiple times to become a foster parent, even going so far as to call orphanages offering to house young girls for the holidays. Luckily, their applications were rejected.
Joey and Van Rooyen’s crimes would tear their families apart, but at one point, all of them were more than happy to bask in the media’s attention, making up elaborate stories that would devolve into the conspiracy theories that still haunt the case.
Joey’s daughter Amor recounts in her memoir how she and her husband were harassed by the police for years following her mother’s death, and that for a good while, both of them were unable to keep a job due to their connection to the Monster of Malherbe Street. They finally managed to settle in Thabazimbi, and Amor is now a proud grandmother who made a point of teaching her grandkids to NEVER trust strangers.
Aletta van Rooyen reportedly never believed that Van Rooyen was guilty of the crimes he’d committed. She spent years being harassed by the public, with people going so far as to threaten to kidnap and kill her grandchildren. At one point, she’d decided to stop fighting it, and allegedly answered the phone with the cheerful greeting “this is the pedophile’s wife speaking, how may I help you?”
Key Takeaways
- Gert van Rooyen and fiancée Joey Haarhoff formed South Africa’s first confirmed serial killer couple, abducting girls in Pretoria and Johannesburg during the late 1980s.
- Six victims known as the Missing 6—Tracey-Lee Scott-Crossley, Fiona Harvey, Joan Horn, Anne-Marie Wapenaar, Odette Boucher, and Yolanda Wessels—were never found despite extensive searches.
- Survivor Joan Booysen escaped in January 1990 by unlocking her wardrobe with a cooler box handle, leading police to identify the couple before they fled.
- Van Rooyen shot Haarhoff and himself during a police chase on January 15, 1990, taking answers about the missing girls to their graves.
- 227 Malherbe Street was demolished in 1996 after exhaustive searches; a 2019 monument with six flowers now marks the site in memory of the victims.
Dana Ortiz covers prosecutorial mechanics, evidentiary procedure, and how investigations unwind decades after the original case file went cold.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who was Gert van Rooyen and what was his nickname?
Gert van Rooyen was a South African serial killer active in Pretoria and Johannesburg during the late 1980s. His nickname was ‘the Monster of Malherbe Street,’ named after 227 Malherbe Street in Capital Park, Pretoria, where he lived and committed his crimes.
Who was Joey Haarhoff and what was her relationship to Gert van Rooyen?
Joey Haarhoff was Gert van Rooyen’s fiancée and accomplice. She was born Francina van Staden, had been married twice before, and met Van Rooyen through a Lonely Hearts ad. She helped him abduct young girls and was described as being firmly under his control. According to some experts, this was the first confirmed case of a serial killer couple in South Africa.
How did Joan Booysen escape from 227 Malherbe Street?
Joan Booysen escaped by using a plastic handle from a polystyrene cooler box she found in the wardrobe where she was locked. She used the handle to flip the catch on the wardrobe door, freeing herself. She then called her cousin from a phone in the lounge, crept out of the house, and ran down the driveway. When the blonde woman (Joey Haarhoff) saw her and tried to grab her, Joan ran into the street and was rescued by Ernst Vermeulen, a passing motorist who noticed her handcuffs and distress.
What happened to Gert van Rooyen and Joey Haarhoff at the end of the police chase?
On January 15, 1990, after a police chase of almost three kilometers, Van Rooyen stopped the white truck on the M1 motorway. According to Colonel Rudi van Olst, Van Rooyen shot Joey Haarhoff through the head while she sat on his lap, then immediately shot himself in the head before police could reach them. They both died at the scene.
Who were the ‘Missing 6’ victims?
The Missing 6 were: Tracey-Lee Scott-Crossley (14, disappeared August 1, 1988 from Randburg), Fiona Harvey (11, disappeared December 22, 1988 from Pietermaritzburg), Joan Horn (12, disappeared June 7, 1989 from Pretoria), Anne-Marie Wapenaar (12, disappeared September 22, 1989 from Kempton Park), Odette Boucher (11, disappeared September 22, 1989 from Kempton Park), and Yolanda Wessels (13, disappeared November 3, 1989 from Kempton Park). Their fates remain unknown.
What evidence linked Van Rooyen and Haarhoff to the missing girls?
Evidence included: belongings and addresses of Anne-Marie Wapenaar and Odette Boucher found in the house; the logo on Van Rooyen’s white truck matching witness descriptions in Fiona Harvey’s disappearance; a letter from Joey confirming they kidnapped Joan Horn for blackmail; Yolanda Wessels’ friends identifying Joey Haarhoff as the kidnapper; and Joey’s family suspecting she had handed her own niece Yolanda to Van Rooyen. Tracey-Lee Scott-Crossley could not be directly tied to them.
What theories exist about what happened to the Missing 6?
Multiple theories emerged: Van Rooyen’s son Flippie claimed the girls were killed in satanic rituals and dissolved in acid, and that three were buried in Kwa-Zulu Natal (he was later imprisoned for 6 years for false testimony); speculation about a green trunk with photos of children and monetary values; a theory that Apartheid government officials were involved in a pedophile ring; and a human-trafficking theory that girls were transported to Durban and shipped to Mozambique. None of these theories were proven, and no trace of the girls was ever found despite extensive searches.
What happened to 227 Malherbe Street after Van Rooyen and Haarhoff’s deaths?
The house was extensively searched and dubbed ‘The House of Horrors.’ The garden was dug up, the swimming pool removed, and in 1996 the bank confiscated it and gave it to police. On May 13, 1996, the house was dismantled piece by piece for forensic examination. It no longer exists and is now an empty lot. In 2019, a monument was raised there with a billboard showing 6 blooming flowers in memory of the Missing 6. The gate through which Joan escaped is covered in green handprints.
What was Gert van Rooyen’s criminal history before the Missing 6 cases?
Van Rooyen had a history of car theft starting at age 17, for which he was sent to reform schools multiple times but kept escaping. In 1979, he kidnapped and sexually assaulted two young girls (ages 10 and 13), driving them to Hartbeespoortdam where he molested them for hours. He was sentenced to four years in prison but served only three. He was also known as a violent man who beat his wife Aletta and openly discussed his interest in young girls, once stating that ‘the perfect girl’s feet should not touch the ground when she is sitting on a chair.‘
How did Joey Haarhoff’s daughter Amor describe her mother’s behavior?
Amor van der Westhuyzen described Joey as an abusive mother who punched her as a toddler, locked her alone in the house, and tied her to her bed before beating her. Amor also recounted how Joey tried to convince her to leave her husband and marry Van Rooyen to ‘give him children,’ and then sent Van Rooyen in to ‘convince’ Amor, during which he pushed her against a wall and kissed her. The last time Amor saw her mother was January 14, 1990, when Joey confessed they had kidnapped a police officer’s daughter for ransom and were being hunted by police.
Sources
- Original Casual Criminalist video: The Monster of Malherbe Street
- Hero image source by Bobbyshabangu / openverse, by-sa.
