Betrayed (18 page)

In November, eighteen months after lodging my complaint with the
Health Professions Council of South Africa about the slapdash mortu
ary doctor who failed to do an autopsy, I finally got a letter from the
organisation's Legal Services Officer in Pretoria. It exonerated the
doctor of any wrongdoing.

I countered with a request for the reasons behind this finding. In
response, I received a long, detailed letter blaming everyone from the
police to Dr Kloppers. It seemed that whoever had investigated my
complaint had an axe to grind with Dr Kloppers. Since she had per
formed a proper autopsy on Tracey, she was a perfect scapegoat. I no
ticed from the letter that lawyers had been involved and a hearing
had taken place. It seemed such a sham. Where is the justice when
there's a hearing, lawyers get involved and blame is assigned, yet
only one side is represented at the hearing?

I was fast losing the will to fight. I wanted to conserve my energy to confront the big boys at the SAPS with the copies of the murder docket I had collected from the magistrate's court in Kempton Park a week
after the inquest. So I decided to let the matter of “the autopsy that
never was” ride. Expecting more was as pointless as expecting Tracey
to walk in my front door. It wouldn't bring Tracey back. It wouldn't
change a thing.

I thought about phoning the Deputy Director of Public Prosecutions
at the Johannesburg Supreme Court to ask him to read the docket, as
he'd invited me to do. But I just wasn't strong enough to go through
everything again when I had little hope that he could do anything to
change the outcome or mishandling of the investigation.

The docket was not a particularly bulky file. A meagre, anorexic
little thing, it was all that was left of Tracey, a scanty summary of how
her life had been cut short. A few hand-written statements Inspector
Pearce took from the original police officers involved in the case. A
statement he took from me. Connor's report and the statements he
had taken from the housemates. The two photos of Tracey's body.
And, finally, the recommendation from the magistrate at the inquest
.

I battled to read them because most were in Afrikaans, not my strong
point. But it became glaringly obvious that not one scrap of
paper was dated March 2005, nothing to indicate that Tracey had di
s
appeared and been murdered in that month. Apart from Connor's
report from July, not a thing was recorded until Inspector Pearce took
over the case nearly seven months after Tracey's body was found.

I took a deep breath and phoned Commissioner Nair to discuss the
docket with him. As expected he passed me back to Commisioner
T
okiso, who didn't sound too pleased to hear from me again, but eve
n
tually scheduled a meeting for two months ahead. I asked for the
original investigating officer Captain Kotze, the current investigating
officer Inspector Pearce and a reporter to be present. Tokiso wasn't
thrilled about the reporter, but I explained she had requested to be
there as she had become closely involved with the investigation. Since he wasn't renowned for speaking to the press, I counted myself lucky
that he finally agreed that she could be present.

Meeting day at my house was a summer's day of hot sunshine and
blue skies untouched by cloud. It had been seventeen long months
since I saw Kotze, nearly four since I had seen Pearce, and I wasn't sur
e
how I was going to react when I saw them again. I asked the reporter
to arrive a bit earlier so we could discuss the best way to conduct the
meeting. Next to arrive was Captain Kotze. He hugged me and chatted
away casually, asking for a Coke when I offered coffee, relaxed, not a
care in the world. My stomach clenched with disappointment. Here was a man who had children of his own, and although he had done
little to find out what had happened to my daughter, he was behavin
g
as if he had gone above and beyond his duties. Was it just bravado? Or
did he really not understand how inadequate he had been? My teeth tingled with irritation.

Inspector Pearce followed a few moments later, looking very busi
ness-like with a jacket and tie, his notebooks and file tucked under
his arm. Glancing sideways at Kotze and asking how long he had
been there, he appeared understandably tense, the man in the firing
line from the Commissioner even though he had only appeared on the
scene after much of the damage had already been done.

A hot and bothered Commissioner Tokiso arrived last, obviously
aggravated about having to drive all the way out to Benoni in the traf
fic to meet us. With him was another man he introduced as a senior-
superintendent from the provincial office. The Commissioner's unease
about the reporter's presence was palpable.

“Why do we have to have a reporter here?” he snapped, sitting on
the edge of his seat as though he wasn't planning to stay long. “What
do you expect to achieve by publishing anything from this meeting?”

We dutifully gave the same arguments we had given before, when he
had agreed to schedule the meeting. He cleared his throat uncomfortably.

“Okay,” he turned to her, “but understand that your presence here
is on condition that I can approve anything you write before you pub
lish it.”

His eyes darted from her to Captain Kotze and me as if to make
sure we understood this too. The reporter agreed and Tokiso nodded
curtly. Then he turned back to me and, as on our previous meeting,
asked why I had called another meeting and what I expected the out
come to be.

Once again, like a tape on an endless repeating loop, I recapped how
I felt about the mishandling of the investigation. I knew that Inspector
Pearce wanted to make a point regarding his late introduction to the case and the flak he had had to take from the Commissioner's office,
even though he hadn't been on the case when I had first started
doubting the skills and commitment of the police force. But I took the
floor and started peppering them with questions I had been stock
piling for months.

“What type of rope was around Tracey's neck?” I demanded.

“It was hessian rope,” Captain Kotze replied. “It's so unusual to see it these days that I remember it clearly.”

“So how do you explain the sworn statement from the mortuary
that it was nylon rope?” I countered.

“Er, well, you know, it all happened a long time ago,” he blustered,
clearing his throat. “Maybe I'm mistaken.”

As I had hoped, Commisioner Tokiso took charge. “Can I see the
photographs of the body, taken at the scene?”

Inspector Pearce handed the docket to the Commissioner, who immediately asked to see the other photographs.

“That's all there is.”

Disbelief and consternation were plainly written on the faces of both the senior-superintendent and the Commissioner, who glanced quickly at the reporter and then looked away again.

“There must be more photographs,” Tokiso said.

“It's impossible for this to be all there is,” added the Senior-Superintendent.

Inspector Pearce convinced them that the two photos they had in front of them were all that had been taken. Two blow-ups had also been made from the original photos. Some hushed chit-chat passed
between the two senior officers. The rest of us couldn't hear what
they were saying, but it wasn't hard to see how ill at ease they were.

The meeting carried on in similar vein for a few hours. I posed my
questions to Captain Kotze and then produced proof that his answers
were shaky and unreliable. I almost felt sorry for him as he struggled
to talk himself out of his own web of half-truths and outright lies.

“Why is the earliest date in the docket dated September 2005, when
the investigation supposedly started in March?” I asked.

No response.

“Can I have copies of the investigative work and statements from
the day Tracey was found up until the docket started?”

“Those are confidential and we can't give them to you,” Kotze replied.

“Once an inquest has been held, the docket is available to the public,
so how can any part of the docket, missing or otherwise, be confidential?” I demanded, biting down hard on my back teeth to force myself
to stay in control. Losing my temper wouldn't do me any good.

Silence.

“Can I have a copy of the missing person's docket?”

“No, it's not for public viewing. It's only accessible to police officers.”

“Enough!” Commisioner Tokiso finally put up his hand. “I think
we can admit that the investigation has been flawed,” he suggested.
Flawed? My mind was snarling at this overly mild characterisation of
what I saw as a bungled disaster.

No mention was made during the meeting of the assurance the po
lice had given to the investigative TV programme – aired six months
earlier – that they would conduct an internal disciplinary hearing fo
r
dereliction of duty. I don't believe anything was ever done; it was just
lip-service by the police to appease the interviewer and put some
gloss on their public image.

“What we can do at this stage,” Tokiso concluded, carefully placing
the tips of his fingers together and tapping them a few times, “is ele
vate your daughter's case to an active case and re-interview her house
mates.”

Then he asked me not to go to the media, stressing that this could
jeopardise the ongoing investigation. I agreed, hoping against all hope
that something constructive would finally come of all this. But my
heart was telling me that the police simply didn't want their incom
petence to be exposed any more than it had been already. Tokiso
closed the meeting by reminding the reporter that she had agreed to
send
him a copy of her article for approval before publication.

She did, and it was published in the local newspaper the following
week.

That meeting was in December 2006. Despite the assurance that
Tracey's case would be elevated to an active case again, to this day I
have received only one more phone call from the police. It came a few
months later, after a widely distributed Sunday newspaper printed
an article about Tracey's case. An officer phoned to tell me that unless
PI Connor handed over any new evidence he had to the police within
twenty-four hours, they would have him arrested. It was obvious that
none of the police had seen the article – they were going on word of mouth information – because the article was simply a re-hash of the
past. When I tried to explain this, the officer got more and more angry.
Why is he putting me in the middle of this, I wondered, becoming
heated myself.

“Do your own damn dirty work,” I retorted. “Phone the PI yoursel
f
or carry out the threat and have him arrested!” As I snapped my phone
shut, I was half hoping that they would try to do just that; they had
no
grounds for an arrest and Connor would have a field day with
them.

That was my final communication with any police officer involved
in investigating my daughter's death. Her file is gathering dust some
where in a system that failed her. No one has ever been arrested and
charged with her murder. PI Dave Connor and I are still in contact an
d
he's still offering a reward for any evidence leading to an arrest and
conviction.

I don't know how or when my daughter died. And I will never know
for sure.

I could have gone on fighting but to what purpose? It won't answer
my questions about what happened. It won't help me sleep at night. It won't bring my daughter back.

Like most people, I believed that the police were doing everything
to find Tracey when she was missing. Once her body was found, I
believed they would do everything to discover what had happened. I was sadly mistaken, so is it any wonder that I'm disillusioned about
our police force, notwithstanding the wonderful work that some of
its members do?

I have a job, a telephone and access to e-mail. What do people do
when a family member or friend is missing or murdered and they
have none of these things? Mothers and fathers sit in shock and grief
, waiting for our men in blue to let them know what has happened to
their child. But they wait in vain. Killers walk free while families serve
life sentences of grief and pain. Criminals are living a good life in
South Africa today, knowing that crime has no punishment because you first have to be caught before you can be punished.

As each festive season approaches, I lie thinking about past Christ
mases. When Tracey and Glen were small and their friends were
getting the latest gimmicky toys in their stockings or under the tree, my children got items of necessity. A small toy or chocolate was our only extravagance. As things improved financially, the presents got
a trifle better, but the most important gift they always received was
my love for them.

What's left of our family is still suffering, having had one of the
best gifts we were ever given snatched away from us. We look around
and see the sparkling lights and hear the happy, excited laughter of
children, but we have joined the ranks of people in the twilight zone,
the homeless, the lonely, the depressed, the abused, the ill and the
neglected. Charitable organisations do what they can to ease the burden for these people, but no one can give us back our Tracey-
filled lives, the unfettered joy, the sparkle in her eyes on Christmas
morning. We don't want to decorate our home, we don't want to send out Christmas cards, we want to crawl into a hole and hibernate until
all the goodwill and cheer has been removed from around us. Our
world has been turned upside down and inside out. Sometimes it's
hard not to resent the fact that others can carry on as they have always
done. Tracey's death consumes us, turns us from family members and friends into strangers to those who thought they knew us. We've be
come strangers to ourselves.

As harsh as my child's death has been, I have a life to live without
her, yet in some ways she seems to be even a bigger part of my life
than she was when she was alive. When did I shake the guilt of being
a survivor and of starting to live again? I don't know; it crept up on me unnoticed. My first genuine smile, my first moment of unforced
laughter, my first realisation of enjoyment, all these later brought a tsunami of guilt crashing down around me.

I will never be the same person I was, but slowly I began to realise
that clinging to my grief and pain was no way to live. How would my
bubbly, laughing, fun-loving daughter respect me if I did not live my
life? I have a son I love very much. How does my clinging to grief affect him? He has a hard and lonely road to travel. Tracey was his sis
ter as well as his best friend, and both were gone in an instant. How
must he have felt when he lost his mother the same day he lost his sis
ter? How did my husband feel to lose his wife as well as his daughte
r, my mother to lose her daughter as well as her granddaughter?

I began to sense that I had to take charge; I was the only one who
could give my family back a “person” rather than an empty shell. It hasn't been easy. My days are sometimes unbearable, my nights still plagued with nightmares, but I'm fighting the darkness, taking one
day at a time. I can't undo the past but hanging onto my pain and
grief just makes the burden heavier to carry.

Learning to live again doesn't mean I don't love my daughter, and
it doesn't mean I've forgotten her. It just means I've come to believe
that out of love, respect and honour for her I have to grasp at the
beauty of the world around me and allow my burden to lighten, to
banish the guilt that isn't mine to bear. My life, my future, will remain
forever shadowed by cold and darkness, but my child will be my
guiding light, and she's calling me back to the land of warmth and beauty with her love and laughter.

The end