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Before we start, this episode of World of Secrets includes descriptions of violence which some listeners may find distressing. It's 1991. Following his disastrous inquest, Louis van Scoor has quit being a security guard. He's bought a dairy farm, a short drive from East London, and is trying to build a completely different kind of life. It's lush and green, and at dawn the birds perform a beautiful morning chorus.
This is something he's wanted for years, a small plot to live off the land with his family. But that peace is about to be shattered. Early one morning, while tending to his cows, he hears a commotion outside. Four o'clock in the morning, I was busy milking, and I noticed four cows coming up the driveway. And this guy walked up to me, the head of murder and robbery squad.
And the guy came up to me and said, "I'm Colonel so-and-so. I'm here to arrest you on charges of murder and attempted murder." And I said, "Oh, okay." And they took me away. And he said to me, "What are you going to do?" I said, "I'm not guilty." The most feared killer in East London insists he's not guilty. But he's arrested and taken away in a police car.
That day, he's charged with 43 counts, 19 of murder, 21 of attempted murder and three of assault. Fonskwo's opponents have gotten him off the streets, but they're not done with him yet. Anger is rising over the scale of his killing spree, and some people want revenge. While in police custody, someone firebombs Fonskwo's farmhouse.
No one claims responsibility for the attack on Vanscourt's farm, but it cripples him financially and he's forced to sell everything. He needs all the resources he can get.
He's about to fight what will become one of the largest criminal trials in the history of South Africa. This is World of Secrets, Season 3, The Apartheid Killer. A BBC World Service investigation with me, Ayanda Charlie. And me, Charlie Norscoff. Episode 5, The Trial. Louis Fonsco's trial takes place in the Supreme Court in East London.
It's a grim concrete building full of stuffy courtrooms, wooden benches and stale carpets. Dominic Jones, the young reporter who helped first expose the scale of VanScore's killings, is the only journalist who attends every day of the trial. As soon as I knew that he was going to appear in court, I dropped everything.
The charges against Van Square are daunting.
But many powerful people in the white establishment in East London are still behind him. Members of the public begin writing letters to the papers defending the security guard. There were letters which said that Louis Fonskoe was doing a good job and should have been rewarded rather than be hounded by the newspapers because that's how it was seen that the newspapers were the problem, not Louis Fonskoe. There isn't just support for Fonskoe in the press.
People from the businesses he once protected give him money too. Despite being financially broken, Fonskoa is able to hire two of the most formidable attorneys in the region. They were heavy hitters. And defense counsel consisted of a big, rotund man by the name of Johan Vessels. And he was a big bulldog of a man with a big courtroom presence. The best cut man in the business.
And then he was assisted by an attorney, Doberman, who was a tall, thin man. Van Score is known for stalking his victims barefoot, dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. And he has a chaotic, bushy black beard. But when he enters the courtroom, he looks a completely different person.
The bulldog lawyer Vessels and the tall, thin Doberman have prepared their client perfectly. He was wearing a fancy suit, you know, his beard, respectably, trimmed. Fonskoa had a lot of experience in court because he had been a police officer for 12 years. And so he was very comfortable in court. He knew the protocols. He began each sentence with the required "my lord" and ended each one with "my lord" again.
He made a very good impression on the stand. We've managed to get recordings of the actual trial. The audio isn't great, but you can clearly hear Van Scor playing this game of deference in court. Correct, my lord. You will then contact the police to come out. Now, my lord. He seemed really charming on the surface and confident. Charming and confident. He spoke clearly...
He didn't seem like a lunatic like you would expect. And he was cautious, very cautious in how he spoke and he would think before he said things. Fonskoa is the perfect witness. With no jury trials in South Africa, making a good impression on the judge can mean the difference between being found guilty or not. And the defence have many things working in their favour.
The man in charge, Judge Malunsky, is white, like almost every other judge at that time, and pretty much everyone else working in the courtroom. He's an experienced lawyer, but not an experienced judge. This is his first ever trial.
In an attempt to make a good impression, Fonskoa's defence team do everything they can to present their client as a normal, measured and law-abiding citizen. They even roll out a criminologist to give expert analysis on Fonskoa's character. I would not label him as a psychopath because a psychopath shows no feelings of any kind. He is
in actual fact, well-adjusted and kindly. The man tasked with taking on Fonscour, proving his killings were murders and overcoming this mountain of obstacles, is state prosecutor Alfonso Hutting. He's experienced, quiet, an almost owl-like in appearance, the complete opposite of the red-faced and bullish defence team. He had a difficult task. Hutting was a grey...
quiet, spoken, almost academic type prosecutor. He didn't have a large courtroom presence. He was quiet, methodical, but he knew his stuff. Hutton might sound like a mismatch, but he's intelligent and he has his own strategy up his sleeve. Prior to the trial, Hutton spent two years gathering evidence.
The prosecutor had close to 100 witnesses at his disposal, men and boys who've been shot by VanScore, but somehow survived. One of the prosecutor's star witnesses is John, the 14-year-old boy who was shot by VanScore after breaking into the Wimpy Burger restaurant in East London. He was later found lying on the rocks by the ocean. He saw his 12-year-old friend, Leafy, killed in front of him.
We approached John in the course of making this podcast. He told us he's still traumatized from the events that night and didn't feel he could speak publicly yet. We're only using his first name to protect his privacy. John's testimony in court from 1992 is recorded, but the quality is too grainy to broadcast. His words, which you are about to hear, are spoken by a South African boy, the same age as John at the time of the attack.
We arrived at Wampi Bar in the evening. It was already dark. We went to the back of the restaurant on the ocean side and Liffey broke a window with a stone. He then climbed in through the hole. He then opened the window for me from the inside and then so that I could climb in too. The boys start to search the restaurant for petty cash. There's almost nothing left in the tills.
As they're snooping around, suddenly, out of nowhere, they see the shadow of a big man walking past the window. The two boys run and hide. We decided to hide in the toilet. And after a few minutes, we got such a fright. There was a white man with a gun in his hand. The white man stood outside the toilet and he said that we must come out. Twelve-year-old Leefy is the first to come out of the toilet. And Leefy walked out in front.
And then he shot Liffey from behind. And I saw Liffey fall. I turned around and looked at the white man. I was scared that he would shoot me. I went towards him to be close to him so I can hold on to him. So that he wouldn't be able to shoot me. He held the gun not far from me. And then I was also shot. Yeah, yeah, in my right leg from the front. I fell down. He told me to stand up.
And then as I was trying to stand up, he shot me again in my left buttock. He said I have to stand up again, but I couldn't. I was lying there and he kicked me in the mouth. After shooting him twice and kicking him in the mouth, John is bleeding out. He can no longer use his legs. He told me again to stand up, but I couldn't. So he picked me up and he propped me against the table. And then he shot me again in the shoulder.
from the front and I fell down. He shot me three times and I fell asleep and I woke up the next day in the hospital. His friend, Leafy, is dead. John's body is found on the rocks outside. He still doesn't know how he got there, but there are signs his limp body may have been smashed through the now shattered window. In VanScore's account of that night, the two boys attack him and he shoots and kills in self-defence.
John is adamant. That is a lie. We did not attack that man. I had no weapons. When he found us in the toilet, we did not resist him. Fonskwa's lead defence attorney challenges John on the witness stand, accusing him of making everything up. But the young boy refuses to budge. No matter what was thrown at him, he stuck to his story. And Fonskwa's legal team actually...
filed perjury charges against him. And John is not the only compelling witness. Dozens of young black men step forward, giving detailed, harrowing accounts of being confronted by Van Scoor after dark. Multiple people say Van Scoor shot them while their hands were up, after they had surrendered. Others describe him toying with them, asking if they'd prefer to be arrested or shot, before shooting them anyway.
Another victim describes being shot in the abdomen, begging for water, before being kicked in his wound by Van Scoor. The prosecution intends to overwhelm the defence with these first-hand testimonies, an extraordinary weight of evidence of brutal violence. What he was trying to do was present a big picture, a mosaic of evidence, to sort of impress upon the judge that all these individuals...
who didn't know each other were coming forward with very similar stories about Louis shooting them after he had already secured their arrest and that he had basically executed them, you know, or tried to execute them. And if you look at what equipment did Louis Fonscour have with him, he only carried two things. He carried a gun and he carried a walkie-talkie. He didn't have handcuffs.
He didn't have a truncheon. He didn't have any way of arresting people. So his intention when he went out wasn't to arrest anyone. It was to shoot them, kill them, hurt them. It was hunting. The testimonies of the dozens of young black men who come forward during the trial are a devastating indictment of Fonskwo. The evidence seems overwhelming.
For the crimes he's being accused of, he could face a death sentence. But Van Scores' lawyer, the bullish Vessels, saw this coming. He's also done his homework, and he's concocted an ingenious plan to save Louis Van Scores from the hangman's rope.
I don't know.
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You really, really want it all to work out while you're away. Monday.com gives you and the team that peace of mind. When all work is on one platform and everyone's in sync, things just flow wherever you are. Tap the banner to go to Monday.com. In the Supreme Court in East London, in a stuffy little room, the prosecution are calling dozens of black witnesses to testify against Louis Fonscour. Court proceedings are in English, but most of these men speak Xhosa,
an indigenous South African language. It's my first language too. But back then, and today, most of us are forced to use English in formal settings. It's the language of power here. And in the courtroom of Fun Square, this gave him and his all-white legal team a distinct advantage, linguistically and in the eyes of the judge.
You know, you have these court officials in their elaborate robes and gowns bowing and referring to the judge as "my lord". And meanwhile, there's this reality of impoverished, desperate people coming before these courts, can barely understand the language that they're being tried in.
And they're coming to court to tell these improbable stories in their tattered, cheap clothes and their worn-out shoes. Everything about the cultural and socio-economic background of the witnesses made them seem out of place in that all-white courtroom with its colonial customs. Despite being in court in their own country, for the young men on the stand, the atmosphere is alien.
And the witnesses know they are taking a huge risk by testifying against a white security guard and a former police officer. Many of them were shot while breaking into buildings. A criminal offence. There's a good chance they could face additional charges simply for telling the truth. A lot of these witnesses seemed quite terrified to be facing the man who had shot them. Some of them also seemed unsure of whether they were being accused of a crime.
or if it was van Schoor who was the accused. And I think that it did affect them. They were obviously nervous giving evidence, nervous about being sent to prison, potentially. They admitted that they were breaking into premises when being confronted by van Schoor. Van Schoor's defense team, no testimonies like this would be given during this trial, and they're ready for them. Van Schoor's lawyer, Johan Wessels,
one of the most ferocious in the region, shifts his strategy. He goes on the offensive. Vessels is a bulldog, and he made a point of attacking the character and the profile of the victims. I remember feeling quite angry about how, you know, he asked almost every victim the same questions.
"How old are you? What's your date of birth?" And, you know, he would undermine them, every one of them, showing them to be unsophisticated because they didn't have an education. And Wessels repeatedly reminded the judge that the victims had all been shot while breaking into buildings.
They were black. They were criminals. And their testimonies couldn't be trusted. The defense's strategy was to paint all the accusers as unreliable. And he was brutal with the witnesses and extremely thorough in his cross-examination. He grilled them on every aspect of their testimony, torn them to pieces. All of them, I would say, all of them were petty criminals.
They were not complete innocents. One of the big issues was that many of them had admitted that they had lied in court on previous occasions, mostly to stay out of jail, which is common. But vessels would be sure to ask them, have you ever lied before court? It doesn't matter what the victims actually say. François' lawyer attacks them all, shredding their credibility in the eyes of the white establishment. And the judge buys it.
His notes from the trial, which are stored in the local archives, repeatedly refer to the victims as unimpressive witnesses, unsophisticated, uneducated and eventually unreliable. The prosecuting lawyer's strategy of convicting Van Scoor through a weight of witness testimony is falling apart.
Hatting turns to the East London Police to try and bolster his position, asking them detailed questions about the scenes of the shootings. But the officers don't play ball. He discovers a huge amount of evidence is missing. Many policemen failed to follow normal protocols at the scenes of shootings. They didn't take photos of the dead bodies. They didn't collect forensic evidence at the scene. They never interrogated Franscois as a suspect.
In one section of the court transcript, voiced here by actors, a frustrated Hutung asked an officer why he didn't bother to collect evidence, like bullet casings, from the scene of one killing. Did you see the bullet holes? I can't remember. Where were the casings? I didn't see any casings. I didn't pick any up. Did you look for them? No, I didn't look for casings. Why not?
At that stage, I didn't care because the person was involved in a crime and I didn't pick up the casings. Did you bother to look for any evidence on the scene? I was convinced the man was shot on the scene. After that, I didn't look for the casings or investigate the scene thoroughly, as I should have. Watching these police interviews from the wooden pews at the back of the courtroom, journalist Dominic Jones feels like the police are covering for their former colleague and friend. They didn't want to be there.
A lot of them knew Louis van Squoer. In a way, it was a betrayal of their brother to be called to court to give evidence against him. It was an opportunity as well for the defense to stand up and say, ask the police officer, did you ever suspect that Louis van Squoer had done something wrong? And they would all say no. They didn't suspect him of having done anything wrong. Louis van Squoer was their brother.
In some instances, police officers were standing outside the building when Van Scoor shot someone. On other occasions, they responded to the scene within minutes. But time and time again, they testify that they can't remember what happened on the night of the killings. Very few people voice it publicly, but support for Van Scoor is strong.
At one point in the trial, someone places an "I love Louie" sticker with a heart full of bullet holes on the judge's car parked outside the courtroom. Despite initially facing 43 counts, the prosecution are forced to drop almost all of the murder and attempted murder charges, far from getting the death penalty. It looks like VanScore could walk free. But it's not all over.
Hatting, prosecuting lawyer, may not have the dogged charisma of Van Scores' defence, but he has a forensic mind and a meticulous attention to detail. He decides to move away from victim testimony and narrows his sights on minute clues from Van Scores' shootings, details that many police officers completely missed. And one of the cases he focuses on is the killing of Edward Sunnis.
When we first met Edward's sister, Marlene Sunis, in East London, she had no idea how her brother had died. And we had no idea either. It was a mystery to all of us. We won't really know what happened. We only know that he was killed. We knew Edward's case had come up in Franskoa's trial, but the audio tapes and records were lost. It's taken years of archival research to unearth them.
But with the help of South African journalist Isa, we have found that missing material. This is the first time these recordings have been played in the media. The first time the Sunnis family have heard a detailed account of what happened to Edward. In the recording from the trial, the prosecutor Hatting gives Finskwer an opportunity to tell the judge what happened on the night Edward died. He claims he found him breaking into a car in an industrial area.
trying to steal its battery. I started running, chasing this person. I shouted at this person to stop. However, this person just carried on running. Fonskoa says he chased Edward towards the wall of a factory. He then gives a strange description of the moment of the shooting. I lifted up my firearm and was in the process of firing a shot at this person.
when this person turned around completely as he was going around the corner. I again shouted at this person, but again I had no response from this person. When I fired a second shot in the direction of this person, this person then rolled down the embankment and landed on the cement or the ground section next to the wall
The state prosecutor presses VanScore further, questioning why he shot Edward. Was there any doubt in your mind as to why this person was running away?
No, my lord. It was clear that he was trying to get away from me in the process of escaping. Escaping from what? From me, my lord. Van Scores' testimony is messy and suspicious. And so are the actions of the police on the day of the killing. The officers who arrive fail to take any photos of the crime scene the day Edward died. Nor do they take any pictures of his dead body.
As far as we know, no images are ever taken of the car that Edward was allegedly trying to steal either. It's unclear whether that car ever existed, but Franskwa's testimony is never questioned or scrutinised by the police. With so little evidence from the scene, and the shooter the only witness, Edward's case looks almost impossible to prosecute. But the prosecutor, Hatting, knows precisely what he's doing.
After allowing Fonskoua to give his testimony, he pulls out a crucial document. The document that will prove the shooting of Edward Souny's was a murder. South African journalist Isa showed us a copy of this file. It took her months to find it, buried away in the archives. Within these boxes, each one contains multiple killings and shootings. This is Edward Souny's.
Iser is pointing out a drawing of a faceless human being. It's an artist's depiction of Edward, showing marks on his body drawn by the forensic pathologist who did his autopsy. The dots show the places where Edward was shot by Van Scoor. One bullet hits Edward's stomach. It seriously wounded him, but it's not fatal.
The other bullet, the one that killed him, passes through the palm of his hand and into his heart. The pathologist's document completely contradicts VanScore's version of events. Edward was not running away and shot through the back. He was facing VanScore with his hands up, seemingly in a position of surrender or pleading. In the face of the prosecution's grilling, VanScore begins to crack.
For the first time, Louis began to break down. He had difficulty concentrating. He complained of headaches. He asked for recesses. Things were not going so well for him because he realized that his stories didn't always gel with the medical evidence or the ballistic evidence. It was interesting to see him squirm.
The judge hadn't believed any of the black witnesses, who say they had already surrendered to Van Scool when they were shot. But he can't deny the physical fact that the bullet that killed Edward Sunis passed through the palm of his outstretched hand. These were the judge's comments on Edward's case. On this count, the deceased was shot twice. The first shot was a non-fatal wound to his abdomen.
You gave false evidence that the deceased was running away when the shot was fired. The second shot penetrated his left hand and then entered his chest. The second shot killed him. At that stage, the deceased, on your evidence, was on the embankment. However, he had already been wounded and he had no reasonable prospect of escaping. You had no right to kill him and your behavior was deplorable.
The Edward Sooney's case helps turn the tide against Fonskoe. Until Iser found these lost recordings from the trial and recovered the old files from the archives, his son Raymond and his sister Marlene never knew what happened to Edward. The police and the court system never bothered to tell them. The families of Fonskoe's victims were not invited to his trial. When it came to the final day, the judge had to make a decision. Would he convict Fonskoe of murder?
And if so, on how many counts? Here is the judge's summary: I accept that you are capable of acts of kindness and ordinary human decency. But I'm also satisfied that you showed no compassion or concern for your victims, that you gunned them down with a dispassionate disregard for their lives, that you needlessly resorted to the use of a firearm with an appalling frequency.
Despite strongly condemning VanScore's behaviour, the judge ultimately decides to be lenient. Out of all the original charges, he only convicts him for seven murders. The rest of the murder charges are dropped. The journalist Dominic Jones, who attended every day of the trial, is despondent.
The judgment was so disappointing because the judge had decided to look at cases individually and not see the big picture of Louis van Schoor basically going out and murdering people for sport. But even the judge knew, said in his judgment, that there were many cases that were borderline. And yet he still gave him a very lenient sentence. Van Schoor is sentenced to 91 years in prison for the seven murders.
But the judge allows him to serve each sentence simultaneously. In the end, he will only go on to spend 12 years in jail. For the families of his victims, there was little justice. For a lot of these people, they lost children, fathers, brothers. They lost livelihoods. They never got the justice that they should have been given because their family member's main crime was being poor.
And Louis van Squere made them pay for that crime with their lives. I used to confide to my closest friends that the van Squere killings made me feel like we were in Nazi Germany. It was obvious there was a problem with Louis van Squere, but many people just went along with it. That included the police, the magistrates in the courts, and even the business community who bought Louis van Squere's services.
And it made me think, you know, this is how Nazi Germany happened. This is how they exterminated people and ordinary right-thinking people went along with it because no one cared about the victims because they were a different colour and not of the same social class. You know, they were poor and they were seen as scum who deserved to die. Van Scoor is taken off the streets and locked up in the East London jail.
The same jail where many of the survivors of his shootings were imprisoned for stealing. As the years go by, things begin to fall apart back home, where his daughter Sabrina is increasingly getting into conflict with her mum, his ex-wife. The tension reaches breaking point. Louis van Scoor is not the only member of his family to become a killer. That's next time on World of Secrets.
Thank you for listening to World of Secrets, Season 3, The Apartheid Killer, from the BBC World Service. This has been Episode 5 of 6. We would like as many people as possible to hear our investigations, so please leave a rating and a review and do tell others about World of Secrets. It really does help. Season 3 is a long-form audio production for the BBC World Service, presented by me, Ayanda Charlie, and Charlie Northcott.
It's a collaboration with BBC Africa Eye with original investigation by Isa Jacobson and Charlie Northcott. There's a BBC Africa Eye film about the apartheid killer, which we'd recommend watching too after listening to the podcast. Look for the link in the show notes. The series producer is Jim Frank, field production by Isa Jacobson. The series editor is Matt Willis.
Anne Dixie is Senior Podcast Producer at the BBC World Service. The podcast commissioning editor is John Manel.
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