The Apartheid Killer: 4. The Hunter Becomes the Hunted
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They use Monday.com to keep their teamwork sharp, their communication clear, and their goals in sight. Monday.com. For whatever you run, even orcas. Go to Monday.com to dive deeper. Before we start, this episode of World of Secrets includes descriptions of violence and torture, which some listeners may find distressing. East London, South Africa. It's the late 1980s. Police officers are scouring through a maze of alleyways and dirt streets.

They're forming a net around a specific house in the heart of Duncan Village, a township on the outskirts of the city where members of an underground resistance are plotting the downfall of the apartheid regime. One of these resistance fighters, a man called Joe, is the target. He's been stockpiling weapons in his home and the police are coming to find them. There was an AK in the fridge. An AK-47? Yeah, to the back.

And there were two grenades in one bin, and there were another two F1 grenades in another bin. The grenades are hidden inside bins full of flour, and the AK-47 machine gun is behind a wooden panel at the back of the fridge. Joe has stuffed bottles of milk, bags of rice, and vegetables in front of it to make it hard to see. But he's run out of time, and the police smash down his door.

The beeping machine that Joe is referring to is a metal detector. The police are using it to scan his largely wooden home, searching for the weapons. They know that something is there, but they can't find it. As they questioned Joe...

They order him to hold out his arm in front of him to see if he's telling the truth. Scores of his fellow fighters have been taken away by the police, tortured, some never to be seen again. His hand is shaking uncontrollably with fear. So I know when now you just stretch your hand like this, straight like this, and my hand was shaking like anything. I said, no, there's something here. What would have happened if they'd found it? They were going to arrest me.

The police turn over every item of furniture in the house. They fail to check the fridge and find the weapons. They eventually give up, but they're not finished with Joe. And he is not finished with them. A powerful movement is rising in South Africa. Activists, lawyers and journalists are joining forces to fight the white supremacist government. And their sights are set on another target too. A security guard who's gone rogue.

A man who's been killing scores of black people after dark. I didn't know at that point who Louis Fonscour was. What I did know is that this was a guy who needed to be stopped. This is World of Secrets, Season 3. The Apartheid Killer. A BBC World Service investigation with me, Ayanda Charlie. And me, Charlie Northcott. Episode 4, The Hunter Becomes The Hunted. At the end of the last episode...

Louis van Scoor killed a 12-year-old boy at the Wimpy restaurant in East London. The other victim that night, 14-year-old John, miraculously survived. Before we pick up on what happened in that case, we need to unpack what was going on in the city at that time. So in this episode, we will journey into the past, meeting the people who tried to investigate and bring down van Scoor.

And to do that, we're spending time with Joe, the man who was hiding an AK-47 in the back of his fridge. People in Duncan Village love Joe for the role he played in the struggle. He's 66 years old now, but everywhere we go, people stop to greet him. He jokes that he's like the unofficial mayor of Duncan Village. Yeah.

Joe is a former member of Umkonto Wesizwe, the Spear of the Nation, which was the military arm of the African National Congress. The government had promised and proven time and again that any form of resistance would be met with maximum force by the state. And by the 1980s, after countless massacres, banishments, unlawful imprisonment and assassinations in their lifetime alone, many young people answered the call to take up arms.

Joe was one of them. Joe was on the front line of the fight. But that's not why we meet him. We went to him because of the information he has on Louis Vance's score. Details nobody has heard before.

He claims that the former security guard was not working alone in East London. He says he had the backing of the police. Specifically,

Joe says VanSchool was close with officers at Cambridge Police Station in East London. He says they would rubber stamp his shootings as justifiable homicide rather than investigate their friend. They don't want to investigate cases. They choose friends. They cover for certain individuals. Cambridge Police Station was known for killing. This was the most hostile police station in this part of the region. Fear it.

Nobody wanted to be arrested and be taken to Cambridge Police Station. Ruthless. Cambridge Police Station is still standing today. And it's a weird place. There's a sinister edge to it. From the outside, it looks like a fortress. The walls are red brick, but a faded grey with moss and mould. And the windows are covered in metal grates, preventing anyone outside from looking in.

Joe has first-hand experience of the brutality of the officers who once worked there. Not long after the incident with the weapons in his fridge, he's arrested and taken to Cambridge Police Station. I was immediately taken to a service. And after close to two hours, they opened the door again. And they called, "Joe, come on, it's your turn." They escort him into a windowless room. In the corner is a wooden bench.

Four police officers are waiting for him. They order him to strip off his clothes. There was a bench next to the wall, that side. And this guy said, strip, strip, strip, strip, strip. And I stripped, and I was left with underwear. And he said, when you go to bed with your girlfriend, do you usually leave your underpants? I asked him, where's my girlfriend? He said, here's your girlfriend. And he showed me the bench. And when I look at this bench...

There were belts attached to the bench itself. And they put my hands under the bench and they put handcuffs. And I was unable to move except only the head. A police officer approaches Joe. He says he's a doctor and that he's going to give him special treatment for being a member of the African National Congress, the ANC. There was a guy who was wearing some military boots.

A threat band with a military vest. He said he's employed to make sure that sick people from the ANC are treated well. So I'm going to treat you. He came on my back with boots, military boots. He was jumping on my back, up and down, up and down. They broke my back. Sure, that's the most painful, most painful.

Joe's back is broken by the police.

Together with Isa Jacobson, we've reviewed the police reports for all of Fun Square's shootings, and there's a clear pattern.

Officers from Cambridge Police Station were frequently the first responders. File after file has the station's official stamp on the front cover. Cambridge Police Station, that's where a lot of these unscored 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. When I go to Cambridge Police Station...

and I see those blocked off windows. I can imagine Fenskewer walking in with his neat and tidy case already sewn up, rubber stamped, and the screams of the people who would have been on the upper floors. It's all in the same building, ultimately. There are people in the system who allowed this to happen. With brutal police officers from Cambridge Police Station supporting him,

Van school must have seemed unstoppable. Shooting after shooting is being signed off as justifiable, seemingly with very little scrutiny from the police. South Africa is operating under a state of emergency at this time. The police have far-reaching powers. For everyone else, it's tense. It was a heavy police presence in town all the time. And we were under a state of emergency. And as journalists,

That put heavy restrictions on what we could do, what we could write. And in fact, we didn't know often what was legal or what was permitted. You could be arrested for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. You just didn't know what the rules were under the state of emergency. This is Dominic Jones.

In the 1980s, he's a rookie journalist, having just landed his first job with the East London paper, The Daily Dispatch. I was such a junior, green journalist. I was a student. Had never been to East London before. Had no idea what sort of newspaper The Daily Dispatch was. And, you know, there was a lot of bad things happening. Dominic is excited.

The Eastern Cape is at the sharp end of the struggle between the apartheid government and its opponents. The region is a boiling kettle of racial tension, and it could blow at any moment. It was lunchtime and people were just heading back to the offices and to their work and there was a massive blast. Blasts and shots of blasts flying everywhere.

There were people screaming inside the restaurant. People lying outside the restaurant covered in blood. That certainly drove home for me that this was a tense, very tense time. The bomb Dominic witnesses is one of dozens set off by resistance fighters across the region, aimed at crippling white-owned businesses. But he isn't allowed to cover stories like this.

He's a junior, and the media is tightly controlled. His editor doesn't want to cover any stories that might panic their white readers. We could barely put a story together. Some of the columns that were being written were things like playing bridge, croquet. There wasn't a lot of coverage of the political situation. In fact, I was asked to become the harbor reporter, the port reporter.

to report on ships that were coming into port. It was rather ridiculous. The country's burning, and I'm being assigned by the editor to be their first port reporter, writing about ships. Dominic is frustrated, so without drawing too much attention, he begins to quietly look into other stories, and one of them, in particular, grabs his attention. I did some research in the library looking for...

reports of shootings by a security guard at local businesses. It was clear to me that there was definitely something of substance behind these rumors that had been going around about Fonscour.

Who was Louis Fonscour? Why was he able to do this? Why were the police covering up for him? You know, at the time, there were rumors about hit squads, secret police hit squads, and people would disappear. And the thing was, is that under the state of emergency, the police basically could tell you what they wanted to tell you, and you weren't really allowed to question them.

Dominic begins looking into Fun Square. His investigation, alongside other journalists and activists, is one of the most comprehensive ever carried out. At the time he's digging, so little information is out there. And he has so many questions about the security guard. Is he a state-sponsored assassin or a lone wolf? How many people has he actually killed?

Dominic tries contacting Van Scoor himself for answers, leaving a note and his phone number on his car windshield. He doesn't hear back, and he assumes he won't. Until one night. It must have been around midnight. I was asleep and all alone. And the telephone rang. Better get up and go and answer the phone. So I went downstairs and the telephone was in the kitchen.

And the kitchen faced the courtyard. And leading to the courtyard were these large glass sliding doors, which would open onto the courtyard. And the curtains were open. Anyway, I picked up the phone and this voice came on that I instantly recognized as Louis Fonscour. And he said, Mr. Jones. And I said, yes. He said, number 39, pal. And then he hung up.

And I thought, what does he mean, 39? Suddenly I thought, I saw the windows, doors out to the courtyard. I was standing there, fully exposed, and thought, does he mean me? Am I number 39?

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Marketing team, did you get those social media posts scheduled for the seal migration? Aye, aye, Captain. We even have an automated notification for all pod managers when they go live. They use Monday.com to keep their teamwork sharp, their communication clear, and their goals in sight. Monday.com. For whatever you run, even orcas. Go to Monday.com to dive deeper. In that moment, Dominic Jones fears for his life.

Once his racing heart settles, he sits down and thinks about what's just happened. He believes Fonscour called to boast that he'd just killed his 39th victim that night. Dominic wants answers too, so he begins to search for evidence. And one of the people he turns to is Charlene Crage. He was at the local newspaper and he said to Charlene,

I've had this incident, have you ever heard of, has this guy's name ever come up? And I said, well, funny, I had a case yesterday. It was just total coincidence. Charlene Craige worked for an organisation called The Black Sash, a coalition of white women who help victims of human rights abuses. Dominic and one of his colleagues reach out to her for help. I had a client come in that had been in prison

I think for six months and hospital as well, who'd been shot and now was coming to looking for justice. I took photos and took the statement from him and I was counting his bullet wounds and checking the entry and exit points in his front and back of his chest. And that's what started the whole process off. The Black Sash had an extensive network of contacts in the townships. So we asked Charlene,

to put out the word to their network of sources and contacts for anyone who had encountered Louis Fonscourt to come forward and bring information to the Black Sash. And then the Black Sash would share that information with us. The deeper Dominic and Charlene dig, the murkier things become. The police appear to be obscuring Fonscourt's role in the shootings. Information is going missing. What was interesting

is that in the early stories about these shootings, they actually gave his name. They said, you know, Louis Fonscour had shot a suspect at a particular business. He was named by the police. But in the more recent stories, the stories had less and less information. You know, the shooter wasn't named by the police. The security company involved

was no longer named. And in some cases, even the business that had been apparently broken into wasn't named. So it seemed to me that the police were trying to hide who was involved in these shootings by giving out less information. Dominic needs hard evidence, but there is so little information out there, the police won't help him. So he decides to try his luck at the courthouse in East London.

A brutalist concrete building full of grey corridors, grey filing cabinets and long-faced guards at the gate. I wasn't quite sure what sort of records I was looking for. Wandering around those corridors, he bumps into a lawyer, who he asks a quick question. What kind of information is recorded when someone is killed? She tells him there would have been an inquest, a detailed account of what had happened and that those reports are stored somewhere inside the building.

An inquest? I didn't even know what an inquest was. Dominic begins to search for the archives, moving through the corridors and eventually down into the basement. Row after row of paper files are stacked in long cabinets and boxes. He begins to quietly search through them, one by one. Each inquest file documents a death, suicides, car accidents. There are hundreds of them. He wonders if he'll ever find anything.

So I moved on to the next one and it was cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds. And I thought, well, this one looks interesting. And I looked on the back and on the back of the cover of each file was a list of witnesses. And there was the name Louis von Squier. And I immediately felt my heart starting to race. It suddenly made what had to that point really been speculation and rumor suddenly made it very real.

Among the files, he finds more Van Scoor cases, more shootings. Cases like the killing of Edward Sunnis. He reads shocking new details that have never come into the light. But Dominic isn't allowed to make copies of this material. He's not even sure if he's allowed in that room in the first place. He jots down as many details as he can and rushes two miles across town back to his editor at the Daily Dispatch. When he gets there, the editor isn't impressed.

This rookie journalist is going to need much more than some scribbled notes to bring down the most popular security guard in East London, a man with many friends in the police force. To expose Van Score, Dominic needs people to know what really happened during his killings. They need to know how many have died. And to prove it, he needs copies of those inquest documents. He decides to call Charlene.

The organisation she works for, the Black Sash, are used to secret activities. And if they're going to get Van Scores' kill files, they're going to have to steal them. The next day, they nervously head back to the courthouse, not knowing if word had got out about a young reporter sniffing around the archives. There's a really good chance security won't let them in. We didn't expect to actually get past the front desk.

And so we used a lot of manipulation to actually get these workers to let us down there. We were so amazed that we actually talked our way into it because even though they are public documents and they should allow us to go in, that's just not the way things worked in South Africa. So we got down and we started pulling out, you know, all these dusty files. My job was to run up and down the staircase.

and manipulate the lady in the office to let me use their photocopier machine. And that was a full-time job because she was just feeling so uncomfortable, but she knew that it was probably not in her interest to not let me do that. So what were you saying to her? Sweet talking her and probably trying to be friends and probably tell her what a great hairdo she had. I would have been using everything, just distract her to what we were really doing.

You must have been excited getting all this information. Yes. You know at any time you can be stopped. So you're just trying to outwit people around you all the time. It's just adrenaline really that's rushing through you and you know that you've got a limited time and you've got to get the information and get out there as quick as you can.

For three days, totally wired on coffee and nervous energy, they run up and down stairs, photocopying, secretly taking pictures and documenting anything that could help them nail Funscore. And we came up with 25 victims. When we studied the inquest record, everything was exactly the same. We could see there was a modus operandi there and there was a pattern. Even the way he shot the victims...

He was shooting to kill. With this new evidence, Dominic thinks he's finally got enough to persuade his editor to go public and publish the story. But under apartheid in East London, it's not that simple. Unfortunately, our newspaper was being privately funded by the businesses that were being protected by Fonscour, so they refused to publish the stories.

Despite having the evidence they need, the newspaper decides not to publish the story on Fonsquoia. Dominic and his colleagues are crushed. The editor wants him to stick with his beat, writing about ships, not killings by a well-respected white businessman. So we had to work out a plan amongst ourselves about how we were going to get the story out. This really matters. After all their work, he doesn't want to let it go.

So he takes the evidence to another newspaper. They publish and they name many of the victims. It's the first time any information has come out publicly about the scale and severity of Fonskoa's killings. The first time anyone had hinted that perhaps his shootings were not justifiable, as the police claimed. It was this article that Marlene Sunis read in episode one.

the first time she knew that her brother Edward had died. On the Monday morning after that, my office was flooded by families who had discovered for the first time what had happened to their child maybe two years ago. And these children had all been buried in mass graves, in pauper's graves on the edge of town. And there was never any attempt to contact the families.

And so none of them knew what had happened to their children. The article is a defining moment. It doesn't answer all the mysteries surrounding Van Scores' killings, but it does unleash unprecedented pressure and scrutiny on the East London police from parts of South African society that simply cannot be ignored. Winds of change are sweeping across the globe. The Berlin Wall has just fallen.

And communist regimes around the world are beginning to lose their grip on power. And in Cape Town, Nelson Mandela has finally been released from prison. VanScore's killings are no longer going unnoticed. After shooting two men one evening, an inquest is held in 1990. But this time, it's different. A young black attorney called Gerald Bloom is brought forward to scrutinise what happened.

The courtroom was a very, very small courtroom. Mr. Van Schoor was standing about two, at most three meters from me when I cross-examined him. Now, just think about it. Just think about that situation. And I had to put to him, you shot with the intention of killing my guy. Bloom cross-examines Van Schoor relentlessly. The magistrate overseeing the courtroom is persuaded.

He says, for the first time, that Van Scoor overstepped the mark. The case draws to a close and Bloom knows he's scored a victory. Van Scoor is in trouble. As the court is adjourned and everyone begins to quietly file out of the room, he sees the six-foot-two bearded man walking towards him. And Van Scoor came straight to me.

And he petted me on the back and he said, well done. He said, thank you very much. I was scared. I must be honest. He said, well done. Yeah, yeah. That's the mentality of the person we're dealing with. It's all a joke to him, I think. After that, he comes to me with a smile on his face and he says, well done. I mean, what other human being would do that? Van Scoor is confident and with good reason.

After all, up to this point, his friends in high places have managed to take care of every last shooting. He had their protection. But now, the net is closing in. They didn't know it then, but in the coming months, he would be the subject of the largest criminal trial in the history of South Africa. And one of the star witnesses in his prosecution is 14-year-old John from the burger restaurant, the boy who miraculously survived.

I was lying there and he kicked me in the mouth. He told me again to stand up, but I couldn't. And then he shot me again. We did not attack that man. 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 4 of 6.

Subscribe or follow now so you get all episodes and our next investigations automatically. If you haven't already, check out our previous two seasons. 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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