Afrikaans coloured community in Bredasdorp targets of cruel torture-murders
3 murders: Kayde Williams 5, Anene Booysen 16 & her father Klasie Speelman.
Found hanged: Suspected killer-rapist Nicolaas Jacobus van Edon 45
February 8 2015 By Caryn Dolley Weekend Argus
Five-year-old murder victim Kayde Williams's classmates bid her farewell at her funeral in Bredasdorp. Photo: Cindy Waxa
Cape Town - Five-year-old murder victim Kayde Williams has been buried just 50m from where her suspected killer hanged himself.
And a few metres away is the grave of Anene Booysen, the teenager who was raped, disembowelled and left for dead in the Overberg town two years before Kayde’s body was found.
The cemetery where these girls are buried tells a story of how even a small town has not been left untainted by the country’s crime scourge.
The grave of Klaasie Speelman, Booysen’s father, is close by, too. He was stabbed to death last year.
Kayde was last seen on Sunday walking from her mother’s home to her grandmother’s nearby house. Her body was found covered in twigs on a nearby field on Monday –
the same day Nicolaas Jacobus van Edon, 45, was last seen before being discovered dead late on Friday.
Police spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Andre Traut on Saturday confirmed Van Edon’s possible role in Kayde’s rape and murder was being investigated.
On Saturday residents still reeling from shock gathered outside the little girl’s home for a service.
When a white coffin covered with white and lavender flowers was carried out of her home, her mother, Estine Williams, 21, clutched a photograph of her little girl and wept.
A bigger ceremony which hundreds of residents attended was held for Kayde at a nearby school hall.
When Kayde’s classmates sang a hymn during the service, residents started to cry.
Lucy Bell, who had been Booysen’s primary school teacher, said Kayde’s murder had rattled the town just as residents had managed to move on from Anene’s murder.
“Wounds have been reopened. Two years of hurt have been brought back,” she said.
A short video clip of Kayde singing a hymn was then shown and residents again started weeping.
The funeral procession then moved to the cemetery.
Kayde’s classmates, each holding a flower, lined the path as her coffin was carried to the grave site. They threw the flowers into her grave, some sobbing as they did so.
As mourners left the funeral they walked past Booysen’s grave and paused there briefly.
Others walked to the tree where Van Edon had been found hanged, and shook their heads, saying he probably held the answers about what had happened to Kayde.
Hours before Kayde’s funeral started on Saturday, a resident who worked at the graveyard told Weekend Argus he had driven through the area around 7pm on Friday.
He had not noticed anything unusual or seen Van Edon’s body. But the resident said 20 minutes after arriving home, the body was discovered hanging from a tree.
He said his daughter, a policewoman, had worked on the Booysen case and had been so traumatised at the time she had taken six months off work.
“This is an awful thing that’s happening here,” he said.
On Friday, hours before Van Edon’s body was found, Bredasdorp resident Annelize Oosthuizen, 47, told Weekend Argus that her daughter, 17, had seen him near the spot Kayde’s body was found shortly after it was discovered.
Her daughter said he had been crying and said: “I don’t understand how someone can do this to a child.”
Oosthuizen said it felt as if the town was cursed. Weekend Argus
http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/kayde-s-murder-reopens-bredasdorp-s-pain-1.1814715#.VNgykuaG-f4
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