Betrayed (17 page)

We arrived home to find Glen agitated. He had tried to phone Inspec
tor Pearce the previous day for an update but had been told by the
department that in future all our enquiries must be in writing and
that the SAPS would no longer have any telephonic communication
with us.

Furious, I phoned Inspector Pearce, who admitted he knew nothing
about these instructions. Then he told me, in passing – as if it were
something of little importance – that the rape test results had come
back and no semen had been found. The results had come back in
February, a month earlier, but no one had bothered to let us know.

Oh yes, you'd better believe that my fighting gloves were back on
when I contacted Commissioner Raymond Nair to rant about this and
the handling of the investigation in general. He agreed to arrange a
meeting for me with Inspector Pearce and a Commissioner Tokiso. He
said he had the utmost confidence in Inspector Pearce and had per
sonally assigned him to Tracey's case because he was one of the best.
I asked for the meeting to be at my house because I wanted to have
all my notes and files to hand.

I had come to understand Inspector Pearce and I realised he was
doing his best. In all fairness, he had been assigned to the case way
too late. But the antagonism between him and Connor was still clear
and he wasn't taking advantage of the PI's offer of help. This annoyed
me, though there was little I could do to defuse the situation between
them. Every time I spoke to either one of them, their mutual dislike
was as plain as the nose on your face.

It was around this time that Inspector Pearce opened up to me and explained many of the problems he was facing with regard to do
ing his duty, not on only Tracey's case but fighting crime in general. I
understood his frustration and bitterness, but my daughter was dead
and I wanted answers. He wasn't to blame for certain aspects of the
mishandling of the case. In fact, he had been the one to trace the spec
imen for the rape test kit and ensure it was taken to the laboratories
when he could have shrugged it off as a waste of time and energy. He
had my sympathy – but I still wanted answers and not excuses.

By the time Commissioner Thabo Tokiso and Inspector Pearce ar
rived
at my house for our meeting it was already April. The days had
grown cooler and autumn leaves carpeted the streets. The Commis
sioner kicked off with a question.

“What do you expect to get out if this meeting?”

I'm not sure what he expected, but certainly not the documented
proof of the uphill battle our family had had in trying to get the case investigated. I produced file upon file of correspondence, newspaper cuttings and anything else that was relevant to the case.

“As you can see, we've had a lot of problems,” I said. “So what I want
to know from you is if you think a decent investigation has taken
place and if you're aware of the correspondence between me and
Commissioner Nair.”

“I'm up to speed with all the problems and am very aware of what's
happening,” he replied. “I'm concerned that you feel the case has
been
mishandled because most of our senior police officers are treating it
as a high priority case and everything possible is being done. The in
vestigating officer has to report back regularly to the Commissioner'
s
office about his progress on the case.” It sounded as though he was
speaking from a well-worn script, a public relations formula intended
to mollify me.

But as I highlighted some of our major concerns, our unanswered
questions, the lack of communication and the downright negligence
,
it became apparent that in fact he wasn't fully up to speed with all the
ins and outs of the investigation. It was as if he was hearing some of the disquieting aspects for the first time.

After more than two hours Commissioner Tokiso and Inspector
Pearce
left, promising to leave no stone unturned to get to the truth of
what had happened the night Tracey died. Against my better judge
ment, I allowed myself to feel a little more positive after the meeting
. But I was soon disappointed. Nothing really changed.

Then in May, when the grass was already brown and crisp, the police finally took statements from Wally and Wilma – fourteen
months after Tracey's death. What Wally said to the police was very
different from what he had told Connor back in July the previous
year. He also accused the private investigator of intimidating and
threatening him. He claimed he had never used drugs till Tracey in
troduced him to them. Which was strange because we knew that
long before Tracey had started dabbling with drugs, she had broken contact with him because of his drug habit. He denied that the crack pipe in Tracey's shorts was his, even though Trudy had identified it as his from the description.

Wally's story was that on the night that Tracey died, he and she
had wanted drugs. He said that he had given her R200 and she had left just before midnight to go and buy some coke. When she didn't
come home, he had gone to bed and only realised Tracey hadn't come
home when he woke up the next morning. He had already admitted
that he had taken her car earlier in the day and there was no petrol left, so if this is the truth I can't forgive him for allowing her to take
the car when he knew the tank was empty. And I don't believe that
one addict would trust another to take his money and go out alone to
buy drugs if they were both craving a fix.

How would we ever separate truth from lies? Although Wally had
told Connor ten months earlier that he would take a polygraph test,
he now refused. That was the end of that.

Months passed. Spring was just beginning to turn bare trees green and
paint them with pink and white blossoms when we were notified that
the inquest into Tracey's murder was to be held at the Tembisa Magis
trates Court.

We had to be there at eight in the morning so Buddy, Glen and I set
off early to avoid the rush hour traffic. The reporter who had been following the case had asked me to let her know when the inquest would
be held and she sat with us, chatting about the type of hearing that was
going to take place. We had been told it would be an informal hearing
so no witnesses would be called and no evidence would be given. In
truth, it was a mere formality.

We waited and waited. The reporter was starting to worry about
the delay because she still had another story to cover that day. At
09.30 we were told to move to a different courtroom. Off we trudged
like a flock of sheep, only to sit on benches outside the courtroom, waiting and waiting for the magistrate to arrive.

At last the doors opened and we filed into a dark and dingy room, a bit like an old-
fashioned movie house. It smelled musty and unaired although an air
conditioner was humming loudly. People milled about, jostling one
another in an attempt to find a place to sit. We slipped into the back
row, but there weren't enough chairs for everyone and many people had to remain standing, leaning against the back wall.

The first few cases were called. Conscious of the reporter's time
constraints, we wondered how long it would take before Tracey's case
came up. I must have looked at my watch a hundred times when the
clerk of the court came in and had a whispered conversation with the
magistrate. Then they both slid out of the courtroom through a side
door. We looked at each other, raised our eyebrows, wondering what
was going on off-stage. Ten minutes later the magistrate reappeared
and asked if Mrs Thompson was in the courtroom. I stood and she
asked me to approach the bench.

“Your daughter's case will be heard in chambers with the senior
magistrate,” she explained. “The clerk of the court will escort you
there.”

No reason was given for this change, but I believe they had discov
ered a reporter was in the court with us and hoped to refuse her en
try
to the hearing by having it in chambers. By now, after waiting
more
than two hours, she had to leave to cover her other case anyway,
but I
promised to let her know the outcome.

The clerk of the court escorted us down a narrow passageway and up a short flight of stairs, where he knocked on the door to the mag
istrate's office. It opened to reveal a dark-haired man with a kind face
and friendly manner. He introduced himself and gently offered his
condolences on our loss.

“I'm sorry to say that the initial investigation into your daughter's
murder was an absolute disgrace. Unfortunately I can't do anything
about that because I can only rule on the documents I've received,”
he explained.

He was referring, though I didn't know it until I got copies of the
docket later, to the fact that there were no documents from the original
investigating officer in the case file, no statements from her house
mates at the time of her disappearance. The only documents in the
file were from when Inspector Pearce took over the case six months
after Tracey was murdered. Basically, he was admitting that as a ma
g
istrate he couldn't take action against the police for the earlier “non-
investigation”; he could only make a ruling on the evidence that
actually existed in the file.

He explained that since no conclusive cause of death was found he
had to base his decision on the various reports he had to hand – the
death certificate from the mortuary, Dr Kloppers's post-mortem report
and the letter from the professor in Pretoria. Officially, Tracey died of ligature strangulation. Killed by person or persons unknown.

This was very hard for a parent to deal with. Strangulation is not a quick death; the victim can take up to four minutes to die. Blood ham
mered in my head. I could see my daughter fighting for her life, f
eel
her terror and pain, hear her screams for help, screams that
turned
to whimpers as she gasped to draw air into her starving lungs
.
Vaguely,
as if through a fog, I heard the magistrate speaking again
and strug
gled to focus on what he was saying.

“I'm handing the docket back for ongoing investigation,” he said.
“My recommendation is that it should be returned to the current investigating officer.”

I let this sink in. He thought it deserved further investigation, and was recommending that Pearce continued to head up the case.

“Can you give me a copy of the docket, please?” I asked.

“Because of the problems and questions that have surrounded the
investigation, I'll be delivering the docket personally to the magistrate's
court in Kempton Park. You'll be able to get copies from them.” Then
he added quietly, “I'm concerned that if I allow it out of my sight the
docket might ‘disappear'.”

It was discomforting to think that so much corruption had entered
our police force that murder dockets could get stolen. But I shouldn't
have been surprised; vital bits of evidence had disappeared without explanation, so it wasn't hard to imagine that the murder docket it
self might vanish too.

Kicking off my shoes as soon as I got home, I phoned Dr Kloppers and the reporter to tell them of the ruling on the manner of Tracey's
death and that the case had been handed back to Inspector Pearce fo
r further investigation. Dr Kloppers was furious. She was still far from convinced that Tracey had died of strangulation, insisting that there was no evidence of this, that the rope found around her neck was no proof at all. I did draw a scrap of relief from this; I couldn't bear the
thought of my daughter suffering the slow, painful death of strangu
lation. But I will forever be haunted by not knowing how, when or where she died.

A few days after the inquest, the Violent Crime Unit was effectively
closed down when its officers were sent to different police stations
across the country. It was reported in the press as “restructuring” in
the police services. We had heard rumours that this was on the cards,
but had been naïve enough to believe it wouldn't actually happen.

The theory was that by basing these officers at police stations in
stead of in a separate unit away from the stations, they would be able
to “give immediate attention” to complaints instead of a case first being handled by someone at the station and then having to be referred
to a specialist at the Violent Crime Unit. The disbanding of the unit
meant that if a violent crime took place in a particular area, it would
now be investigated by the nearest police station. Previously such
crimes were investigated by the Violent Crimes Unit, which had fa
cilities and teams to concentrate on them. Members of the unit were
opposed to the move, claiming that they worked in teams and wonder
ing if police stations would have sufficient manpower to investigate
crimes.

I spoke to Inspector Pearce again a few weeks later. He was not a
happy man. We had a long conversation about the circumstances and
how downbeat we felt about the Violent Crime Unit being closed. He
told me he had asked his senior officer to give Tracey's case to another
detective. With his heavy workload and the lack of tools to perform
his duty, he felt he couldn't do justice to the case. His request was refused and officially, at least, he remained on the case. As subsequent events were to prove, it made little difference. So little had been done
to solve this crime, no one was really interested in further investi
ga
tion at this late stage, no matter what the magistrate had recommended.