Part Two: Louis van Schoor: The Deadliest Security Guard in History

Robert concludes the story of Louis van Schoor and the surprise tale of his daughter, Sabrina.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Here we go, Welcome back. It's a podcast. Oh my god,
you're fuck yeah. I don't know why. I don't know
why I opened it that way.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Nobody does.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Nobody's gonna like that, and nobody's gonna be happy with it, Sophie,
What am I doing?

Speaker 3 (00:20):
I think some of the fans really do like it.
I don't know if it's like a Stockholm suit.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
They are sickos. They are sickos. You're right about that, Mollie.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Did it bring you joy?

Speaker 2 (00:29):
Robert?

Speaker 3 (00:30):
No?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Nothing does anymore believe that brings me joy is the
film Twisters, which I'm still gonna talk about. I know
I talked about it at the Tuesday opening. But you
know what I really appreciate about Twisters, Mollie, and about Twister.

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Hopefully some of the fans have had time to see
it since they listened to the first episode, so now
they're on board.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
You gotta go watch out and see it. You know,
you gotta go watch it. They're gonna stop making tornado
movies if we don't watch them, right, and then what's
gonna happen to Oklahoma's tour?

Speaker 3 (00:55):
You have to support the tornado based economy.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
What I love about these movies is that they all
decided and this is the smart decision from a filmmaking standpoint.
The tornadoes had to be sentient like these these are
tornadoes that have enemies and that have grudges and that
are targeting city centers to do as much damage as possible.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
Talking about that, that's no.

Speaker 2 (01:18):
There is a scene where the tornado roars at our
main characters and then throws a semi truck at them because.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
They're fighting, Like these people are trying to destroy tornadoes.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Yes, yes, yes they are. They're going to war against
the tornadoes sold.

Speaker 3 (01:35):
To just like learn from the tornado scientists. They want
to when you're.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Going to escalate. Yeah, the initial movie there, but their
goal is they want to learn from it so they
can predict them in so that what's her name doesn't
have her dad sucked out into the.

Speaker 3 (01:46):
Sky again, right, that was about like predicting for like evacuation.
This is about like physically fighting it.

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yes, because no one So one of the through lines
and twisters is that no one who lives in Tornado
Alley has ever heard of a tornado or knows what
to do. None of the houses have shelters, and the
only people are are heroes who are a bunch of
like weirdo stormchaser YouTube nerds have to like go into
towns and warn everyone to evacuate because Oklahomans just don't

(02:14):
know about tornadoes and nobody.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
Believes these out of towners.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Well, no, it's always very clear because there's a giant
tornado the size of an aircraft carrier in the sky.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Does Glenn Powell just like hip check the tornado and
his wrangular jeans and.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
No, he drives a very cool truck and shoots fireworks
into it. So well, actually someone else forgot and irangular
jeans he's wearing. Well, i'd actually I don't think we
get a shirt.

Speaker 3 (02:41):
Got sucked into the tornado.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
He's very wet a lot of the time, though, so
he doesn't get to show off. Yeah, anyway, I guess
should we talk about this racist Molly?

Speaker 3 (02:52):
I was having more fun talking about a sentient tornado,
but I knew that couldn't last.

Speaker 2 (02:56):
It's less fun than Glenn Palell. I don't think Glenn
Palell has killed dozens of people.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
You don't know? You know, actually we found out about
Army Hammer.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
But here's what I'll say if Glenn Powell has been
killing people. I'm sure they're an even mix of white, black,
every color of the rainbow.

Speaker 1 (03:12):
I just feel confident he didn't use dogs.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Definitely, not a not He would never never stoop to
dogs for his killing. He might use dogs. He might
use dogs. It's not a zero percent chance we're back.
I hope Glenn Powell is not a listener because we're
kind of being needlessly mean to a man as far

(03:36):
as I'm aware, hasn't ever done anything bad to anyone.

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Sorry, I said you made Sorry.

Speaker 2 (03:44):
There's there's a Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:45):
I still don't know who he is.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
Yeah, it's he's very good looking, Molly, but again in
a way that's kind of off putting. Yeah, he probably
he has to know that, right.

Speaker 1 (03:54):
I'm sure he knows.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
Lewis fan sure not very good looking in my opinion. Uh,
As I noted last episode, it's a little bit hard
to triangulate the price precise length of time that Lewis
was killing people, but the bulk of his murdering seems
to have occurred from around nineteen eighty six to nineteen
eighty nine. These are the twilight years of the apartheid
regime and the anxious business owners in middle class whites

(04:17):
of East London saw Lewis again as a hero. He
is their own private batman, and that is how they
look at him. Most of the businesses that contracted with
his company had silent alarms. When someone broke in, Van
Sure would be alerted and he would rush to the
scene to surprise the intruder. He always showed up alone
in a private vehicle, no sirens, and as was his

(04:38):
wont he went barefoot. He later told a reporter it's quiet,
you don't have your shoes squeaking on tiles and stuff.
So again, his interest is not to stop robberies or
to arrest people. It is to sneak up on them
so that he can murder them, very, very brutally.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
I just don't like the idea that he's not wearing shoes.

Speaker 2 (04:55):
Yeah, yeah, that's just extra creepy, right, It's like a
reverse diehard. Now, he claimed to not turn on lights
and that he usually avoided flashlights. He's inconsistent on that
last point, so I suspect he did use a flashlight
to at least try to shock his targets. But to
the press he would claim that his primary sense for
hunting was his sense of smell.

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Qu wait, sense for what now? Hunting?

Speaker 2 (05:18):
Hunting? Yes, that's how he describes this great great he's
just talking openly about when the press coming like, seems
like you're shooting a lot of people who's like, yeah,
I love hunting people. You know, I hunt by sense
of smell. If somebody breaks in, the adrenaline gives off
an odor and you can pick that up. Okay, I
don't know that. I think you can. But that's a

(05:39):
very unsettling thing to say. That's something a monster, says Lewis.

Speaker 3 (05:43):
I mean, I guess you know, like gamblers, you have
a system, you have superstitions, you have these beliefs about
your craft.

Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yes, and some people have better senses than others. So
I'm not gonna say, like, it's definitely true that like fear,
sweat is different, smells different. You can kind of tell
sometimes if.

Speaker 3 (06:01):
Somebody you can't smell a guy in the back of
the CBS.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
You're not go I don't think you're going to. But
maybe Lewis is the predator. You know, he is a predator.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
He spent a long time with dogs, but he did
not develop any dog like.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Some of the dogs have taught me their skills. Yeah. Now.
The adrenalines with Van Schuur were mostly conducted at the
start of the nineties, before he was charged with any
crimes for his many murders. He was a subject of
amusement for a lot of reporters, and their stories helped
build him a legend and earn him the love of
many in the local white community. The vast majority of

(06:33):
his victims were very poor, the kind of people who
often broke into stores to steal food or cash, and
as a result, their deaths made very little impact in
the local papers. If they were mentioned, it usually wasn't
by name, robbers shot, breaking into pharmacy or whatever. White
business owners and middle class residents knew of Lewis, at
least by reputation, and overwhelmingly considered him a hero. Black

(06:57):
residents also knew him. Stories read in Zosha of a
bearded man nicknamed Whiskers who would stalk men through the
streets and make them disappear forever as journalists. Dominic Jones,
one of the first to report on Lewis, said Lewis
van Shore was basically going out and murdering people for sport.
Lewis himself would tell the BBC during an investigation decades later,

(07:20):
every night is a new adventure, if you want to
put it that way, I know, I don't.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
I don't.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
I don't know at all. What do you mean an adventure?

Speaker 3 (07:28):
And this is going on for long enough that he's
becoming this sort of like real life Boogeyman in these
communities like they of course he is. And I guess
they don't know where he's going to be or which
alarms go to his phone.

Speaker 2 (07:40):
No, and you probably because of how it's being reported,
some people are probably aware it's all this one guy,
but like a lot of locals, both whites and blacks
are probably think this is more a bunch of people
committing murders because of how many people he's shooting. You
wouldn't nactually would Why would you? All of these are
one guy. It's a lot for one guy, right. That's

(08:01):
very now. At the time, things had changed enough in
South Africa that Lewis had to claim he never went hunting,
quote with the intention of killing black people. He just
found stocking. He does call it hunting a lot, He
says he just found it exciting. And I do think
parts of this are true, although not in a way
that makes it better. Lewis fan sure to me, feels

(08:23):
like a guy who would have taken a job that
let him hunt and kill humans in any society where
that job existed. He's again definitely racist, but I think
that the killing was more the motivation than the racism.
The racism provides the opportunity and the legal cover to
do the killing, right, This is my take on it.
Lewis reported every murder to the local police, and when

(08:44):
he was criticized for being a serial killer, he would
defend himself by saying his actions were quote all within
the law. This was untrue in a strict textual sense,
but it was accurate in that the cops supported what
he was doing. As Lewis said, every officer and London
knew what was going on. All the police officers knew.
Not once did anybody say, hey, Louis, you're on the borderline,

(09:06):
or you should cool it or whatever. They all knew
what was happening, right.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
So you're saying, like not people didn't know was all
one guy. But like whoever's processing the.

Speaker 2 (09:14):
Cops, the cops definitely know. Yes, the cops are not
are fully aware because they also are showing up at
the scene every time he shoots someone, which is all
the time. He is always shooting people.

Speaker 3 (09:27):
Is they never a conversation about, like, did you do
a crime?

Speaker 2 (09:33):
I don't think there's an interest in having that conversation.
And obviously, as Lewis said, I don't think he's lying
about this. I think like he seems to be legitimately
frustrated because he does get in trouble eventually where he's like, look,
I talked to the cops. None of them said I
was like a borderline right. Nobody ever said to stop
shooting people?

Speaker 3 (09:50):
Why are yeah? Like they should have told me sooner.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
They needed to tell me the exact amount of people
I needed to shoot. Now, obviously we shouldn't. I don't
necessarily think he's lying there, but we shouldn't take his
word for it. That said one of the local journalists.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
They didn't stop him.

Speaker 2 (10:07):
They didn't stop him. One of the local journalists who
put together a team to start looking into Lewis was
and this is another great South African name, Patrick Goodenough
literally just the words good enough stuff together. What was
going on in that country that that became a last
name for you people? Huh right, yeah, good enough. Oh,

(10:28):
because you just know every year a journalism school, whenever
he turns into an assignment, you know his teachers are
making fun of that name one way or the other.
You know, Yeah, this is good enough, not good enough,
not good enough. Sorry, Patrick, I'm sure you had a
tough road to hoe. You seem to have turned into
a fine man, because he's going to be one of
the heroes of this story. Good enough, he said of

(10:51):
the police in East London. There's the support for him
was massive. He would not have been able to get
away with the fraction of what he got away with
without it. Now, another of the journalists who dug into
this story back before it was a story was Isad Jacobson,
who I quoted last episode. Here's the BBC discussing her
very early efforts to uncover what was going on. In
the police records held in public archives, Miss Jacobson found

(11:13):
instances of killings where the officers had been present at
the time of the shootings at no point that they
appear to question Van Schure as a suspect. In many instances,
the police failed to take photos of the deceased at
the scenes of the shooting. And failed to collect key
forensic evidence, such as bullet casings. Van Shure was often
the only witness to his shootings, so this evidence could
have been crucial for determining what had actually happened. In

(11:35):
each case, these were cover ups. He had the backing
from police officer of from police officers from junior rank
and senior rank. Said mister goodenough, they wouldn't investigate. They'd
sit down with him and have a cigarette while chatting
with bodies lying nearby. Yeah, that's not good, pretty gross.
I think I'm going.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
To guess the cops are doing some of this too.
He was doing it when he was a cop, likehooting,
murdering people too. It's just happening.

Speaker 2 (12:04):
It's just understood. He is probably talking shop with a
guy who also just killed someone a lot of the time, right.

Speaker 3 (12:12):
So it's not like they are too stupid to realize
he's shot all the back on the ground.

Speaker 2 (12:17):
I don't know how much all of the local like
white business owners, are aware of the specifics of what
Lewis is doing, but the cops are. They don't, like,
they don't they don't give a shit, no, no, no,
except for you know, a good number of journalists actually
do like there is a it takes a significant journalistic effort.
This is actually a case of a murderer who is
caught by the press and prosecuted.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
And I guess once a hundred guys are missing.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
That is funny you say that, family, because by nineteen
eighty nine, Lewis has been involved in at least one
hundred shootings, probably a lot more. No, no, he is
at least one hundred shootings. And Lewis himself will say, like,
I have no idea how many people I shot. There
were way too many of them to keep track of,
so normally.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
I would say I don't know how many people they've killed.
Is a very bad thing to say, but I think
once you get into a certain number, it's gonna be
bad regardless. Probably better that he doesn't know because he's
keeping meticulous records.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
That's worse.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
That's worse.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
I talked to a drone pilot once who was told,
at like the end of his time of service by
his superior the number of people that had been killed
in drone strikes he participated in, and it was in
the thousands, And he was like, why didn't you tell me?
This is just ruined my life.

Speaker 3 (13:30):
Like, there's no amount of therapy that can undo that moment.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
You should know, right it actually it should be traumatic
to blow people up with a drone. It's better than
it's traumatic. Right.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
It just seems like telling him was a rude thing
to do.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
It is kind of a dick move from your boss though, right.

Speaker 3 (13:47):
Okay, ay man, good job, jum.

Speaker 2 (13:49):
Want to let you know you've been responsible for the
deaths of thousands. Yeah, Statistically about a third of them
were innocent, at least, maybe more like seventy percent based
on a lot of our analyzes. Anyway, have a good
time as a civilian.

Speaker 3 (14:04):
We have the Mackenzie Intern figure out how many of
more kids?

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Yeah, oh a bunch.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
So, by nineteen eighty nine, Lewis had been involved in
at least one hundred shootings. Now these numbers are not
available to anyone, right, They are all buried in a
police filing system that doesn't always name Lewis and was
designed to frustrate outside observers, like reporters from the East
London Daily Dispatch, where Patrick Goodenough worked. He'd gotten good enough.

(14:31):
There's people are gonna be like, no, it's in South
African we pronounce it Gowden, weef damn it? How do you?
How can you not know that?

Speaker 3 (14:37):
But we're not doing that, You're mate, We're absolutely not
doing that.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
I don't care disrespecting it on bur is Patrick good enough,
and by god he is.

Speaker 3 (14:44):
So.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
Patrick got onto the story when he interviewed one of
the men who had survived Lewis, a guy named Ciabanga Tom,
which is another excellent name.

Speaker 1 (14:54):
Yeah seriously, Now.

Speaker 2 (14:55):
Unfortunately Seabanga Tom is a child when he is shot.
I think he's like fourteen something. That Patrick had also
interviewed Lewis, who had bragged the first time the number
comes out. Is that Patrick is just talking to this
guy who he started to think might be a serial
killer because cia Banda Tom says like, I wasn't trying
to run, he just kind of tried to execute me, right.

(15:17):
So Patrick comes across a couple other cases of shootings
this guy is involved and finds out like it seems
like there's a lot of bodies tied to this guy.
So he sits down with Lewis, thinking like, all right,
you know, this is going to be maybe one of
the tougher interviews of my life. I've got a man
here that I think is a serial murderer. You know,
he's probably doing some terrible things and getting away with it,
and I'm trying to bring him down. He's gonna know that.

(15:38):
You know, we're going to be playing this game of
cat and mouse, this real like Hannibal Lecter moment with
a murderer. And as soon as the interview starts, Lewis
is like, yeah, I shot more than like a hundred
people than the last couple of years. It's crazy how
many guys I'm shooting. Just very funny.

Speaker 3 (15:53):
Oh the vibes in that room, Yeah, insane.

Speaker 2 (15:57):
It's like, yeah, I reckon, I've shot like a hundred people.
I don't know, can't really count that high. Anyway, what's
this article about?

Speaker 3 (16:06):
But that wasn't even part of the eneview. He's just
making small talk.

Speaker 2 (16:09):
No, he just likes He just likes killing. He likes
talking about killing. He's just a big fan of it.
You will not be surprised to hear that. This convinced
Patrick he was onto a big story. Now. He had
nearly finished an article on the shooting, but unfortunately the
article was centered because the first survivor he's talked to
is Ciabanga, Tom right. So his article is centered on

(16:30):
Tom's experience because Tom also gives him an eyewitness account
of Lewis breaking the law right him execute, you know,
just shooting people. Right. The problem is that, like all
of Lewis's victims Ceabanga, Tom gets charged with breaking and entering,
and in South Africa they have this thing where if
someone gets charged, the case is now what they called

(16:52):
sub justice, which meant you're not allowed to report on
it until the accused gives a statement in court. Oh,
I can see why you would have a rule like this.
I can understand how, even theoretically, it can develop out
of good intentions. Right, you don't want yellow pressed, tabloid
journalism or whatever affecting how a court case goes, right,

(17:15):
So you want.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
And a lot of countries have pretty strict laws about
how the pass is allowed to report on crime.

Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yes, so I do understand why some of why this
may have come into place. But in the case like
you really see the weakness of that here because every
time Patrick gets close to being able to report on
Lewis actively shooting people, that person will get charged and
he can't publish the article. Right. So it's this kind
of maddening state of affairs for him. So furious, Patrick

(17:45):
decides that the story he has is not good enough
and he can contacts a local legal aid charity called
Black Sash to try to get Seabanga a lawyer. He
talked with their coordinator, Charlene Craig, about Lewis, who he'd interviewed,
and let her know, Hey, hey, there's this like white
former cop security guard who just told me he shot
one hundred people. You guys are like dealing with, you know,

(18:09):
legal justice issues in our town. Have you looked into
this at all? And it turns out that Charlene had.
She hands him a copy of a statement that she
had taken a month earlier from a local man named Zumzie.
Quote and this is from the book The Color of Violence.
In it, he said he was on his way home
in October nineteen eighty eight after trying to get work
at a bakery when a man in a backie it's

(18:30):
a kind of vehicle asked him if he wanted a job.
He said, He climbed into the vehicle and the two
drove a short way to the Turnbull Bowling Club, where
the man who said his name was Van Schure told
him to wait outside the window on the left of
the building. According to the statement, Van Shure then disappeared
and returned holding a gun without warning. He shot Vzumzie
twice in the chest and in his left arm. And

(18:51):
it's from this statement that we get our most conclusive
answer to the over zealous racist security guard or serial
killer question, because that is not a story of a
random bigot. That is the story of a man who
is hunting and entrapping people and using the imperiod, Like
that's a serial killer hunting people, right, And you know,
maybe racism plays a big role obviously him getting away

(19:12):
with it, but like you didn't need to do that,
that's I mean, he didn't need to. He wanted he
wanted to shoot this man. He entrapped the man by
telling him I have a job for you, and then
he shot him and then he threw his body on
a crime scene.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
But even hiss like sort of fake justified shootings that
he's doing once a week at work, Like is that
not enough?

Speaker 2 (19:34):
Well? These are these are what a lot of those
shootings are? Those shootings always get marked down as he
was responding to a break in what's actually happening a
lot of the time is he is hunting random black
men in the street and throwing their bodies into a
crime scene, right right, Yeah, Like he will fake a
break in. There will always be something stolen, but it's

(19:55):
usually a low value item.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
Right, He's also just stealing, he is.

Speaker 2 (19:59):
I'm sure there's some of this is him responding to
be at ease, but most of this is him fucking
hunting people and faking it.

Speaker 3 (20:07):
Well, that's it's worse.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
It's much. I don't Yeah, it's they're both bad. But yeah,
I think there's a good I think this is the
worst version of this story is the one that happened.
I'll say that.

Speaker 3 (20:21):
So he really is just a wragular old serial killer,
but existing within a system that allowed him to be
yes that way, yes, and congratulated him from behaving that way.

Speaker 2 (20:31):
Yes, Yes, I think that is the most accurate way
I can I can describe this.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
I don't feel good, Robert, it's neither too.

Speaker 2 (20:40):
I But it's time for ads, so that'll be nice.

Speaker 3 (20:44):
That will soothe my soul.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
Yeah, our spirits will be lifted immediately.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
And we're back, oh man, having a great time. So
this guy Mazumzi was like all the others charged with
breaking and entering, so his case could not be reported on. Right.
So again our boy good Enough keeps getting these really
important stories and then as he writes it up and

(21:14):
is ready to hand it to an editor, gets the
notice that like, oh, this guy's been charged. Can't say
shit now, you know, got a wait. So the good
news is that Shyleen and her colleagues are now on
the case as well, and as a legal age charity,
they have none of the same restrictions as the press.
They have collected at this point three other identical accounts
nearly from men who had been hunted, shot and survived. Right,

(21:35):
So this is four cases Shyleen brings to him of like, yeah,
these guys all said that he literally just grabbed them
off the street. Right.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
That's a strong pattern at this point.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
That's a pattern. That's that's a pretty good pattern. I
always say, I figure.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
A lot of them don't live. So if you have
four guys who lived, yeah, does a lot.

Speaker 2 (21:52):
There's a lot of And also one of the things
that starts to come out is there's a lot of
families asking, like my son or my husband just disappeared,
where are they? And in a lot of cases, the
police are just throwing these dead people into unmarked graves
and never telling anyone. So again, we have no idea
how many people he actually killed. You know, some of

(22:13):
these people do find out, like that their son was
thrown into an unmarked grave, but the cops are working
to cover up a serial killer's murders.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
Can I ask you a stupid question that's also surely abhorrent? Yeah,
why does so many of them live?

Speaker 2 (22:32):
Well, it's because it's a handgun. So this is so
there's gun stuff. A lot of people don't know handguns
are handguns and rifles or rifles. Right. A handgun is
a terrible weapon to kill someone with. It's just the
most convenient, right, It's easy to have one on you.
They are not very powerful. It is extremely common for
people to be shot. I have read of cases. There's

(22:55):
a one particular case of a couple of bank robbers
that the FBI ambushed and the FBI shot one man
fifty times and the other like forty seven times, and
both men not just lived, but were walked off the
scene like it is. It's wild how many bullets people
can take if their handgun bullets and survive rifles are
a bit of a different case, you know, not that

(23:17):
people don't survive shots from rifles, but it is a
very different kind of injury you're looking at.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
I have forty paper cuts on my m has to
be put on a stretcher, But forty bullet holes it's
a lot.

Speaker 2 (23:28):
It's a lot. I mean you also have to note that,
like the nine millimeter of the day is a weaker
round than the same bullet now because there have been
advances in ballistics and like just how we make bullets, right.

Speaker 3 (23:39):
I feel like if he's that interested in killing, like,
is it just the I think these guys are creevously injured. No,
I just feel like, is it the activity that he
is interested in? And it doesn't mean yeah, master how
it ends.

Speaker 2 (23:52):
I think he's trying to kill them, But I also
think he's probably not. Like checking for a pulse A
lot of times it's hard to it's not actually, if
you've ever tried to the pulse of an injury, it's
like not always easy. He's not smart. I don't credit
him with being a great planner. I think he's just
showing guys they lose consciousness because they've been shot repeatedly,

(24:13):
and some of them wake up, some of them don't,
you know, that's kind of the deal. So one of
the Heidi, the person who wrote that book, makes a
big deal about the fact that he used hollow points
and how this is like evidence of his murderous intent.
I actually disagree with that. Hollow points are just kind
of like it's what everyone who carries a handgun in
a city is going like anywhere, is going to use
because they they are better at stopping people, but they

(24:36):
also penetrate less. So if you are someone like a
copper security guard and you think you might be shooting
at someone in an urban environment, you want a bullet
that is less likely to go through them and then
hit someone else. Right, Like, it's just whatever damage the
merchandise or damage the merchandise, but anyway, whatever, it doesn't
really matter. So sha Lead and her colleagues collect like

(24:57):
four accounts of guys who have been hunted and shot
and survived, and they reach out to illegal late aid
lawyer Dave Pittman, who suggests getting victim statements so that
they can file for criminal charges. And I'm going to
quote next from Heidi Hollands, The Color of murder and
this is her talking to Pittman. I drove to East London,
where I was joined by Charlene Craig, recalls Pittman, accompanied
by a a relative of Siabongo. We went directly to

(25:19):
Frarie Hospital where we found the victim with a bullet
wound running from his abdomen clear through his back. A
telling piece of evidence collected from the custody of the
hospital was the clothing he had been wearing when he
was shot, notably a synthetic fiber tracksuit. The tracksuit top
had a gaping hole in front, with indications that the
fiber had been burned in the vicinity of the hole,
which would prove Siabonga's allegation that he had been shot

(25:41):
at point blank range. Armed with ciabonga statement and his
clothes in the plastic bag, we drove jauntily to the
Fleet Street police station. I don't know why we needed
to know jauntily that you drove having a good time,
but he Heidi knows. These kinds of details are important
to really make a story come alive. Do them?

Speaker 3 (25:59):
There?

Speaker 2 (26:00):
Yeah? Now, No sooner had they taken a statement from
Siaboga than there was another shooting in East London police
noted a security guard had been involved, but refused to
name him. Obviously, at this point everyone involved in this case,
the journalists in Black Sash are like, well, it was
must have been Lewis right, Probably was the guy who
shoots someone every day. It's the guy who only shoots people.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
It's the human hunter.

Speaker 2 (26:24):
Yeah. Now, the victim in this shooting was Muntuzima Titi
twenty four, a night watchman, so a security guard himself,
who had been walking home from a late shift when
a white stranger ran up to him in the night,
shot him and tossed him in the back of his car.
When he woke up in the hospital, police charged him
with breaking an enter ring. Such a nightmare. It sucks,

(26:48):
just a horrible, horrible situation. Also, you're literally a security guard.

Speaker 3 (26:55):
How much blood is in this man's car. He's routinely
putting shot like shooting victim.

Speaker 2 (27:00):
I think he's got I think he's got like a
flatbed and he's just kind of throwing him in there
and then hosing it off.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Just hosing it out the way I do it.

Speaker 2 (27:06):
You know, it's the way I've done it. I mean,
would would. I haven't killed anyone in my truck, Molly,
what do you drive?

Speaker 3 (27:16):
I'm not giving out that kind of personal information to
your hordes of deranged fans, right.

Speaker 2 (27:22):
One of them could be like this guy.

Speaker 1 (27:24):
Yeah, you were just complaining about people texting you in
sort of messaging on the signal and you're like, hey, Molly,
what kind of car do you drive?

Speaker 2 (27:30):
Kind of car do you drive? I just want to know.

Speaker 3 (27:36):
My last car got total while I was covering. It
was a post chase six like you know, free the
Insurrection Boys rally. My car got totaled, was parked, you know,
there's a police chase in DC and oh man, and
they totaled my parked car anyway, but before that, So
now I have a car that has no giant key
scrapes on it, Robert, and that is very precious to me,

(27:57):
because my last car got keyed up by some sort
of muk and fed weirdodfather's grave. Oh no, I'm not
telling you why I.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
Drive very specific, very specific. I have a car with
no blood stains in the bed.

Speaker 3 (28:11):
You know, I don't think there's I don't think there's
any blood in my car.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
So actually there's kind of a lot of blood in
the back und anyway, whatever with roadkill, it's fine. So
by this way, you put it in the car because
it's a truck. Else you put your roadkill.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
Is this because you read cab you read too, and
now you're interested. Now you're in.

Speaker 2 (28:33):
I like fresh roadkill, Molly. I would not feed it
to a hawk. I feed it to people.

Speaker 3 (28:39):
All right, we move on.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Anyway, you've made a little weird now, Patrick, So there's
a lot of blood in the car.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Okay, there's a lot of probably a lot of blood
in his car.

Speaker 3 (28:50):
But there's a lot of normal reasons why there might be.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, sure, of course. Well, no, he's he's just abducting
security guards.

Speaker 3 (28:56):
It's just a serial killer.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yeah, he's just a serial kill. By this point, Patrick
Goodenough had tied Lewis to five fatal shootings, which was
good but not good enough. He had also found seven
wounded victims. In June of nineteen eighty nine, Pittman had
enough to file attempted murder in civil damages against Lewis.
This gave good enough public victim damage statements that he

(29:19):
could use in his reporting. Right at this point, the
victims have put out a public damage statement, so he
can like theoretically write an article.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
So they're filing a civil suit, so they're not.

Speaker 2 (29:30):
Yeah, there's filing criminal charges and a civil suit. His
attitude is, we should charge this guy with murder and
like with everything we can, we need to get him
off the street. Right, That's what Pittman is trying to do, right.
He wants to stop the guy, this guy from being
able to shoot people. To figure it out, to agree
to this, well, he files the charges.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
Right, they just have a different system because you can't
do that here.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
Yeah, I mean, I don't know the South African apartheid era,
I don't know how that worked, right, I'm just reading
what the reporting on it said. Right, But Pittman has
these public victim damage statements, which now theoretically Patrick Goodenough
can report on. But when he gets an article together
his editor they have an editorial meeting that Goodenough isn't

(30:17):
allowed in. But it's like very frantic. He can see
people arguing and yelling, and then his editor says, no,
you can't publish anything. So Patrick puts together a stripped
down version of the article, one in which he does
not name any names but just notes that charges have
been brought against a security guard who was shooting a
lot of local people. This too is refused from publication.

(30:38):
During a phone call with Lewis, the killer boasted to
the journalist, I'm in full production, full production, basically, I'm
still working. Nothing about this has hurt me yet, okay.
And so as all of this kind of like keeps
winding its way through the courts, there's very little interest
in the story. When a week later, Van Schure attends

(30:59):
an inquest for shooting the year before in June of
nineteen eighty eight.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Now we're getting an inquest.

Speaker 2 (31:05):
Yes, he has occasionally involved in inquests, and in this
particular shooting, he had arrived on scene to the site
of a Wimpy bar, which is a chain of restaurants
I think, and this one is by the beach, and
a thirteen year old and a fifteen year old have
broken into it searching for cash. Lewis had arrived and
both kids had fled, terrified from the bearded demon now

(31:26):
hunting them. Lewis caught the boys hiding in a bathroom.
Unable to run away. He opened fire, hitting hitting the
two kids seven times and killing one of them. I
think he kills the thirteen year old. This is what
really lights a fire under Patrick's ass because he's like,
this guy's murdered children, and he confirms he starts like
doing police. He goes physically on site and combs through

(31:47):
records of every police shooting for the last couple of years,
and he's able to confirm that Lewis has been on
the site of more than two hundred and seventy silent
alarm calls in recent years. That's a lot. He enlists
other colleagues and they start trolling through inquest records and
one by one they found more. They find more Lewis
van Schure killings. Zola Sotfia twenty seven had been killed

(32:10):
on November fifteenth, nineteen eighty seven. Sidwell Bomba Kobaka thirty seven,
gut shot in June of nineteen eighty seven, Kukuile Nexo
shot in the head and stomach. By the time he
was done on his first day, Patrick had confirmed twenty
two murders committed by Lewis van Schure. The cases all
had chilling similarities. At each break in a single low

(32:32):
value item had been removed. Van Schure was never questioned
in court, just asked to submit statements that he had
crafted to comply with the letter of the law. He
always asserted he'd shouted a warning and claimed that he
had fired in the direction of the suspects rather than
at them. This was thin stuff to defend a man
who had shot so many people, But South African judges

(32:52):
had the right to close an inquest if they concluded
there were no live witnesses who could provide added context,
and since.

Speaker 3 (32:58):
Lewis was usually great way to get out.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
Ale, Yeah, to make sure there's no one else.

Speaker 3 (33:05):
I mean, murder can never really be prosecuted as long
as you tell everybody who's there.

Speaker 2 (33:10):
Well, we got all the context. The guy who did
the murder told us everything. So there's really nothing else
to gain by a trial, you know, or by a
court case.

Speaker 3 (33:17):
Cool good system.

Speaker 2 (33:19):
As it became clear one of the modern eras most
prolific serial killers lived in their town, the Black Sash
and good Enough's reporters were inundated suddenly with information. Heidi
Holland writes, a massive dossier began to grow against the man,
whose callous exploits read like a scene from a Dirty
Harry script. She really likes, comparing this to Dirty Harry.
I don't think it's very similar.

Speaker 3 (33:39):
I ran to do it more than once or twice.

Speaker 2 (33:41):
No, because also Dirty Harry specifically doesn't shoot people running away.
Oh well, I guess he probably died. I need to
rewatch that movie to say that.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
I've never seen a movie.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
Oh it's been a long time. Maybe he does shoot
some people in the back. I wouldn't be surprised if
he did. Anyway, I'm going to continue that quote. He
ran a cross roofs entered dark buildings alone and unafraid,
with his gun clasped in both hands, arrogantly admitting in
court documents that he fired seven to eight or even
ten shots at a time. To everyone's surprise, Van Sure
himself contributed to the dragnet that was closing in around him.

(34:13):
After he heard on the radio that investigators believed he
had killed at least thirty four people, and around midnight
one night, three days after shooting his latest and last
victim dead, Lewis telephoned Dominic Jones with one of the reporters,
to set the record straight. Number thirty nine, Pal was
all he said. No, again, he's not a bright man.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
That's something that happens on like I don't know, like
season seventeen police procedural.

Speaker 2 (34:39):
Yeah, but he just called jurors be like, shot another
guy to EH number thirty nine, feeling fine. Heidi describes
Lewis in this last period of impunity as the human
avatar of the apartheid government, exuding a calm, macho era
of competence and utterly certain violence meant to calm the
white populace and frighten Black South Africans away from one society.

(35:01):
He's a human wall. In the last months of his
long killing spree, Lewis shot a person almost every week,
and he killed one person almost every three weeks. But
then in November of nineteen eighty nine, the fever pitch
of media attention and protests prompted the local Attorney general
to order an inquiry. This was one of the most
significant criminal prosecutions of the late apartheid era, a sign

(35:23):
that the consensus around this evil system had frayed irreparably.
In nineteen ninety Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Lewis
and his security firm recognized that the wind had shifted,
and so did the local cops. In nineteen ninety one,
Lewis was finally arrested and charged The final credible tally
of his kills was thirty nine dead and dozens more injured.

(35:44):
We will never have any clear idea of how many
people this guy shot, but he kills at least thirty nine,
which puts him up there. That is top one percent
of serial killers, right.

Speaker 3 (35:54):
That is a lot, and at a kind of incredible pace.

Speaker 2 (36:00):
Yeah, like especially for three. Like if you hear a
serial clearcuse like twenty people in thirty years, you're like, wow,
that's one of the one of the big ones, you know.
But Lewis is just cranking him out. He's yeah, he is.
He's really a he's a workman like serial killer. You know,
he's just putting in the hours. Molly, It's all about
putting in the hours. Anyway. Here's ads Sabrina. His daughter

(36:28):
was just twelve years old. And I'm not a serial killer.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
Alarming that this man.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
I just wanted to make I just wanted to make
that clear.

Speaker 3 (36:34):
I forgot about Sabrina. Yeah, it's alarming.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
He has a daughter.

Speaker 3 (36:37):
I do not like that part.

Speaker 2 (36:39):
Oh you're not You're really not gonna like where her
story goes? Oh good.

Speaker 3 (36:42):
Although throughout all of this he has like little contact
with her right, and Sabrina has been with her mom.

Speaker 2 (36:48):
He has very little contact with her. Yes, you would
think so. So. She's twelve years old in August of
nineteen ninety one when she learns via radio broadcast her
father was accused of being one of the most prolific
murderers in the country. She described herself as feeling almost
dead because quote, I worshiped my father. I was very

(37:08):
very upset. Well, yeah, and obviously Louis had not been
super present, but also her mother and her brothers also
they seem like they were assholes. Like I think her
whole family kind of sucked. Ass Sabrina's really the only
one who maybe doesn't.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
Her mom didn't kill like eighty guys.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
No, she she sure didn't. But she kind of likes
him more because her mom is the one that's around
all the time, and Louis shows up occasionally for like
special visits.

Speaker 3 (37:35):
Right, sometimes we're twelve, like your mom grounds you is
a bit who sucks and like your dad who shows
up and takes you to the movies as cool.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
Again, she doesn't want, uh, Sabrina to see her dad
at all, and sometimes he set up like secret visits,
like would she Sabrina staying with a friend. He'll come
over to sit and hang out with her. We really weird, grateful, weird. Yeah. Now,
Sabrina had against her again, against her mother's wishes, started

(38:02):
reconnecting with her dad in like the months or the
year or so before he got arrested. She'd even started
dressing like him and going barefoot to mimic his fashion sense.
Her mother seems mostly to have wanted to try to
keep her away from the topic, but the case quickly
made her dad famous. She remembers the night that they
found out about this. A cop friend of the family
drops by and tells her her dad is a superhero. Oh,

(38:25):
we are talking white people in apartheid South Africa. These
are not a lot of thin on the ground, nice.

Speaker 3 (38:32):
Folks, melodramatic, but I felt bile rise in my chest.
You said that.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
Oh yeah. But there is a massive level of popular
support for Lewis during his trial from the white populace
of East London. The BBC reports quote one entrepreneurial businessman
printed bumper stickers with pictures of the security guard. They said,
I love Lewis next to a heart full of bullet holes.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
The second half of that sentence was so much worse.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
There's like sometimes there's society. I'm gonna get in trouble.
Since the trial occurred in the dying days of the
apartheid regime, the justice system still favored a man like Lewis.
He was ultimately charged with thirty nine murders, but only
convicted of seven. The other thirty two killings were listed
as justifiable homicides. Yeah, he should have been seven should

(39:28):
be enough though, to put you away forever, right, like seven.

Speaker 3 (39:31):
Murders, it is right.

Speaker 2 (39:33):
No, that should be a long sentence. We're not gonna
get one. Lewis was convicted. He was sentenced of something
like ninety years, but he was allowed to serve them
all concurrently, which means he was guaranteed pretty much guaranteed
less than twenty years behind bars with good behavior. And
he is a great prisoner. All the guards loved him,
loved him, super popular with the white prison guards. Relatives

(39:57):
of his victims were furious, and the case made it
clear how much work the police had put into keeping
Lewis free. The dead that good enough were able to
uncover was just a fraction of the total, which we
will never know. Many black families in East London never
recovered the bodies of their family members. Marlene Muhumbi's brother
Edward was killed by Van Schuan nineteen eighty seven. His
body was thrown into an unmarked grave and the family

(40:18):
was left unnotified. For Sabrina, her father's disgrace was a constant,
confusing through line in her adolescence. In high school, she
read an article about her dad and realized how little
she understood him. She decided to She had a school
project to do an article, to write about an evil
man and what made them evil. And she's like, well,

(40:39):
I'll write an article about my dad. And she gets
a bunch of news clippings from the librarian about her father.
But she decides not to write the piece because as
she starts writing, and she can't not write defensively about
her father, and she notes, most of my friends were
blacks and colors by then, and I thought it would
look like I was praising him. So she writes about

(40:59):
Hitler instead. Oh, good, my dad with Hitler. Yeah, it's
a lot easier to just write about Hitler. You're doing
You're doing great hunting.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Some point, this eighth gree English teacher should have said.
You know what, I'm going to give you an A
and I'm going to send you to the guidance count is.

Speaker 2 (41:19):
Going to give you an A here. You don't have
to write an article about your dad.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
You don't have to do that.

Speaker 2 (41:24):
I'm very sorry that, you know, who never writes articles
about their fathers? Sponsors of this podcast?

Speaker 1 (41:34):
You know, to do another adds Jesus.

Speaker 2 (41:38):
Sometimes I just in the zone, so if I just.

Speaker 3 (41:40):
Can't, I just love products and services.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
I just can't stop plugging.

Speaker 1 (41:43):
The shell for capitalism.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
I just love, you know so much.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Sometimes when I go to bed, every time, when I
go to bed, the only thing with me is Chumba casino.
You know, it's it's it's my lover, my friend, my comfort.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
But I heard Toyotas have amazing sell value.

Speaker 2 (42:01):
Uh wait, is that is Toyota doing ads? Because if
that's the case, what are we doing here, Sophie, Get
me on the horn with the Toyota guys. I want
to I want to tell the when to bring the
highlux to the US. You know, do we have juice
with Toyota? Now? Do we have some.

Speaker 1 (42:16):
Suggest you to the ad people for Toyota?

Speaker 2 (42:18):
That's never going to happen.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
Your show.

Speaker 2 (42:23):
Well, that's great.

Speaker 3 (42:24):
Every mom.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
Roberts.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
Some of them love to do an ad for Toyota
or to Mobile, and they're like great, good to know.

Speaker 2 (42:34):
The problem is that Toyota people don't want the kinds
of ads that I would do, which is the kinds
of ads that will sell toyotas right, because there's no
there's no car that has been used as successfully in
as many insurgent conflicts and outright conventional wars in the
world as the Toyota high Lux. You know, Toyota reliability

(42:55):
is what you want to put one need.

Speaker 3 (42:58):
An ad plug, get back to the screw. I'm surprised
I didn't have a high loox in Twisters.

Speaker 2 (43:03):
Oh, you're gonna ship a Trindo paid by Dodge.

Speaker 3 (43:07):
But don't you need a high Lux. Don't you need
to make a technical to fight a tornado?

Speaker 2 (43:11):
No. Here's what's why I think it's realistic that they
were all Rams and Twister because the Dodge Ram is
the official truck of people with seventeen duys, and every
character in Twisters has numerous duys like it is. These
guys are Oklahoma storm chasers. Not a one of them
has ever gotten behind the wheel sober, and that is
appreciate for a dodge ram. Yeah, it's not safe to

(43:35):
drive a dodge ram sober. You know you'll flip it.
So back to the story, Yeah, of course. Sabrina insists
that her mother and most of the rest of her
close family were very racist, and I don't think she
has to go to extreme measures to convince me of this.
Sounds true to have turned out differently because some of
her earliest memories were of the maid that her wealthy

(43:57):
mother hired to raise her. The maid was a black woman,
and Sabrina often called her mom and she's like, well,
I grew up with this black lady basically raising me
because my mom was busy all the time, and it
just became very aware of how racist everyone in my
family was. As a teenager, she becomes pregnant and it
is with a child that is going to be mixed race,

(44:17):
which is a real big deal in South Africa at
the time, especially.

Speaker 3 (44:22):
Your dad as the racism murderer.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Well, here's the thing. Her mom is furious. She claims
that her dad, who is behind bars at this point,
like calls her mom and is like be nicer to her.
About this. She says her dad actually was always very
supportive of her having a mixed race baby.

Speaker 3 (44:42):
Okay once again, and once again misjudged the killer.

Speaker 2 (44:46):
He's not bad about this. Her mom is, apparently though. Robert.
She claims that a black friend of hers was the
only person who listened to her and didn't judge her
and like helped her decide, you know, to keep the kid,
which she does now. Over time, her mother's racism began
to grape more and more on her. Although it may
have just been how controlling Beverly was, Sabrina was kind

(45:08):
of the black sheep of the family. Her mother is
this rich wlcoholic. Her half brothers take over a security
firm that her mother started, and they give.

Speaker 3 (45:15):
She shouldn't be allowed.

Speaker 2 (45:17):
This family should be doing security.

Speaker 3 (45:19):
I know they're not guilty of this, They're not involved.
I just should do it.

Speaker 2 (45:24):
She claims. They brag about being affiliated with Lewis before
he gets convicted, So I think that's saying ass. Yeah. Now, Sabrina,
you know, again kind of the black sheep, and claims
she was basically a prisoner in her mother's home. Eventually,
she reached out to the father of her child, who
introduced her to a man named Gino, who promised that
he had a solution to her issues. Murder.

Speaker 3 (45:45):
Is it a gun?

Speaker 2 (45:47):
No, it's a much more brutal murder than that. Now
there are two versions of this story, maybe both have
some truth. One is that Sabrina wanted to stage a
murder that looked random, like a robbery gone wrong, so
she could take her inheritance and be free. The other
is that she was just so disgusted by her mom's
racism that she felt her mother had to die. I
don't find that last one entirely credible. It's poetic, Yeah,

(46:14):
maybe maybe.

Speaker 3 (46:15):
I mean, I'm sure that's maybe something that she tells
herself as part of this justification is working up to it,
but it's mostly because like, your mom's being a bitch.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Your mom's kind of a bitch, and you want her money,
right probably? Probably? Yeah, And it's weird. I also think
maybe she's not super well because there's interviews where she claims, like,
on the last day of her mom's life, she wanted
to give her a nice goodbye and tell her she
loved her and thank her. Down gets you're having a

(46:45):
man slash her throat. What it's going on. You her
do her.

Speaker 3 (46:51):
Favorite park one last time.

Speaker 2 (46:54):
You want to go on a walk, mom, don't mind
the guy looming in the corner. Yeah, it's anyway. She
also claimed that Gino threatened to kill her and her
brother if they didn't do the killing after a while.
And anyway, I don't know a lot of shady stuff here.
I don't know how much I believe of these claims.

(47:16):
But Sabrina did have her mother murdered. She hired a
man to slit her throat and then came upon the
body and called the authorities. The whole thing was found
out almost immediately. Sabrina was sent to trial, where she
was not consistent, claiming at times that her mother had
loved her mixed race granddaughter and apologizing for what had happened. Still,
she also became something of a rallying point from any

(47:37):
of the Black East Londoners who'd spent years terrified of
her father from the BBC. At her trial in June
two thousand and two, Sabrina's admirers, the same South Africans
we'd lived in fear of her father, crowded into the
public gallery to commend her for striking a blow against
racism by murdering her mother. Her lawyer, a black man,
compared Sabrina's need to free herself from her mother's oppression

(47:57):
to the plight of South Africa's freedom fighters under a
part which I don't I don't even really know what
to say about that.

Speaker 3 (48:05):
There's a lot going on, just like a lot of
psychology going on here.

Speaker 2 (48:09):
There's a lot going on here. You're really feeling that
rubber band effect of trauma from the apartheid years in
this case.

Speaker 3 (48:15):
Has she had the baby or is she just like.

Speaker 2 (48:17):
Very she has. I think she's had the kid by
this point. Because she's separate, she misses out on the
kid's childhood, you know, but maybe I don't know.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
I just can't imagine a more like it's a visible symbol,
right that, like this this man who was using apartheid
to murder she has this mixed race child.

Speaker 1 (48:37):
And then he was like a chill grandpa. Yeah, he
has kind of a chill great, well not quite serial
killer grandpa.

Speaker 3 (48:45):
Yeah, killa grandpa. It's just a lot going on for
port Sabrina. I just I don't know that I falter
for it.

Speaker 2 (48:51):
No, No, I don't. I can't really blame her too much, Louis,
and they didn't.

Speaker 3 (48:55):
They didn't have like forensic miles back then, so she
didn't know that murder for hire never never said it
never works.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
As much as we love hitmen and movies, no one
has ever successfully gotten paid for a murder. It just
doesn't happen. The only people involved in that industry are
FBI agents and the mentally unsound. That's that's just it.
That's the whole business. Now. Lewis publicly because there's a

(49:23):
lot of articles interview him when his daughter goes to trial.
It's a it's a huge famous trial, and Lewis is
very publicly accepting of his granddaughter in Sabrina. I think
for self serving reasons. For one thing, he's about to
go up for parole, right, and so he wants wants
to make it clear I'm not a racist. You know,
I shot up a lack, but I'm not a racist. Yeah.

(49:45):
He also he kept being like, if you let me
out early, I'll be able to raise my granddaughter. Well,
my daughters, you should be allowed. You should be raising
a kid. What are you talking about?

Speaker 3 (49:57):
A judge to write up something special that says you.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Can't do that you are not allowed to be anywhere
close to children. In fact, when he was brought into
court as a character witness to try to help mitigate
his daughter's guilt, he just he spent all of the
time defending himself and arguing for his parole.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
Look, I'm no a lawyer, This isn't legal advice, but
if you ever need a character witness for a criminal proceeding, yeah,
don't invite a serial killer.

Speaker 2 (50:24):
I would say, here's my legal advice, free legal advice
for all you listeners out there. If you need a
character witness for a court case, pick a guy who
shot less than one hundred people. You know, not to
I guess, never pick a guy who shot anyone, but
certainly not one hundred people. That's the number, you know.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
I mean, I guess he does have sort of a
unique lived experience when it comes to being a bad person,
So he does have some perspective on that.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
I will say, as a journalist, if I were just
looking for like critiques on shooting a guy in the dark,
I would certainly call Lewis right. He seems to have
been an expert in shooting people in the dark, and
the back probably would be great at that job. I
don't know. I don't think that's a job anyway. Him
being a character witness does not work. She goes to prison.

(51:09):
She's going to be there for like thirteen years. Lewis
does twelve years, bars a little longer.

Speaker 3 (51:17):
Oh longer twelve.

Speaker 1 (51:19):
That math really adds up.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
And when he gets out, he'd been telling reporters as
he was trying to get early released, I've got to
raise my granddaughter. I want to be there for her.
He immediately moves to a different city, and he doesn't
even tell his daughter, does not adopt the grand doctor
because none of it, gets married right away, gets married
again to human woman, yes, some lady, and then he

(51:44):
gets a job on a farm funded by a state
project to provide poor black people with land and support
for operating agricultural businesses.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
I have to go.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
South Africa. Baby apart, I's gone, but we're still fucked
as hell.

Speaker 3 (52:03):
Oh so apart I'd ended while he was in jail.

Speaker 2 (52:05):
Yeah ninety four, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:07):
I lost. I lost track of our years. So he
comes out into a different world.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Very different world. But he gets he gets right to
work scamming the government. So I will say I found
an article some of the people who worked on that
farm said he was a really good member of the team.
He was very good at teaching people. He was good
at scaring off thieves. But the person who makes all
of these claims in this article, because he gets he
gets removed, he gets forced out when there's news stories

(52:35):
that are like, it's kind of fucked up. This guy's
getting money meant for poor black people to like encourage
them to farm, after you know, he murdered all those folks.
The person who makes these claims that like, actually he
was great and it's really bad that he had to
leave is Patricia Nugumbalanga, who owned most of the farm,
and intersperses her claims about how good Lewis was with

(52:55):
anger at the fact that the government has not sent
any more subsidies. And nugom Belang also faces criminal charges
herself from a local security guard who accused her of
beating him badly after he broke into a building on
the farm. So I don't know how to parse this.
I don't know if Lewis was a good worker or not,
or if there's something weird about this lady. But the
fact that he is on this farm causes an outroar

(53:17):
when it gets published right and he is forced from
the property. From the For the rest of his life,
Lewis would be visited on occasion by reporters. He claimed
at the end of his days to be quote happy
and content and that ninety percent of the people who
recognized him on the street supported what he'd done. But
he also expressed disgust at the disgust at the new
South Africa. Everything has changed people's attitudes, the service and shops.

(53:40):
It's not the same, Yeah, I bet yeah. The only
good news I can give you is that by July
of twenty twenty four, father time caught up with the
old bastard and did to him what the justice system wouldn't.
A BBC reporter who visited him before his death noted
that he had lost all his teeth and had both
his legs amputated after a heart attack. Lewis fashion he

(54:01):
accepted only the most brutal form of surgery for the BBC.
When the surgeon carried out this procedure, Van Sure requested
an epidural instead of a general anesthetic so he could
watch them remove his legs.

Speaker 3 (54:13):
He's such a sick.

Speaker 2 (54:17):
You know what shine on to you crazy diamond. It's
good to know them who you are. Right, it's an option, Yeah,
I guess, I guess it's an option. Yes. It's very
funny because he immediately.

Speaker 3 (54:32):
And hearing your fur saw through it's The.

Speaker 2 (54:37):
BBC article is super funny because it quotes him saying
I was curious I saw them cutting they sawed through
the bone, and speaking to the BBC World Service, Van
Sure wanted to persuade us that he is not the
monster that people say I am. That's not gonna do it. Man,
you didn't have to tell anyone that part of the story.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
Why didn't the doctor say no?

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (55:01):
Man? Anyway, Lewis dies July twenty fifth, twenty twenty four.
He just died due to complications from like a week ago. Yeah, yeah,
very recently.

Speaker 3 (55:11):
He said, robituary and you said that's hell.

Speaker 2 (55:14):
Yeah, who is this motherfucker? One relative of a victim
told the BBC he got off easy, which I agree with. Sabrina,
on the other hand, served out her time. She was
noted by black inmates who served alongside her as being
different from most of the other incarcerated whites. So it
does at least seem like the not being a racist
stuff was legitimate. Although she was sentenced to twenty five

(55:36):
years for the murder of her mom, like her dad,
she was released after twelve years or so of good behavior,
and I wish her the best. Good luck Sabrina and.

Speaker 3 (55:45):
What happened to her child, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Wow, I'm gonna guess honestly, with this family, no good
news is good news, right, Yeah, just.

Speaker 3 (55:54):
Send them just foster care At this point, that's never
a good option. It's never better than a family place.
But I think maybe in this case.

Speaker 2 (56:02):
Yeah, when your dad's yeah, the murder guy. Yeah, An,
I didn't. I didn't like that that.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
I mean, I thought I thought it was going to
be pretty bad when you told us that people were
setting dogs heads on fire. Yeah, actually, long for more
of that now.

Speaker 2 (56:25):
Every time when you're doing an apartheid South Africa story,
it's basically always going to be the bleakest shit you've
ever heard in your life. So that's good.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
Well, thanks, No good South African.

Speaker 2 (56:38):
Molly, you got any Oh my gosh, what do I
have to plug?

Speaker 3 (56:43):
Oh? They're letting me make a podcast now, Robert?

Speaker 2 (56:46):
Oh good? Really wait, who's doing that?

Speaker 3 (56:49):
Somebody? Very foolish weird little guys. By the time this
comes out will be out one maybe two episodes, you'll
be able to go and listen to them. You're gonna
love them. It's it's a it's s very uplifting kind
of like this show just a lot of guys just
doing normal stuff that's not upsetting. Yay uh it's me, Hi,

(57:14):
I'm them, I'm the problem. It's me more horrible stories
for your ear holes. No, I really do think people
are gonna like it.

Speaker 2 (57:24):
Yeah, excellent, excellent. I do too, Mollie, I really do.

Speaker 1 (57:28):
It's very it's amazing, and it's just it's like a
little creepy Crawley n bedtime horror story and you're in
and it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:39):
Some people have asked, like always it like behind the
Bastard where there's like a guest, and I think we
ultimately decided that sort of a spooky bedtime story vibe
was a little bit better. So it's just me telling
you a story about something terrible, yeah, but like a
fun way funny.

Speaker 2 (57:55):
And I assume you will probably also tell them less
about the film Twisters.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (58:01):
You know, I think by the time I record the
second episode, I will have seen Twisters, so maybe I
can work that inside.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
If you really want to be prepped for the podcasting game,
like I am Molly, you got to watch Twisters and
then you need to go back and watch the O. J.
Simpson Show, where what Ross from Friends je all the time?
It's so funny. Ross from Friends always watching, always a
good time. That's great, is great. No Ross from Friends though,

(58:28):
but that's probably for the best.

Speaker 1 (58:30):
I wish I had my own Gary from Beep in
my life, in the form of a dog who could talk.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
I almost said Ross from Friends doesn't have like Armando
Iannucci vibes. But actually he could have been in the
Death of Stalin. All right, I could have cast You
could have cast Ross from Friends with some like Fadings,
elderly Soviet deureaucrat. Yeah, he could, he could do it.
He could do it.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
I think the range I think I would like to
leave now. Okay, podcast is over you well, I Love
you by Behind the Bastards is a production of cool
Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our
website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the

(59:13):
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,