Steeped in Blood (2 page)

‘To thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.’

– WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

Hamlet
, Act I, scene iii, lines 78–80

There was no doubt in the police investigators’ minds that Fred van der Vyver had murdered Inge Lotz. The crime scene pointed to a murderer whom she knew well – nothing was stolen and there was no sign of forced entry – and Fred knew Inge intimately. What’s more, they had just had an argument. Fred had motive and perhaps some opportunity, but, most importantly, the police investigators
believed
he was guilty. All that they needed to convict him was the evidence to prove this.

So how did he get away with it, if, indeed, he did commit the crime? It’s quite simple: each piece of evidence fell horribly short when subjected to scientific scrutiny. There was not a shred of evidence, scientific or other, to link Fred van der Vyver to the death of Inge Lotz. The police investigation was not about finding the
truth; rather, it was so clouded by bias that reality blurred into fantasy. The ideals of forensic science were abandoned and replaced by the police’s desperation to gain a conviction at any cost.

Forensic science is akin to a voyage of discovery: the scientist unravels the clues and sifts through the ashes and dust to find the gems of information that will bring him or her as close as humanly possible to the true state of events. That is the crux of the work of a forensic scientist.

In each and every case, there are many external influences at work. One of the most dangerous is personal bias, and this is where the investigation into the murder of Inge Lotz fell so terribly short. The critical difference between a scientist and a layperson is the ability to observe and analyse information in a completely unbiased way.

This lesson was brought home to me vividly in my very first chemistry practical at the University of the Witwatersrand. As first-years, we all had a little black one-rand lab book in which to record our research and results, and we arrived fresh-faced and eager, ready to conduct our first scientific experiment. With our twenty coins of the same denomination in hand, which we had been told to bring on that first day, we were sent off to the weighing room.

The task was to weigh each coin individually and note down its mass to the fourth decimal point. We then had to calculate the coins’ mean and standard deviation, which is a measure of the range or dispersion of weights measured for the set of coins. No two coins ever had an identical mass, due to weighing or observation errors, or wear and tear from use.

We were then instructed to reweigh each coin and repeat the entire exercise. I discovered that the standard deviation on the second set of weighing was much smaller the second time around. Why? It was simple: the second time I weighed the coins, I subconsciously knew what the average weight was, and this influenced my later measurements. Thus, on the inaugural day of my scientific
career, I was taught a fundamental lesson: as a scientist, you have to get rid of your bias. Subjective influences, knowledge you already have and misinformation can all lead to the wrong conclusions.

It is not for a scientist to pre-empt results or to seek particular findings. The scientist’s task is purely to find out what nature and the laws of science have put there to be found. If the facts do not support a theory, a good scientist will discard the theory with alacrity and look past the external influences until he or she gets as close to the truth as possible. That is the craft of science, and particularly of forensic science.

External influences play a huge role not only in science, but also in the development of a child, and I was very fortunate to have some of the best influences in my early years. These moulding elements inspired my interest in and keen passion for the world of science.

Let me start at the beginning. My father’s family emigrated from Russia at the turn of the century, fleeing the persecution of Jews at the time. My paternal grandparents moved independently from St Petersburg to England, where they met and married. Shortly after this, they set sail for South Africa in search of a golden future. They arrived in Durban just after the Boer War, and my father was born in Newcastle, in Natal, in November 1903. The family later moved to Bloemfontein, where they formed part of a thriving Jewish community.

I know very little about my paternal grandparents, except their names – Jonas and Leah. My father did not mention them once in all the years I was growing up, and we never had any contact with them. My father had married out of his faith – my mother was Anglican – and I suspect he was disowned for this decision. Perhaps my grandfather was never even told about the marriage.

My paternal grandparents produced four children, of which my father, Cyril, was the eldest. There were also two daughters, René and Gladys, and a younger son, Leonard.

My Aunt Gladys married a dentist in Cape Town and lived in suburbia with him for the next fifty years or so, while my father’s eldest sister, René Ahrensen, became a well-known Shakespearean exponent. In fact, she started Maynardville Open Air Theatre in Wynberg, Cape Town, with Cecelia Sonnenberg. There is a plaque commemorating these two ladies on either side of the entrance to the theatre to this day. René married briefly and gave birth to one daughter, my first cousin, Noel. Growing up, I saw Aunt René only occasionally – we were not a close-knit family.

My father’s youngest brother, Leonard, was by far the most interesting. He obtained a master’s degree in physics from the University of the Orange Free State, and later, having been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship, furthered his studies at Oxford, where he shared lodgings with Bram Fischer. When it had become known that Leonard had applied for the scholarship, Bram, whose father was judge president of the Free State and whose grandfather had been prime minister of the Orange River Colony, approached him, generously saying, ‘I see that you have applied for the Rhodes Scholarship. So have I. Because of my family connections, I will probably get it. You apply first and I will withdraw my application. I’ll apply next year and see you then.’

That’s exactly what happened. The two friends ended up in Oxford, where they shared a house. This was around the time when communist agents were turning Oxford students towards communism, and I am sure both Bram and Len were influenced by this. Len became chairman of the British Scientific Workers Union, and who knows what may have been in store for him had he been lured into the world of Anthony Blunt, Kim Philby, Donald Maclean, John Cairncross and others, who became communist spies after their university days in the late 1920s.

Len worked on a great many scientific projects, and had a keen interest in the effect of current passing through gases and vacuums. He was part of the team that developed the cavity magnetron, the
device that generated the microwaves used in radar and became the scientific basis for microwave ovens. He also worked on the development of fluorescent coating for cameras, in the electronics world of physics, which ultimately resulted in the invention of television. His involvement in infrared bombsights eventually brought about his demise: he was killed testing a bombsight when the Wellington Bomber in which he was flying crashed. Sadly, this all happened before I was born, and I never knew him.

My mother’s side of the family came from the idyllic English countryside. My grandmother was born Langsford and lived on the River Tamar, which separates Cornwall from Devon in England. The Langsfords lived at the Cotehele Mill in the late 1880s, where they enjoyed a largely self-sufficient life – they made their own butter, milk and bacon and raised their own meat; they grew their own vegetables; and salmon were caught in the nearby river.

Gran was one of thirteen children. The names of many of these children reflect the times in which they were born – one child was called Horatio and another Nelson, after the great Napoleonic Wars leader Horatio Nelson.

My maternal grandfather, James Bruno Blatchford, was born on the island of Jersey. As a young man he had trained as a fitter and turner, and he later worked in the naval dockyards in Plymouth, about fifteen miles away from the Cotehele Mill. It was at Cotehele Mill that he met my grandmother, and they eventually married.

Shortly afterwards, my grandfather contracted Malta fever, a form of brucellosis. The normal ‘prescription’ when a doctor didn’t know how to cure an illness in those days was a long trip to a hot, dry country. This is how my grandparents arrived in South Africa.

My grandfather found employment on the mines as a fitter and turner. Eager to better himself, he decided to study at night. Eventually he wrote his mine-engineering ticket and became a mining engineer, a role he continued to perform for the rest of his life, on the far East Rand.

My grandparents’ marriage was not always a bed of roses, it seems – I suspect that my grandfather had the same affinity for gambling and horse racing that my father had. Gran left him and went back to England with her first daughter when she was pregnant with her second child. My mother, Winifred Mabel, was born in Penzance shortly afterwards. A few years later, the First World War broke out, and my mother later shared with me her vivid childhood memories of seeing the Zeppelins flying over the British coast.

At about the age of eight or nine, my mother returned to South Africa with my grandmother, and my grandparents settled back down on the mines together, where they continued with their lives until my grandfather’s death in about 1940. My mother’s older sister, Bertha Bower, married a mine official who achieved some status as the mayor of Brakpan in the early fifties. I remember having a lot of fun driving around in the mayoral car, registration TO 1, in those days. Sadly, my aunt, who was a heavy smoker, died at the young age of forty-seven, and my mother and grandmother were the only two members of the family left. My grandmother died in 1960 when she was about eighty.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, my father signed up and went to fight. He met and married my mother towards the end of the war, and shortly afterwards, on 14 July 1944, my brother Peter was born. A few years later, on 8 December 1948, I arrived.

My father was an immensely intelligent man. He was an expert in all aspects that make a business work, and it is a great tragedy that he never formalised his knowledge or qualifications in any field. My earliest recollections are of him working at Brakpan Motors as the company secretary for a man called Syd Israel. My mother, an efficient short-hand typist, worked there as well. She had a Standard 8 education, which was considered a good qualification for a woman in those days.

From my early childhood perspective, we lived a happy, contented
life in Brakpan, a small mining town on the East Rand, about fifty kilometres from Johannesburg. I was completely unaware of any sinister undercurrents in the family, or of any looming tragedy, but our reality was shattered in 1957, when I was nine years old. My father had a sustained and unjustified belief in his ability to predict which horses would win at the races. This caused considerable financial stress in the family after a particularly bad loss: my father was disgraced and ostracised by his friends and acquaintances, and found himself unemployable. Ruin was imminent, and he attempted suicide. The suicide attempt added to the stigma, as suicide was illegal in those days (as it still is today), and he was sent for psychological treatment. Through all of this trauma, we lost all our material possessions and my family was socially isolated.

Eventually, an old friend in Brakpan came to the rescue. His brother-in-law owned a glassworks in Standerton, but the business was losing money, and he offered my father a position. We moved to Standerton, and for the rest of his working life my father was beholden to Julian Berman, the man who had given him another chance. With his excellent business skills, my father managed to turn the glassworks around.

Life in Standerton for a nine-year-old was bliss. It was a rural community that made a Huckleberry Finn–type of lifestyle possible. My mother did not approve of the children who lived across the road from us, but I befriended them nonetheless. They were the children of a cabinetmaker called Alf Doubel, who was the finest wood craftsman I have ever encountered – he could make wood talk. I spent many happy hours in his workshop, and he inspired in me a love of woodworking.

Ignoring adult prejudice and blissfully unaware of any drama in my own family, I spent many happy afternoons and weekends running around barefoot, riding my bicycle, or swimming in or canoeing on the Vaal River with my new friends. A real treat was when my mother would give me ten cents and I could go to the
movies and buy a cold drink. A whole afternoon’s entertainment could be had for ten cents!

I was baptised an Anglican, and my mother made sure that as much religion was poured into me as possible – in fact, until my cup ran over! I suspect that the rabbi and the Anglican priest drew lots over me, and the one who lost received my soul! I was sent to an Anglican church school – St Martin’s School, in Johannesburg – after we moved to Standerton, where my brother was also a pupil. He was conscientious and well behaved. The same could not be said of me. To put it mildly, I was found to be ‘difficult’ at school, and my school reports reflected this (two of my earlier reports are included in
Appendix A
).

St Martin’s was one of the more liberal establishments of its day. It had begun as St Peter’s, and one of its more famous pupils was Oliver Tambo. The headmaster, Michael Stern, was a man who judged no one unfairly. He had the ability to look past difficulties to see the potential in the unruly children in his care. He was passionate about the development of young minds, often overlooking broken rules if he could see that some good had resulted.

One Saturday afternoon, a friend, Donald Currie, and I were exploring a drainage canal that ran near the school into Wemmer Pan. We were strictly forbidden to go to the canal, as part of the canal was covered and obviously it was a dangerous escapade. While exploring, Currie and I found the body of a newborn black baby. We went straight to the nearest police station to report it, but this was the early 1960s and nothing could have interested the police less. I said to Currie, ‘Let’s go and report this to the boss (as Stern was known to us).’ Currie was appalled, fearing a caning for breaking the school rules by going down to the canal. I insisted, and we timidly approached Stern in his office.