Speaker 1: School of Humans.
Speaker 2: This show follows the investigation of serial murders and contains
Speaker 2: material that may be disturbing.
Speaker 3: Listener discretion advised.
Speaker 4: Jared Jackson went missing on December sixteenth of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: the same day that Zack Valentine was apparently killed in
Speaker 4: a car accident. This was no coincidence. After both men disappeared,
Speaker 4: Alectis Perdaeis worked feverishly to get their hands on Zack
Speaker 4: Valentine's life insurance PEA, and when a friend posted about
Speaker 4: Zach's death on Facebook, the group thought they were in
Speaker 4: the clear. They saw this as a green light to
Speaker 4: file the claim, but these things take time, something EPD
Speaker 4: didn't have. Someone else saw the post. Two Detective Susette
Speaker 4: Canotse's daughter Shaney. She alerted her mother, I.
Speaker 5: Read something on Facebook and she was like, oh, this
Speaker 5: may be a link.
Speaker 2: To my pace.
Speaker 4: Although she was not working on the case, it had
Speaker 4: stayed with her these last four years, so Suzette called
Speaker 4: it in. She warned authorities to be extra suspicious of
Speaker 4: anything involving Zach Valentine or Cecilia Stein. Her instincts were,
Speaker 4: as usual, right on the money. Zach was in hiding
Speaker 4: pretending to be dead until the coast was clear. Here's
Speaker 4: Detective Ben Boysen.
Speaker 6: Zack Valentine became an issue for him because he wasn't hiding.
Speaker 6: He said diabetic. He needed medicine. I didn't have money.
Speaker 4: Life on the run was hard for Zach for obvious reasons.
Speaker 4: He couldn't get a job, so he spent his days
Speaker 4: and nights hold up in a cheap hotel outside Krueger's door,
Speaker 4: living on cup of noodles, cigarettes, and the insolent brought him.
Speaker 4: It would make sense that Laru would be genuinely concerned
Speaker 4: for Zach. After all, he was the closest thing Laroux
Speaker 4: had to a father or an older brother. According to
Speaker 4: Yana Marx's book, LaRue warned Zack that Cecilia and the
Speaker 4: others were considering getting rid of him because he was
Speaker 4: becoming too expensive to keep alive.
Speaker 6: Maranda was working as a teacher. Salary was not enough
Speaker 6: for all those people to live and to buy Zach
Speaker 6: Valentine's medicine. So I think at the end of the
Speaker 6: day they would have killed.
Speaker 4: Him because they had gotten away with so much already.
Speaker 4: Though Secilia and Marinda thought they were untouchable, here's doctor
Speaker 4: Nikki Falkoff we met earlier in the series.
Speaker 7: Once you realized that the thing that is the most
Speaker 7: taboo thing imaginable is actually possible for you to do,
Speaker 7: your sense of yourself as being subject to the same
Speaker 7: rules as everybody else in society probably starts to slowly disintegrate.
Speaker 7: For these things like murder, like stealing, They've become lessonless
Speaker 7: to booth for you as time goes by.
Speaker 3: Because you think you were different, do you think you're exceptional?
Speaker 4: When the money didn't come. After Jared's death, EPD returned
Speaker 4: to their old ways of haphazard, over zealous murder. While
Speaker 4: some of epd's final victims were acquaintances and fellow members
Speaker 4: of the Krugersdorp community, they were, ultimately, to Sicilia and Mirinda,
Speaker 4: a means to an end, raw resources to be mined
Speaker 4: in pursuit of a financial windfall. EPD now treated murder
Speaker 4: as casually as a day at the office. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 4: impact of their crimes shook Krugersdorp to its core, because
Speaker 4: now anyone with a bank account was a potential target.
Speaker 8: It could have been me and you. They were doing
Speaker 8: regular jobs, showing up for appointment and they were killed.
Speaker 4: From School of Humans and iHeart podcasts. This is Queen
Speaker 4: Havoc and her murder cult. I'm your host, Kurt Kupachek,
Speaker 4: Episode eight, Vile Hearts. If you've come this far with us,
Speaker 4: you know this story is a bramble, a mess of
Speaker 4: moving parts, a not that titans in the stomach and
Speaker 4: won't let you rest until you've untied the narrative. There's
Speaker 4: no way to tell this story without becoming sort of
Speaker 4: consumed by it. Our colleague Jamaine Kriher warned us about
Speaker 4: this actually while we were in South Africa.
Speaker 9: Every time you think you understand what's happening, you realize
Speaker 9: that you're wrong. If you let it, this is the
Speaker 9: type of story that will absolutely take over your life
Speaker 9: because I don't think there'll ever be an end to it.
Speaker 9: I think every time you turn a corner there's something new.
Speaker 4: Pulling at all these dark and twisted threads is heroin,
Speaker 4: even for a seasoned journalist like Yanna Marx.
Speaker 10: I had to work through every single piece of information
Speaker 10: to be able to portray it accurately, and that meant
Speaker 10: I had to like relive or try to put myself
Speaker 10: there on the scene, try to relive through the dockets,
Speaker 10: to photos, the different narratives, and yeah, I mean it
Speaker 10: took quite at all.
Speaker 8: And I will struggle to sleep. I would get bad
Speaker 8: dreams because it was hard. It's hard stuff and if
Speaker 8: you're close to something like that, I mean, I can
Speaker 8: just imagine if that's what I went through, how it
Speaker 8: must have been for the family members of these victims.
Speaker 4: Between the whiffs of Satanism, the manipulation of Christianity, the
Speaker 4: crooked cops, the slaughter of innocence, and the gross human
Speaker 4: capacity for this level of brutality, this story took over
Speaker 4: our lives too. It was quite a daunting challenge to
Speaker 4: unravel truth from fiction, to detangle lies from hearsay and memory.
Speaker 4: This long after the fact, there are pieces of this story,
Speaker 4: details that we were forced to omit for the sake
Speaker 4: of clarity, because, as Jamaine pointed out, every time you
Speaker 4: turn a corner, there's a new perspective to consider. We've
Speaker 4: done our best to dig for the truth and allowed
Speaker 4: to become our compass. And the sad fact of this
Speaker 4: moment is that Electus Perdais would seemingly stop at nothing
Speaker 4: to satiate Cecilia's greed and lust for power. The appointment
Speaker 4: murders continued in twenty sixteen. EPD believed they were above
Speaker 4: the law, and so they struck close to home, taking
Speaker 4: advantage of their actual neighbors. It was late summer in
Speaker 4: the Southern Hemisphere when the murders began again, just after
Speaker 4: the realization that the insurance money was not going to
Speaker 4: hit their bank accounts for some time. On January twenty seventh,
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen, EPD took aim at fifty seven year old
Speaker 4: Glenn McGregor.
Speaker 6: John Barnett used to lift opposite him actually knew exactly
Speaker 6: where he was living.
Speaker 4: McGregor wasn't rich, but he was a tax consultant that
Speaker 4: qualified him. Surely he had money squirreled away somewhere. John
Speaker 4: Barnard told his cohort what he apparently knew. For a fact,
Speaker 4: McGregor didn't trust banks, so he must keep all his
Speaker 4: money at home. Cecilia and Mirinda also knew McGregor. He
Speaker 4: was a local. He lived just outside Krueger's Torp, but
Speaker 4: his office was only a few blocks away from Cassana Flats.
Speaker 4: John Barnard actually rented property from Glenn, and the group
Speaker 4: had once teased Mirinda about Glenn being a potential mate.
Speaker 4: Driving along the dusty streets of Krueger's Torp with Ben,
Speaker 4: we passed MacGregor's office. The awning still eerily bears his name.
Speaker 6: Now you see Wheeler MacGregor and Associates, and this was
Speaker 6: his office.
Speaker 4: Mirinda met McGregor at that same office, claiming she needed
Speaker 4: tax advice. True to form, she talked him into a
Speaker 4: business meeting later at his home. McGregor was surprised when
Speaker 4: he opened the door to see Mirinda and her two
Speaker 4: grown children standing there. She never said anything about bringing
Speaker 4: her kids, but he graciously invited them in. They chatted
Speaker 4: for about twenty minutes. It was friendly enough, some get
Speaker 4: to know you chit chat. Then, without warning, Mirinda pulled
Speaker 4: out a gun. She shoved it in McGregor's face. This
Speaker 4: is a stick up, she shouted. MacGregor laughed loudly, but
Speaker 4: then quickly froze once he realized this was no joke.
Speaker 4: Marinda's face matched the flat, pallid expressions of her two children.
Speaker 4: Their plan hold him at gunpoint, get his banking information,
Speaker 4: drain his accounts, then strangle him. No gun meant no
Speaker 4: ballistic evidence. Then they would leave just as they left
Speaker 4: the other to be discovered by a loved one. But
Speaker 4: as usual, things went awry. McGregor stood up, ready to
Speaker 4: take on LaRue to fight for his life. McGregor was
Speaker 4: a much bigger man than LaRue, so Marinda panicked. Fearing
Speaker 4: for her son's life and the plan falling apart, she
Speaker 4: fired her twenty two pistol, landing two bullets in McGregor's gut.
Speaker 4: McGregor collapsed to the floor, LaRue bound his feet. Marcelle
Speaker 4: got busy searching the house for cash. Mirinda bent down,
Speaker 4: low her lips to his ear. She promised Glenn she'd
Speaker 4: call an ambulance. In exchange for access to his banking
Speaker 4: app Mirinda managed to transfer six thousand Rand about three
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty US dollars into her bank account for cover.
Speaker 4: She attached a memo to the transfer great Fuck. Once
Speaker 4: the money was delivered, Marinda demanded that LaRue finish Glen
Speaker 4: off with his rope. She nicknamed it his chokey chokie
Speaker 4: after he had used it on Dearren Jackson. Before Mirinda
Speaker 4: and her children fled their victims home, they slipped Glenn's
Speaker 4: body into the bathtub and left him soaking in warm water.
Speaker 4: Cecilia said it would throw off the coroner's estimated time
Speaker 4: of death. That's where McGregor was discovered the next day.
Speaker 4: That afternoon, on January twenty eighth, while Mirinda was teaching
Speaker 4: her students English, Cecilia sent LaRue to the high school
Speaker 4: to fetch Marinda's bank card so he could withdraw all
Speaker 4: the money from McGregor and hand it over immediately. Cecilia
Speaker 4: wanted to keep all the money in her own hands.
Speaker 4: Confident they'd got and away with yet another murder, the
Speaker 4: members of EPD subsisted for the next few months on
Speaker 4: what little they'd robbed from McGregor. That paltry sum a
Speaker 4: mere three hundred bucks, was why Glenn McGregor had to die.
Speaker 4: His life was worth two months of time for Zach Valentine.
Speaker 4: Soon enough, Cecilia decided they needed a bigger score, which
Speaker 4: meant they needed to kill again. In less than a month,
Speaker 4: between May tenth and May thirty first of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: they committed three more murders. Maritzka Cootsaer was a respected
Speaker 4: local crime reporter at the time, and covered the next
Speaker 4: murder of Anthony.
Speaker 3: Scholfield to us, the first murder felt like Anthony Scholfield
Speaker 3: because that's actually when it started falling a botch.
Speaker 4: You know, here's Colonel Christelle Boisen who spoke to Anthony's wife.
Speaker 2: This was like the pilot murder for them, you know,
Speaker 2: trying out a pilot plan and if this works, we're
Speaker 2: going to do it again. And surely they did it
Speaker 2: again with the two other murders that followed after.
Speaker 4: Other than the Myers and McGregor, all the appointment murders
Speaker 4: took place in Kruger's door proper. In fact, the remaining
Speaker 4: three murders would all be carried out inside Mirinda's own
Speaker 4: apartment at Casana Flats.
Speaker 6: Playing with Marinda was John Barnat and LaRue. Marcel stayed
Speaker 6: with Cecilia downstairs. Marinda stayed in the living room and
Speaker 6: that's where they killed, and she was sleeping d every
Speaker 6: night after the Quler.
Speaker 4: On May tenth, twenty sixteen, Anthony Schofield, a financial broker
Speaker 4: that Marenda had worked with in the past, got a call. LaRue,
Speaker 4: using a fake name and a cheap SIM card, set
Speaker 4: the appointment through Schofield's wife and bookkeeper, Heather. They were
Speaker 4: to meet their prospective client at key West, a shopping
Speaker 4: center and krugers Dorp. Here's Colonel Christelle Boison, who spoke
Speaker 4: to Anthony's wife.
Speaker 2: Mister Sheffield, informed us that on the day of the murder,
Speaker 2: she was actually packing the caravan because her and a
Speaker 2: husband would have gone on this long camping trip on
Speaker 2: the first one that they've taken for a very long while,
Speaker 2: and Shelfield was just attending his last appointment before they
Speaker 2: would have left for the Strip. He did leave, but
Speaker 2: he never came back.
Speaker 4: LaRue called Schofield right at their meeting time six o'clock,
Speaker 4: saying he had a crisis. He asked if Schofield could
Speaker 4: come to his place for the meeting instead, the address
Speaker 4: seventeen Cassana. Schofield obliged and was surprised when he arrived
Speaker 4: in saw Marinda there. Good grief, you live here too,
Speaker 4: he said. They acted fast, holding him at gunpoint a
Speaker 4: thirty eight special this time until he handed over his
Speaker 4: bank card and pin into ordered Marcel and John Barnard
Speaker 4: to go to the ATM down the street and make
Speaker 4: sure the pin number worked. Cash in hand, they headed back.
Speaker 4: Schofield was dead by the time they returned, John and
Speaker 4: LaRue wrapped his body in a black plastic bag and
Speaker 4: carried it down the stairs, grabbing his car keys on
Speaker 4: the way out. They placed the body in his trunk
Speaker 4: or the boot as they call it, and abandoned his
Speaker 4: Honda a few streets away, leaving the keys in the ignition,
Speaker 4: hoping that a desperate person might steal the car with
Speaker 4: the body in it. Maritzka coats there recalls the day
Speaker 4: law enforcement found his body.
Speaker 3: Anthony Schorefield was murdered. It was my first off day
Speaker 3: in months. So my contact, you know, she sends men Macy.
Speaker 3: She's like, listen here an elderly man murdered, found in
Speaker 3: his boot. You know you need to write the story.
Speaker 4: Tired but committed to her work, Maritzka drove to the
Speaker 4: scene first.
Speaker 3: Time, pissed off because it's my off days, but out
Speaker 3: of curiosity, I drove to the school where his body
Speaker 3: was found. Tried to see if I could find anything.
Speaker 3: You know, because when you write as a journalist, you know,
Speaker 3: you get familiar with your community, You get familiar with
Speaker 3: the crimes, You start understanding things.
Speaker 4: Although Krueger's door had a lot of crime, this one
Speaker 4: felt bizarre.
Speaker 3: So it immediately stood out to me because obviously I
Speaker 3: was writing crime a lot, so I knew which stop
Speaker 3: of crime happened in what area. And this was really
Speaker 3: a weird crime. You know, who does this? You know,
Speaker 3: kill someone, leaves them in their boot, leaves the keys
Speaker 3: in the car, and I mean this was introducedov North.
Speaker 4: Over the next few days, the killers went back and
Speaker 4: withdrew the daily maximum allowance until the card was eventually canceled.
Speaker 6: And then just around the corner is which Eddy after
Speaker 6: they killed him, they came here and they bought meat
Speaker 6: from this place to have a party.
Speaker 4: LaRue used him share to pick something up from Marcel.
Speaker 6: Luru bought some Houdis for im and his sister a
Speaker 6: disk shop. Yah, And that's all of Skullfield's money.
Speaker 4: This was epd's biggest score, only providing them with about
Speaker 4: sixteen thousand, six hundred rand, still only about eight hundred
Speaker 4: and seventy five US dollars, all going directly to Cecilia.
Speaker 4: This would be their pattern moving forward. The ease and
Speaker 4: immediacy of it appealed to Cecilia. Two would hold the
Speaker 4: victim at gunpoint, while others would go to the ATM
Speaker 4: and drain their accounts. Then their victim would be killed,
Speaker 4: their body disappeared, human lives disposed of with barely his
Speaker 4: second thought. Luckily, for the people of Krugersdorp, money leaves
Speaker 4: a trail. On May twenty sixth, about two weeks after
Speaker 4: Schofield's life was taken, the body of a young man,
Speaker 4: Kevin McAlpine, was discovered in one of Kruegersdorp's most dangerous neighborhoods.
Speaker 4: Kevin was also a financial advisor. Only twenty nine years old,
Speaker 4: he'd recently celebrated his first wedding anniversary. His wife, Keziah,
Speaker 4: was seven months pregnant. Kevin had been actively looking for
Speaker 4: a new job as well, making a career change before
Speaker 4: becoming a father. He promised Kezia that this would be
Speaker 4: his last appointment for a while. They couldn't say no
Speaker 4: to a potential client. Here's Christell again.
Speaker 2: McAlpine wasn't supposed to attend the appointment that first found
Speaker 2: another broker, but he's not working in that business anymore.
Speaker 2: But he has a friend that would appreciate their business,
Speaker 2: and he then, not knowing, is sending someone else to
Speaker 2: his death, passed the appointment on to Mac Alpine.
Speaker 4: Unfortunately, he crossed paths with Queen Havoc's band of wayward huntsman.
Speaker 3: When Kevin was murdered, that was the turning point, the
Speaker 3: first turning point.
Speaker 4: Meritzka was called to the scene that night as well.
Speaker 3: It's eleven o'clock at night. I'm sleeping. My phone rings.
Speaker 3: My contact says, hey, pop up, Stone up ons it alike,
Speaker 3: So that roughly translates to hey, girl, get up, we've
Speaker 3: got a body.
Speaker 4: She makes her way there. A large crowd surrounds Kevin's
Speaker 4: open trunk.
Speaker 3: So now I think to myself, oh fucking know. Now
Speaker 3: I'm gonna get you chased off the scene, because usually
Speaker 3: that's what happens, you know, the family they don't want
Speaker 3: the journalist day.
Speaker 4: But then she's approached by someone.
Speaker 3: So now this man comes. He isn't tears, and he
Speaker 3: says to me, Marisco, thank goodness you are here. Now
Speaker 3: I'm like, how does this man know my name? And
Speaker 3: he grabs me and he's crying, and he says, it's
Speaker 3: Kevin in the boots, even in the boot.
Speaker 4: Confused but present, Maritska tries to make sense of this.
Speaker 3: Okay, now I know the victim's name. But it still
Speaker 3: didn't add up. And then he said, what will you
Speaker 3: are Nates say about that? So you are Nita Skeavin's mother,
Speaker 3: I swear to you, know, like they say when it
Speaker 3: feels like a brick walls fall on you. It was
Speaker 3: that moment because then I realized that I knew that
Speaker 3: person in that boot, you know, like it was the
Speaker 3: most bizarre feeling in the world.
Speaker 4: Maritzka is a well known journalist who, like Yanna and Ben,
Speaker 4: wrote a book on the Kruger Store of Killings. It's
Speaker 4: called Outcast. Over the course of her reporting, she became
Speaker 4: a close confidant to LaRue more on that soon. She's
Speaker 4: a warm presence. She has an infectious laugh and vibrant energy,
Speaker 4: and this spade of murders had become personal for her,
Speaker 4: too close for comfort.
Speaker 3: You get so used to writing about people you don't know,
Speaker 3: writing nice stories, sad stories you know, but you don't
Speaker 3: often get to write about you old mother's base friends. Son.
Speaker 4: Epd's next victim was discovered four days later, on May thirtieth,
Speaker 4: twenty sixteen, a woman, this time breaking epd'sm just slightly.
Speaker 3: The next murder was Hanley Lauterogan.
Speaker 4: Mirinda had made an appointment with Hanley Lattigan for three PM,
Speaker 4: claiming she was looking to purchase a new home and
Speaker 4: she had one favor to ask, though Mirinda said her
Speaker 4: car was in the shop and asked Hanley if she
Speaker 4: could swing by and pick her up on the way
Speaker 4: to the house. The morning of May thirty first, twenty sixteen,
Speaker 4: was the last time Hanley's husband saw her alive. She
Speaker 4: was fifty two years old. Ritzka didn't know Honley personally,
Speaker 4: but Kevin McAlpine's sister did.
Speaker 3: I remember the night when she went missing. Kavin's sister
Speaker 3: actually sent me a message on ficebook saying, Marisco, look
Speaker 3: what's going on on? You must help them. It's busy
Speaker 3: happening again.
Speaker 4: While Mirinda held Honley lot again at gunpoint, Honley had
Speaker 4: cleverly managed to transfer the large sum to her husband,
Speaker 4: knowing this would trigger an alert on his phone, which
Speaker 4: it did. Soon after, the husband also received a phone
Speaker 4: call from Honley's colleague wondering why she hadn't shown up
Speaker 4: at the house she was supposed to be showing to Mirinda.
Speaker 4: Her husband made a frantic call to authorities, and a
Speaker 4: search party began. Tragically, it was too late for Honley.
Speaker 6: School to them. That was on the way to school
Speaker 6: founded the next morning next to the right.
Speaker 4: I must admit it's a bit nauseating to tick through
Speaker 4: these murders so quickly. The weight of these tragic events
Speaker 4: is not lost on us. Our aim here is to
Speaker 4: avoid walking you through too much more brutality and refocus
Speaker 4: our lens on the light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 6: This is not Kruguzdop police area. This is the Antantine
Speaker 6: policing area. So they will open the kaise yeah, and
Speaker 6: the cases will not be linked to Kruguzdolt.
Speaker 4: Hanley's body was found dumped in Randfontein. That's another interesting
Speaker 4: break in epd's pattern. Randfontaine is the next town over
Speaker 4: from Krugersdorp, but technically falls in another district covered by
Speaker 4: another police force. Sicili and Morinda were now fully relying
Speaker 4: on sloppy police work and their inside connections to get
Speaker 4: away with literal murder. But the day after Hanley's murder
Speaker 4: June one, twenty sixteen, Brigadier Many Victor walked into the
Speaker 4: krugersdor police station. Three rapid fire murders had taken place,
Speaker 4: and the citizens of Krugersdorp were outraged. Brigadier Many Victor
Speaker 4: was already a veteran officer by then and was no
Speaker 4: for his work in intelligence. We spoke with him on
Speaker 4: the ground in South Africa.
Speaker 11: There was a huge outcry in the Kyugozstal community, people
Speaker 11: thinking this a serial murderer on the loose. People were
Speaker 11: marching to the police station and they were demanding actions
Speaker 11: and so forth. So the day after the third murder,
Speaker 11: which was Hardy lot I, walked into the Kyugozstal police station.
Speaker 4: Brigadier Victor immediately began assembling a task team of highly
Speaker 4: skilled investigators to help crack this high priority case. The
Speaker 4: members of this task force referred to their operation as
Speaker 4: the war room. This term implied to the public that
Speaker 4: they were taking the situation seriously, treating the investigation with
Speaker 4: the urgency and the severity it deserved.
Speaker 8: When Moni came on board at that point, he was
Speaker 8: the head of our crime intelligence and I mean they
Speaker 8: were slacking and he had to war room. We all
Speaker 8: different disciplines within the police came together and that's where
Speaker 8: it actually realized, Okay, you know what, you have something,
Speaker 8: I have something. I think to some things all connected
Speaker 8: in some way.
Speaker 4: Besides the obvious proximity of the murders and the signature
Speaker 4: methods of kill and disposal, the Brigadier immediately noticed a
Speaker 4: common trait among the latest victims of the kruger Storp
Speaker 4: serial killings.
Speaker 11: All of them were financial bocus. So the three murders
Speaker 11: were linked in the Saints so that the target was
Speaker 11: people that I used to working after. I was meeting
Speaker 11: people and strange places, taking them to have discussions or
Speaker 11: to cl so, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 4: This made them perfect marks for EPD, just like you
Speaker 4: were me. They were simply earning their scratch, making a living,
Speaker 4: not knowing that they were scheduling appointments for their own demise.
Speaker 4: The day Hanley went missing, her husband had alerted more
Speaker 4: than just the police, He had the full support of
Speaker 4: the local community. Here is Detective Vinen Vinter, who worked
Speaker 4: within the Ranfontein district.
Speaker 5: The night Honorly disappeared, I got a phone call from
Speaker 5: a missing persons organization by the name of Pink Ladies.
Speaker 5: We then liaised with Brigadier Mooni and the following morning
Speaker 5: we got a message that a body was found in
Speaker 5: the Renfuntin area.
Speaker 4: Detective Vinter's commander at the time was Lieutenant Colonel Eric Krueger.
Speaker 12: My station was then Rene Fontaine as a group commander.
Speaker 4: Detective Krueger's expertise is in tracing suspects, so when he
Speaker 4: noticed that other bodies had been found not so far away,
Speaker 4: he contacted Brigadier Manny Victor, who then tapped the two
Speaker 4: of them to become part of his war room effort.
Speaker 4: There were new cops, now trustworthy ones, and they were communicating,
Speaker 4: finally beginning to connect the dots.
Speaker 5: The Brigadier then decided it would be best to get
Speaker 5: a toss team up and running, since these guys is
Speaker 5: on are being committed in a regular time frame.
Speaker 4: While the two starting officers began digging for evidence, Brigadier
Speaker 4: Victor continued to build his task team. He called the
Speaker 4: most dogged cop that he knew.
Speaker 6: You can't become a policeman for money because there is
Speaker 6: no money in the police to look into victims' family's
Speaker 6: eyes when as in the criminal degild tears coming out
Speaker 6: of their eyes and hugging me and thanked me for
Speaker 6: assisting to get justice. It's much higher than he is.
Speaker 6: Slary that any person can can pay you. That's why
Speaker 6: I became a cop.
Speaker 4: The task team became a pack of bloodhounds, and Ben
Speaker 4: Boysen was the top dog, leading their charge, closing in
Speaker 4: on the devil's trail. Detective Ben Boysen spent most of
Speaker 4: his adult life in Kruger's Tour. He was a member
Speaker 4: of a special unit called the Hawks for many years.
Speaker 4: It targets corruption and organized crime. Before he received the
Speaker 4: call from Manny Victor, he already knew about the nameless
Speaker 4: fear that stalked his town, and he watched his Facebook
Speaker 4: became the new town square.
Speaker 6: When the three appointments dealings happened in Kruguzdor, the people
Speaker 6: went on Facebook and they say, yeh, this need to
Speaker 6: stop now because all the people feared to get out
Speaker 6: of the houses at night and stuff like that. And
Speaker 6: somebody said on Facebook they wish they they can get
Speaker 6: a good cope now to investigate this.
Speaker 4: Despite Ben's calling to serve and protect, he still knew
Speaker 4: what he would be up against should he get involved.
Speaker 6: I wish I can do it, but sometimes you need
Speaker 6: to watch what you wish for because it can come true.
Speaker 4: On June sixth, Ben agreed to lead the sprawling Murder
Speaker 4: investigation under one condition.
Speaker 6: So I said, I will take over the investigation, but
Speaker 6: I'll do it on my own.
Speaker 4: Ben was under no illusions about what to expect from
Speaker 4: local cops. He echoed a sentiment that we in the
Speaker 4: US are unfortunately all too familiar with many overworked, underpaid,
Speaker 4: and undertrained cops are punching the clock in a broken system.
Speaker 6: Saving six seven cops out to seven or eight different
Speaker 6: people to take statements and stuff. Some way, somebody is
Speaker 6: going to do not mention stuff in a statement, and
Speaker 6: you're going to lose your golden threat in the investigation.
Speaker 4: I love that image. A golden thread, a through line,
Speaker 4: a theme, a pattern, an m o Here's detective violent Winter.
Speaker 5: We realized that certain other murders that was committed prior
Speaker 5: at the same murders of Barandi, where people will will
Speaker 5: be called for an appointment, and after the appointment I disappeared.
Speaker 4: Thankfully, Ben had Manny's rock solid team of road tested
Speaker 4: investigators helping him dig for evidence. Maybe in this case
Speaker 4: they were the exception. But in order to keep hold
Speaker 4: of that golden thread of his detective poison, did accept
Speaker 4: the full weight of responsibility on this investigation, and he
Speaker 4: knew he could rely on himself to see it through
Speaker 4: or die trying. Meanwhile, laying low at Cassana Flats, Secilia
Speaker 4: and Mirinda, with the help of John Barnard, planned their
Speaker 4: next hit. More insurance, fraud, more murder, more Mayhem was
Speaker 4: on the horizon for EPD, and Zach Valentine was still
Speaker 4: in hiding. He had taken shelter with a Christian ministry
Speaker 4: in a neighboring district. Cecilia was too blinded by her
Speaker 4: lust for money and power to see what was coming.
Speaker 4: The war she had waged against her fellow humans, the
Speaker 4: spell she had cast on her followers was about to boomerang.
Speaker 4: Just as Cecilia had taken down Rhea by attacking those
Speaker 4: close to her, the police would infiltrate Cecilia's in her
Speaker 4: circle and break the very people she had scared. In
Speaker 4: the submission, as Detective Ben Boysen got acquainted with the
Speaker 4: details of the killings, neither he nor the war room
Speaker 4: officers had any idea how many murderers they were dealing with.
Speaker 4: But then there was a breakthrough. Here's Detective Vinter.
Speaker 5: Normally, when money east withdrawn from ATM over a certain amount,
Speaker 5: the ATM will actually capture a photograph of you.
Speaker 4: After trying angulating some cell phone data, the task team
Speaker 4: had narrowed their search to focus on West Kruger's store.
Speaker 4: They retrieved the CCTV footage from the ATMs that corresponded
Speaker 4: with the three victims withdrawals around the time of their deaths.
Speaker 4: The images were blurry, but the police could tell that
Speaker 4: the suspects were young, possibly even teenagers. Then one of
Speaker 4: HRT Kruger's sources pointed out that the suspects looked a
Speaker 4: lot like Merinda Stein's kids, the same Arendu Stein that
Speaker 4: had been brought in for questioning in the aftermath of
Speaker 4: more than one homicide. Here's Detective Vinter, who was busy
Speaker 4: in the war room.
Speaker 5: We then did a social media profiling on them. We
Speaker 5: were actually went in and had a look at the
Speaker 5: relevant social media the facebooks with the other counts. Add
Speaker 5: to actually obtaining all the photographs that can be used
Speaker 5: for comparison purposes.
Speaker 4: With not much more than blurry footage and a potential
Speaker 4: social media photo comparison, detective Krueger took a field trip.
Speaker 12: I just was curious to see what the two children
Speaker 12: look like. You know, are they the same that I've
Speaker 12: got on my video footage.
Speaker 4: When he knocked on the door, burn the answered. Surprisingly,
Speaker 4: she didn't seem alarmed or even averse to talking to him.
Speaker 12: I didn't went to the flat that morning whom Miranda
Speaker 12: was staying, and I interviewed, asked her about the children
Speaker 12: and said, we're doing investigation. Did they mind to come
Speaker 12: to the police station for photos. I was taking a
Speaker 12: big chance because I know actually reason't for them to
Speaker 12: come in.
Speaker 4: He was stunned when his gambit actually paid off.
Speaker 12: She found me about two o'clock that afternoon and sit
Speaker 12: waiting for us at the police station. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 4: Marinda assumed the cops would never put together a legitimate
Speaker 4: case against her or her children, or Cecilia or any
Speaker 4: of the others. For years, local police failed to do
Speaker 4: exactly that. Why would it be any different this time?
Speaker 12: So they came in. Now what we called is a
Speaker 12: controlled photo and an uncontrolled photo. The uncontrolled photo will
Speaker 12: be the photo from the ATM, and the control one
Speaker 12: will be when you asked him to stand in a
Speaker 12: similar way that the photo on the video foot Teacher
Speaker 12: look luck and they were very cooperative. I couldn't believe
Speaker 12: myself it's actually happening.
Speaker 4: The golden thread was starting to shine through the bramble.
Speaker 4: On the day Hanley was murdered, Marcel received an acceptance
Speaker 4: letter to medical school. Here's Detective Susette recalling the harsh
Speaker 4: reality that Marcel was facing. She took out her frustrations
Speaker 4: in her diary.
Speaker 1: She was actually a very, very cleave a girl with
Speaker 1: distinctions in all her subjects. And at the back of
Speaker 1: this diary she wrote, in big letters, I don't know
Speaker 1: why my mother is doing this to me.
Speaker 4: When Marinda heard that Marcel got into school, she flew
Speaker 4: into her rage. Marcell pleaded with her mother, but Marinda
Speaker 4: would hear nothing of it. When Marcel wouldn't let it go,
Speaker 4: her mother threatened to get rid of her, just as
Speaker 4: they had gotten rid of Mikayla. Here's Maritzka again.
Speaker 3: And Laru told me straight up that Mikhayla's murder was
Speaker 3: always the example. You know, I like to say that
Speaker 3: the same can happen to you.
Speaker 4: Marenda threatened LaRue as well when he resisted killing Hamley.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of back and forth between Marinda
Speaker 4: and Harmley while they negotiated money.
Speaker 1: Out of her.
Speaker 4: When it came time to end her life, LaRue begged
Speaker 4: his mother not to make him do it.
Speaker 2: He called Hanley a tenny, so that's like an auntie
Speaker 2: and an elderly woman in Afrikaans, and he couldn't get
Speaker 2: it off of his heart to kill at Tenny. And
Speaker 2: then his mom actually turned the gun on him and says, listen,
Speaker 2: if you're not going to kill her, I'm going to
Speaker 2: kill you, and I'm going to kill her anyway.
Speaker 4: LaRue later told Maritzka that Cecilia grew increasingly ruthless leading
Speaker 4: up to the final appointment murder. By that point, EPD
Speaker 4: had a kill list, which included LaRue's father. LaRue had
Speaker 4: recently started to rebuild this relationship.
Speaker 6: He was trying to convince his father he wants to
Speaker 6: be part of his life again.
Speaker 4: How did Cecilia respond. She told LaRue to take out
Speaker 4: a life insurance policy, two in fact, one for his
Speaker 4: father and one for himself. LaRue was now on high alert,
Speaker 4: but he continued to follow orders and scheduled a fishing
Speaker 4: trip with his estrange father. It happened to fall on
Speaker 4: the day after Marinda brought her children in to be
Speaker 4: photographed by the cops that morning. Placing worms on a hook,
Speaker 4: Laru floated the life insurance policy idea to his father,
Speaker 4: but this conversation would be interrupted.
Speaker 6: That's why he was they when he was arrested, because
Speaker 6: he was trying to convince his father that he can
Speaker 6: take a policy out on his father's life.
Speaker 4: On July twenty third, twenty sixteen, LaRue Stein was arrested.
Speaker 4: He was sitting by a damn fishing with his father
Speaker 4: when the police descended. LaRue was apprehended just outside a
Speaker 4: krueger stor and handed over to Manny Victor's task team.
Speaker 4: The prosecutor then charged the twenty year old with kidnapping, robbery,
Speaker 4: and three counts of murder. Later that same day, police
Speaker 4: busted down Merinda's door at Cassano Flats to arrest Marcel.
Speaker 4: When they searched their belongings, they found a baseball cap
Speaker 4: and dog PAGs that matched the ones I did in
Speaker 4: the CCTV footage. As they rummaged through the apartment, one
Speaker 4: of the arresting officers spied a pot plant on the
Speaker 4: back porch. Marijuana was still illegal in South Africa at
Speaker 4: the time. Since it was Merinda's home, they cuffed her
Speaker 4: and threw her in the paddy wagon too. When questioned,
Speaker 4: Marcel and LaRue obediently stuck to their rehearsed story. Detective
Speaker 4: Ben Boysen says the police didn't really have much evidence
Speaker 4: to go on.
Speaker 6: The geis is that the police have against them is
Speaker 6: only they wind and throw the money of the deceased
Speaker 6: and Marcelle's explanation day off was that Brady got it
Speaker 6: from the Nigerians and the Nigerians gave him the Panamas
Speaker 6: and they will only was supposed to go and throw
Speaker 6: the money for the Nigerians.
Speaker 4: In South Africa, Nigerians is most often and unfortunate post
Speaker 4: apart hide shorthand for drug dealers. In just three weeks time,
Speaker 4: Manny Victor's War Room put Marinda, Marcel and LaRue all
Speaker 4: behind bars, just in time to save the life of
Speaker 4: a local doctor who is the next scheduled victim from
Speaker 4: their ever growing kill list. This investigation might seem slow
Speaker 4: given the CCTV footage, but this pace was impressive when
Speaker 4: compared to the way cases were typically managed in American movies.
Speaker 6: That they might you know, there's a murder and there's
Speaker 6: a lot of cops investigating it and within African two
Speaker 6: or three weeks, everybody's rated. And in South Africa doesn't
Speaker 6: work like that. If you get a kiss, you investigated,
Speaker 6: nobody else assisted you investigated.
Speaker 4: Detective Ben Boysen is an old school type, a man
Speaker 4: of service and honor. He's a cop because he had
Speaker 4: a calling, and he's also the author of On the
Speaker 4: Devil's Trail, How I hunted down the Kruger Store of Killers.
Speaker 6: The biggest problem that most of the policemen do and
Speaker 6: they investigate the crime where Sism is involved, and I
Speaker 6: want to investigates.
Speaker 11: Is not the crime.
Speaker 6: It's a religion, so it's not against the Luan. So
Speaker 6: you still need to focus on on the murder.
Speaker 4: Unlike prior special investigators, Detective Ben Boysen wasn't the least
Speaker 4: bit captivated by the sealacious. He had no time for
Speaker 4: the supernatural. He came to solve crimes, not to speculate
Speaker 4: about witches and blood drinkers. Ben Boisen was a dogged cop.
Speaker 4: His heart was in it, fully committed to bringing justice
Speaker 4: to the wronged and peace to the grieving. However, this
Speaker 4: case would test even him. Mirinda would once again find
Speaker 4: her way out of police custody, and the task team
Speaker 4: would continue to search for the conductor of this cacophony,
Speaker 4: Queen Havoc herself. This time, Mirinda and Cecilia had officially
Speaker 4: met their match detected. Ben Boyson would not rest until
Speaker 4: the killing ceased.
Speaker 6: That is the school way Maranda used to teach. When
Speaker 6: did she stop teaching when I arrested her.
Speaker 4: On the next episode of Queen Havoc.
Speaker 6: Le Rustaine made a confession.
Speaker 8: They managed to id him as Zach Valentine.
Speaker 6: For a young boy like that picking up a date
Speaker 6: person and allowed him into a vehicle. It's totally not possible.
Speaker 3: She wasn't involved in any actual killing.
Speaker 6: She used the people to do it for her while
Speaker 6: I was speaking to him in prison. I've got the
Speaker 6: scenes that is predicting the people around him.
Speaker 4: Queen Havoc and Her Murder Cult is a production of
Speaker 4: Schooly Humans and iHeart Podcasts. Queen Havoc is hosted and
Speaker 4: created by me Kurt Kupachick, produced and written by Jennifer Takeiny,
Speaker 4: Julia Chriscau, and Kurt Kupachick. Lead producer is Julia Chriska.
Speaker 4: Story editor is Saren Burnett. Senior producer is Amelia Brock.
Speaker 4: Production manager is Daisy Church. Original music composed by Claire Campbell, Editing,
Speaker 4: sound design and scoring by Jesse Niswanger, Additional editing by
Speaker 4: Miranda Hawkins. Associate producers are DaShan Moodley and Jamaine Krier.
Speaker 4: Additional producing by Ben Melman, fact checking by Dennis Webster.
Speaker 4: Recording engineers are Graham Gibson, Clay Hillenberg and Josh Hook.
Speaker 4: Executive producers are Virginia Prescott, L. C. Crowley, Brandon Barr,
Speaker 4: Jennifer Takini and Kurt Kupachak. We want to thank all
Speaker 4: of those who so generously welcomed us in South Africa
Speaker 4: and shared their stories. We're incredibly grateful to you all.
Speaker 4: We also want to acknowledge how traumatic these events are
Speaker 4: for the victims and their families. Please respect their privacy.
Speaker 4: If you or someone you know has been affected by
Speaker 4: cult behaviors, there are resources available, including voices for Dignity
Speaker 4: at Christine Murray dot com