I guess I’ve always had some odd interests. I was a serious child with serious views about the world. The writing bug first bit when I was about 8 years old. I remember reading a children’s book – some inane story where there’s always a happy ending (yes, I realise, most children’s books are like that) and when I finished the 10 pages and closed the back cover, I decided I could certainly write a better story than that! So I did.
If you’re wondering whether you’ve accidentally clicked on a writer’s blog, you haven’t, this is the preamble to True Crime South Africa, because it’s about how I fell in love with stories, especially the ones with monsters in them, and then I grew up and realised the stories are often real and so are the monsters.
My first brush with dark crime was in primary school. The younger sister of a classmate was kidnapped and murdered. I do not say this lightly but I remember it now through the eyes of a child who did not quite understand the devastating circumstances this classmate was living through.
I recall hearing the story and somehow mixing it up, in my young brain, with the Van Rooyen kidnappings that were also news around this time. Years later I researched the case, needing to close that chapter in my mind, and discovered it was a completely separate crime. I may cover this case later in this blog and podcast because I believe this girl, who never got the chance to grow up, deserves a voice.
Many years after leaving school, I once again had a personal connection to a murder case. A high school classmate, one of the few I had good memories of, was murdered. Her bright, beautiful smile and the light she brought to those around her was extinguished in a second by a brutal act. The case, to my knowledge, remains unsolved.
The rest of my journey into the world of true crime feels as though it happened all at once. My writing has almost always been in the crime genre and I had always followed cases in the news voraciously. I remember sitting in front of the television as Channel 170 (Crime and Investigation) went live, thinking how I would never leave the television again.
Thankfully I managed to drag myself away but the bug had bitten and soon my YouTube feed was filled with true crime, my Audible and Google Play Book accounts only ever suggested crime-related stories and the idea for True Crime South Africa was not far away.
I am an extremely observant and curious person and I’ve always thought I would have made a great detective or investigative journalist, perhaps this blog and podcast are a way for me to skate the fringe of those spaces. Most importantly, though, as I start this journey, I realise that this is in no way, about me. This journey starts with two beautiful smiling faces who were taken before their time and it is dedicated to every person who has suffered when the monsters became real.
