The Gert van Rooyen Disappearances

The girls who never came home

Between August 1988 and November 1989, a series of schoolgirls vanished in different parts of South Africa. The names most often linked to the case are Tracy-Lee Scott-Crossley of Randburg, Fiona Harvey of Pietermaritzburg, Joan Horn of Pretoria, Odette Boucher and Anne-Marie Wapenaar of Kempton Park, and Yolanda Wessels. All were children, roughly between 11 and 14 years old; individual ages differ by a year from one report to another. Tracy-Lee was on her way to the Cresta shopping centre in Randburg when she disappeared in 1988, and Fiona had gone out on an errand to buy milk. Joan Horn went missing on 7 June 1989, and Odette and Anne-Marie disappeared together on 22 September 1989. None of the girls has ever been found, alive or dead.

Sources do not agree on the exact number. The South African History Online timeline lists five girls, the most widely cited figure is six, and one 2019 report said investigators believed seven girls had been abducted, counting one who escaped. This file follows the six names that recur most consistently in the press.

Gert van Rooyen and Joey Haarhoff

The disappearances were attributed to Gert van Rooyen, a Pretoria man, and his partner Francina "Joey" Haarhoff, who lived with him in a house on Malherbe Street in Capital Park, Pretoria. Reporting describes the couple as lovers and accomplices who spent most of their time in Pretoria and Johannesburg but also had ties to KwaZulu-Natal. A retired detective later established that Van Rooyen worked as a subcontractor for a firm in Pinetown, near Durban, from August to December 1989.

At least two teenagers are reported to have got away from the pair. A 16-year-old Durban girl, Janet Delport, escaped after being abducted from a shopping mall in July 1989. In January 1990 another 16-year-old, Joan Booysen, escaped from the Capital Park house and went to the police, and her account finally led detectives to the couple.

The end of the chase

According to later reconstructions, Van Rooyen and Haarhoff wrote wills and farewell notes on 11 January 1990, shortly after Booysen's escape. A few days later, with police closing in and pursuing them, Van Rooyen shot Haarhoff and then himself. Reports give the date as either 15 or 16 January 1990. Their deaths meant neither could be questioned, charged or tried, and whatever they knew about the missing girls died with them.

Decades of searching

Police dug up the garden and swimming pool at the Capital Park property and checked a lead that bodies had been buried at the Zandfontein cemetery in Pretoria, but found no evidence. In 1996 a bank donated the house to the police, who took it apart from 13 May that year: the roof was stripped and searched, walls were knocked down, rooms were scanned for hidden spaces and the soil was sifted. The bones recovered there were identified as animal remains. A traffic officer's statement about seeing two drowsy-looking girls in Van Rooyen's pickup, and a blanket found in the house, were also examined, but DNA testing produced nothing usable.

Over the years, Van Rooyen's son Flippie made sensational claims about trafficking networks and well-connected accomplices. None of these allegations has been substantiated, and no other person has been charged in connection with the girls' disappearances.

In June 2017, after a 15-month inquiry by a television current affairs programme, forensic investigators dug at Blythedale Beach on the KwaZulu-Natal north coast, where the couple had holidayed. The dig was called off after two days without any reported finds. In 2019 the Sunday Times reported that a woman believed she might be Fiona Harvey and had given DNA samples to police; no confirmation was published, and Harvey's father said he did not believe it. Later that year, retired Natal detective Don Chandler, who had been the original investigating officer, said he was helping the Hawks on behalf of the families, concentrating on Durban and on a theory that some girls may have been taken out through the harbour. He said cold case investigators were struggling to get police to release evidence, and that old material might be retested with modern methods.

Where the case stands

The case remains unsolved. In the reputable reporting reviewed for this file, no new excavation, identification or official breakthrough was reported in 2024, 2025 or 2026, and the girls' fates are still unknown. Because Van Rooyen and Haarhoff died before arrest, their responsibility has never been tested in a court; it rests on police findings, survivor accounts and the circumstances of their deaths rather than on a conviction.

Why it matters

For South Africa, the case is a lasting example of how a criminal investigation can end without answers when the suspects die before trial. With no prosecution, there was no court process to establish what happened to each child, and families have had to rely on periodic police digs, retired detectives and journalists for decades. The repeated calls to re-examine physical evidence with modern forensic techniques reflect how much the case still depends on material gathered with the methods of the late 1980s.