The Sizzlers Massacre

On this week's episode we travel all the way to Sea Point in Cape Town, South Africa.  And we are taking a deep look into The Sizzlers Massacre which took place on January 20th, 2003. Nine people were murdered, and one person was severely injured in a hate crime against the queer community.

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Transcript

[Underscore Music]

Most of us go to work every day, without having to be overly concerned for our safety.  We are just living out daily lives, this was also the case for the men in our story today, they were just attempting to live their everyday lives, but someone took their lives from them.

[Theme Music Start]

Welcome to The Secret Sits, I’m your host John Dodson.  Join us every Thursday as we uncover the Secrets behind the world’s most fascinating true crime cases.  You can find all episodes of The Secret Sits for free on Apple Podcast, Spotify or where ever you get your podcasts.  And if you like what you are hearing, reach out to us on Instagram and Facebook @The Secret Sits Podcast or on Twitter @SecretSitsPod. Now, on with our story.

[Theme Music Play Out]

[Under Score Music]

The location for our case today is a first for The Secret Sits, as we travel all the way to Sea Point in Cape Town, South Africa.  Sea Point is one of Cape Town’s most affluent and densely populated suburbs.  On January 20th, 1003, in the morning air, so early that it is still dark outside, Mark Hamilton steps out of his taxi.  He had just arrived at 7 Graham Road in Sea Point.  He walked towards the unsuspecting house known as Sizzlers and as he approached the gate, he found it strange that it was slightly open.  This gate was always locked and if you wanted to gain access, you had to first ring the bell for someone to assist you.

Although this looked like any other unassuming suburban house, Sizzlers was actually a gay massage parlor, because of this the owner was very concerned with safety.  

The house at No. 7 Graham Road has white walls and a picket fence, there are red hibiscus flowers along the walkway. As you come up the path to the front door, you will encounter a white security gate, behind this gate is a massage parlor for men, men who like to sleep with other men.  Sizzlers, many believe was the oldest gay massage parlor in South Africa, opening its doors in 1997.  Sizzlers was known for its regular clientele, which included married men, silver foxes, along with young men interest in their first homosexual experience.  It’s kind of like the Chicken Ranch from The Best Little Whore House in Texas.  And the men who came to Sizzlers did everything for work from playing rugby, to regular businessmen, to academics.  It was also a frequent stop for tourists.

A former Sizzlers masseur told Dir Burger in January of 2003 that clients paid a basic fee of $20 USD and that got them one hour, this hour included a full body massage and a happy ending.  Anything other than that basic package had to be worked out between the client and the masseur.  Extra treatments could include anything from oral sex to a full sexual encounter, all depending on what the masseurs were willing to do.

The parlor had room for up to 10 masseurs to live in the house at a time.  A manager also lived in the house full time.  Most of these men would sleep during the day and work from the evening time until late into the morning.  Most of these working men were young, anywhere from late teens to late 20s.  Most were from the South African platteland which are the more rural areas located more inward from the coastline.  Many of these men were not homosexual themselves, but the work provided an easy source of income.  And all of these men used street names in place of their own true names, for anonymity. 

Many sources have said that drugs were a necessary survival item for male sex workers, it allowed them to deal with nature of their work.  Marijuana, cocaine, crack and ecstasy were reported to be the most popular drugs amongst sex workers in Sea Point.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance received a number of complaints about Sizzlers, complaints stated that the male masseurs were treated like sex slaves and that they had no freedom.  On November 21st 2002, a letter was sent to the City Council saying that Otgaar was illegally operating a business on a property zoned for residential.  The council sent Otgaar a cease and desist for his business on December 15th 2002.  But Otgaar continued his operations like always.  And that brings us back to Mark as he walks up the path to the Sizzler house.

Mark stepped inside the door of the house, just to his left was a room that held bunkbeds, this is where the masseurs would sleep and this door was open, as Mark looked into this room, he could see four men lying on their stomachs all of them on the floor.  Mark made his way further into the house, up the hallway and past the owner’s bedroom.  He saw a knife laying out on a coffee table and he reached down and picked it up.

The next door he came to, also on his left was one of the massage rooms, the owner referred to these rooms as studios.  Here Mark saw a single man lying on the floor, his hands and ankles had been bound together.  As Mark looked through the house there was a large amount of blood covering everything.  Mark had seen enough and he began exiting the house, he placed the knife back in the table as he went by and after exiting the house, he ran to a Total gas station near by to try and get help.  As Mark arrived at the gas station a police vehicle pulled into the station at the same time.  Mark ran to the officers and begged them to follow him to the house.

The officers tried to calm Mark down and they told him that they needed to deal with the situation here at the gas station, the reason they had been called here in the first place, and as officers were telling Mark this, he heard a man begin to scream, “I don’t want to die!”

Mark looked around to find the person who was screaming and he saw a man on his knees, as Mark staired at the man he noticed something odd, the man had duct tape around his neck, something he had also just seen on the men at the house of horrors he had just vacated.  Mark told the officers that he knew where the man had come from and that there were a lot more bodies.  The officers then agreed to go with Mark to the house.  Police Sargent Ismail Jacobs entered the house first, Mark told the officers that he had no wish to go back into the house, but much to his dismay, the police officers insisted that he follow them into the home.

Mark tried not to look, but even looking up, he began to notice that even the ceiling was covered in blood.  As they reached the sleeping quarters for the masseurs, all 4 bodies were still there, but now something was different.  Mark was sure that everyone he had seen the first time he entered the house was dead, but now one of the men in this room was still alive, he was writhing on the floor and Mark could hear some choking and gurgling sounds coming from the man.  His throat had been cut and he was struggling to breathe, he had also been gagged with a sock, which was still in his mouth.  Mark told the officers and they removed the gag from the man’s mouth.  His wrists and ankles had been tied with cloths washing line, the police also removed these restraints.   

As Mark was kneeling next to this man, struggling to breathe and stay alive another noise broke through the room and Mark’s body became stiff and a shiver ran down his spine, was the killer still here he thought?  One of the officers walked over to the side of the room Mark was on and helped him lift one of the beds out of the way, here they did not find the killer, but another man beneath the bed, in the same state as the first man and also choking on his own blood.

Only after the paramedics arrived was Mark asked to leave the building.  After this day, Mark would have difficulty sleeping for a very long time.  Of all the inhabitants of this house only three men were found still alive, Warren Visser, Marius Meyer and Gregory Berghaus, all three of these men were rushed to the hospital, along with the man found at the nearby gas station.

Six deceased men were removed from the house and moved to the morgue, these men were; Aubrey Otgaar, Travis Reade, Sergio de Castro, Stephanus Fouché, Jüan Meyer and Timothy Boyd.

Police went to work investigating this horrifying crime and as they worked into the morning their victim count grew to 7 when Warren Visser died at the hospital at 8:00AM.  The number grew once again as victim number 8, Marius Meyer passed away that afternoon at 2:00PM.  Gregory Berghaus was still in critical condition and Quinton Taylor was remaining stable.

Cape Town, which is the Mother City of South Africa, was shaken when the news of this story broke.  LGBT rights groups reacted immediately, they felt that this massacre had been a hate crime against their community, against MY community.  Sea Point was known to have a criminal element and some dangerous underground characters, this incident triggered calls for a clean-up of this seedy element from the town.

The investigation was difficult, for one, police were having a had time even identifying the victims, the job they had been performing was considered sex-work and many if not all sex workers in this area only worked under aliases.  There was also no clear indication of a motive for the attack.  But there were many theories.  

Because this massacre happened in a gay massage parlor, many residences felt it was obviously a homophobic murderer.  Others believed that it was more of a drug connection, this is disputed by many because the owner of the parlor, Aubrey Otgaar was strongly against the use or even the presence of drugs on his property.  Although this is the claim, many former Sizzlers masseurs and clients have admitted that they used drugs inside the parlor before.  One masseur said that many of the young male clients would smoke marijuana to help calm themselves down.

Aubrey Otgaar had kicked a masseur out of his parlor not long before the murders because he caught them with drugs, after he had kicked this man out, two Nigerians visited the message parlor looking for this particular man, they claimed that he owed them money, but Otgaar ran the two men off and told them not to come back.

A third theory, which also involved the drug angle, was that the murders happened because due to non-compliance with a protection racket.  The owner of an escort service said in the Cape Argus on January 21st 2003 that she would not be surprised if the protection bosses the Nigerians and Moroccans were involved.  Protection fees could go up to $4000 USD per month.  And let’s face it, these protection rackets are not for protection, it is just a payment so you are not the one robbed or mistreated.

The simplest theory though was plane old simple robbery.  The safes had all been opened and emptied during the massacre. 

The men had been gruesomely murdered in a way that made the police believe that either there was heavy gang involvement or there was a deeper psychological undercurrent to these killings.

The investigation team located several witnesses and eventually they were able to form a more complete picture of what had happened.  A getaway vehicle had been identified; it was an older-model white BMW.  One witness could place one of the victims arguing with two people inside of this car just prior to the massacre, it is believed that the argument was about drug money.  Through witness accounts police came up with four suspects: First, a man with reddish hair, a goatee, and two tattoos (a coiling cobra on his left upper arm and the words 'Fast Guns' on his right wrist); second, a slender man who sniffed frequently; third, a tall, well-built man, whose head was shaven cleanly; and lastly, another well-built man, which is a pretty broad pool of people.

The man with the tattoo Fast Guns was significant to police because The Fast Guns is the name of a gang which operates out of Johannesburg, the largest city in South Africa.  But Johannesburg is located on the other end of the country from Cape Town, this was a long way from The Fast Guns’ turf.  But let’s talk for just a moment about some South African gang politics.  One of the dominant gangs of the Cape Flats, this is the windy, sandy, level stretch of earth to the west of Cape Town, is the Americans, yes everyone, that is the name of a gang in South Africa, the Americans.  And the Americans have connections with the Fast Guns.  These two gangs have even carried out hits for each other in the past, just to screw with the police and make their crimes more difficult to solve.

According to experts on the subject, this is the primary duty for the Fast Guns, they act as killers for hire.

The commander of the Johannesburg Crime Intelligence Unit, Superintendent Joe Nomdoe, stated in an article in the January 21, 2003, edition of the Cape Times that the Fast Guns was created from seven existing gangs more than 15 years previously. In particular, they are involved in drugs, vehicle theft and hijacking and murder. The leaders are aged 30 and above, while the gang members are teenagers and even younger.

Because of the involvement of the Fast Guns, many believed that someone, possibly the Capetonian gang, hired the Fast Guns to conduct the massacre at Sizzler as some kind of payback or to send a message.  But this was all just speculation and a former member of the Fast Guns rejected this idea, simply based on the skin color of the suspects in this case.  According to this man, the suspects were all white and that made him doubt that they had any connection to the Fast Guns, an exclusively black gang, who did not even like whites, according to this former member.

While the investigation continued, an LGBT organization by the name, the Triangle Project, made counseling services available to people who had been impacted by this tragedy. There were also calls to legalize sex work, from residence like Sheryl Ozinsky, who runs tourism in Cape Town and Althea Mcquene who works as a coordinator for SWEAT (the Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce).

Althea stated the problem quite succinctly, in a January 20, 2003, article on Independent On-Line: "The present law that criminalizes sex work forces the sex industry to operate underground with no protection or regulation. This situation opens up the industry to criminal activity and sex workers are particularly vulnerable to criminal-related activities and violence."

Police could not find any evidence that Aubrey Otgaar, the owner of Sizzlers, nor any of the masseurs involved in the attack were possible targets of gang hits.  But people had been looking for two former Sizzlers masseurs, just days before the massacre and these men were reported to have been driving an older-model BWM.  One of these two men was the masseur Otgaar had ejected from his parlor for using drugs.  These two men went by their street names, Stephen and Maroewaan, the group of men in the BWM had been going door-to-door at all of the local gay message parlors looking for them.  After Stephen and Maroewaan had lost their employment at Sizzlers it was said that they moved to Johannesburg, it was here that these two men supposedly wronged someone, possibly a gang member and they had fled back to Cape Town to hide out.  Going on this information it was further hypothesized that the men had contracts out on their lives and that the killers went to Sizzlers because they thought they could obtain their location from their former colleagues.  The gang tortured and then finally brutally murdered the men in the message parlor.

Police located Stephen and questioned him for several hours.  The following day, Maroewaan called the Cape Argus paper and gave them an interview, after that he contacted the police.  Maroewaan said that he had not had any involvement with gangs in Johannesburg, he told police that he had not even been to that city for 9 years, the last time he had gone was for his brother’s funeral. He admitted that he was the only male sex worker in Cape Town with his name so there must have been some kind of misunderstanding.

Police used superglue to pull a print from some duct tape found at the crime scene.  As the case was investigated police officers guarded the outside of the home, beside where they stood guard a growing memorial of flowers and messages scrawled onto cards sprung up along the fence. “You will always be in our hearts and we will never forget you.” One read.  “Love you always – Mom and Dad” read another.

On January 22nd, Gregory Berghaus’ condition at the hospital was deteriorating fast, he was placed onto life support but the doctors were not optimistic, 3 days later, Gregory passed away from his injuries.

Dean, had been working at Sizzlers for two weeks, he was just 20-years-old, and Dean was supposed to have been in that house Sunday, but he was feeling under the weather so he spent his night at his home instead.  The next morning, while he was laying in his bed listening to the radio, he heard a report about the attack, he began to shake uncontrollably.

The 56-Year-Old owner of Sizzlers Aubrey Otgaar, whom everyone called Eric was the first victim of the massacre to be laid to rest.  His service was on January 23, 2003, the priest at his memorial said, people should be judged not by what they do, but who they are.  Aubrey’s brother said that their family was close and although they did not approve of their brother’s choice of business, they did not hold that against him.  One of Aubrey’s ex-boyfriends described him as an amazing person, who was funny and a prankster.

Travis Reade had just turned 20 on New Year’s Day.  He always loved having the newest cloths and tech gadgets.  He was a kind person who loved what he was doing for a living at Sizzlers.  Travis’ family did not love what he had chosen to do with his life and they attempted to get him to leave the job, but Travis simply did not want to leave.

Sergio de Castro was just 22-years-old, his mother left home when he was 3 and his father died 4 years later.  Sergio went to live with one of his close relatives.  He would then spend his childhood being shuffled between different homes until her finally left to be on his own in 2000, this is when he arrived in Cape Town.  He was learning to be a web designer and he was a natural musician playing the flute and the guitar, he also enjoyed singing in his church choir.

Unfortunately, not much is known about Marius Meyer. He was 21 years old at the time of the murders, and he was originally from Barkly West, which is a small town in the Northern Cape province. Marius was taken to Groote Schuur hospital after the attack, but died there later the same day.

Stephanus Fouche was only 17 when he was murdered.  In August of 2002 he told his adoptive parents that he wanted to leave his small town and go to Cape Town to look for work.  His father said he was a polite, responsible and good-natured boy.  He called his parents every single day at 6:00AM.  When he did not call on that Monday and the reports came out about the massacre, his parents knew he was amongst the dead.  On the Thursday after the murders, his father traveled to Cape Town to collect his son’s body and he took him back home.

Warren Visser was 22 and he had been working at Sizzlers for a little over a month.  He had a degree in computer engineering.  Warren’s mother was convinced that he was a sex worker, although Warren vehemently denied it.  His parents had been trying to identify what parlor their son was working at so they could kidnap him and forcibly remove him from the lifestyle.  Warren spoke to his mother on the phone just hours before the attack and she begged him to leave his line of work, but all Warren said back to his mother was, why don’t you trust me?

Juan Meyer was 20 at the time of his death in this case.  He had moved to Cape Town two years earlier in search of financial success. He had worked at a casting agency, but then he quit in November.  His parents had no idea he worked at Sizzlers.  Because of financial hardship Juan’s parents could not afford to travel to Cape Town after his death, but friends pooled money and purchased them tickets for the travel and also help raise money for a funeral.

The last victim to be identified was 29-year-old Timothy Boyd.  He had moved to Cape Town in September of 2001 from Johannesburg.  He was straight but worked in the gay sex industry to make money.  Timothy had been working at another parlor called The Barracks, but they fired him when they found out he had a girlfriend.  Because of this he ended up working at Sizzlers, he started just a month and a half before the killings.

As the first weeks after the massacre came to a close the police found themselves dealing with some diverse leads and strange tips. At 10:15 p.m. on Tuesday evening, the day after the murders, a man began banging on the apartment door of Juan Uys, the chairperson of the Gay and Lesbian Association, demanding that Uys come out. Uys instead pushed the panic button and security guards escorted the man away. Uys, who lived in the Bordeaux apartments directly opposite Sizzlers, notified the police. The man matched the description of one of the four suspects in the Sizzlers massacre, and the security guards recognized him from 5-year-old police photographs of two men bearing Fast Guns tattoos. In the reports covering the events, it was mentioned that the police obtained closed circuit camera footage of the man, but when questioned, they denied this. The incident resulted in the GLA postponing their fifth national conference indefinitely and all executive members left the Western Cape.

In the meantime, a confidential information hotline had been established, and was receiving a lot of calls. In addition, detectives discovered that an amount of cash had been stolen from a safe inside the house, along with jewelry taken by Otgaar as collateral from clients lacking cash. Wristwatches and jewelry were also taken from the victims.  A week after the murders, one of the national television stations aired an episode of Special Assignment, an investigative journalism program, claiming evidence that the Sizzlers massacre had been perpetrated by eight black men. In the program, Jeremy Veary, head of the Operation Slasher Gang Unit, stated that the killings were characteristic of the MO of the 28s prison gang, which, according to him, controls the drugs and sex market in Sea Point. The team investigating the murders, now consisting of six detectives from the Serious and Violent Crimes Unit and coordinated by unit commander supt. Michael Barkhuizen, was baffled by this pronouncement, since Veary had never been involved in the investigation.

Nevertheless, on January 29, sketches were completed for two suspects, based on information from several witnesses, including the sole survivor, Quinton Taylor, still in the hospital under heavy police protection. The sketches—one of a white male and the other of a black male—were first circulated among police stations and released to the media the next day. Again, the public responded with fervor, and the detectives were inundated with possible leads.

While this was taking place Aubrey Otgaar’s family hired a former detective, who now worked as a private investigator to look into the case.  This PI Henk Jones said that there was a pink dog bowl on a table in the men’s bedroom that was filled with blood.  There was also an unused paint brush in the room leading to speculation that the killers intended to write a message in blood on the walls, but this had not been followed through on.

Quinton Taylor was discharged from the hospital on Monday February 3rd, with two bullets still lodged in his body, he was moved to a police safe house and was soon placed into witness protection.  Quinton was taken back to Sizzlers the following day to help them reconstruct the events of January 20th.  Quinton told police that robbery was the motive behind the attack.  A week later Quinton would undergo surgery to remove the two bullets from his body.

The lead investigating officer on this case was Jonathan Morris, Inspector Morris sat with Quinton and he performed a photo lineup, one of these photos immediately stood out to Quinton, he sat there staring at a photo of the man who had slit his throat and shot him in the head.

The man identified was Trevor Basil Theys, this man had a gun registered to him which fit many of the bullets recovered at the crime scene.  Police did not have a current address for this man so they first went to Theys’ sister-in-law’s house and then to his ex-wife’s home where they obtained his current address.  He lived approximately 14 miles from Cape Town.  On February 13th at 05:00AM police arrested the 42-year-old man.

After about an hour of interrogation, Theys made a full confession. He then had to make his confessions again in front of a court magistrate, in South Africa this makes the confession carry more weight in court.  Theys also gave up his accomplice in this crime, 26-year-old Adam Roy Woest.  Woest was working as a waiter at a popular local restaurant on the V&A Waterfront, this is where he was taken into custody.  This man also gave a full confession before the magistrate.  Both of these men claimed that robbery had been the sole motive behind the attack.

It turns out Woest lived in an apartment complex directly across the street from Sizzlers and his apartment had a clear view of the house.  Woest’s live-in fiancée, who also worked at the same restaurant as Woest, said that masseurs from Sizzlers quite often eat at their restaurant and Woest had overheard them talking about the substantial amount of cash kept at Sizzlers.  The next day, on February 17, the two men were brought to the Cape Town magistrate's court in handcuffs, their faces hidden beneath balaclavas. The balaclavas were necessary to protect the lawfulness of the upcoming identification parade, as it is called in South Africa. During the trial, which would finally begin a little less than a year later, the courtroom was packed. Theys appeared nervous and clenched his fists, while Woest stared expressionlessly as the charges were read against them: nine counts of murder, one count of attempted murder, one count of robbery with aggravating circumstances, and one count of the illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. Then they were taken to the Goodwood Prison.

The identity parade was supposed to be held on February 28, but police failed to acquire enough men of appropriate build, age and color to appear alongside the accused. On March 4, the parade was finally held. Quinton Taylor and a client who had arrived at Sizzlers on the night of the murders and had been run away by one of the killers, faced twenty men. Quinton identified Woest and Theys without any difficulty.

The trial for these two men began on Monday, February 2, 2004. State advocate Anthony Stephen rose in the Cape High Court and put forth the state's case against the two accused. He described the events of January 20, 2003, as a robbery which had "escalated out of control." He told the court that there were "indications that both men acted in a bizarre and weird manner. There is also a degree of amnesia at a crucial juncture during the crime."

Woest and Theys were not asked to plead. Instead, Stephen asked the court to refer the defendants to the Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital for observation. This request was made in agreement with that of the defense counsel. Mr. Justice Nathan Erasmus concurred and ordered psychiatric observation of 30 days, to evaluate the accuseds' competence to stand trial as well as whether there was any indication of diminished responsibility.

Woest and Theys listened with fallen shoulders and blank faces. Their frames had diminished noticeably. Yet a Sea Point resident commented in the Cape Times of February 3, 2004, that, apart from the weight loss, the defendants 'looked very relaxed...They don't even look remorseful.'

On March 3, 2004, the trial began. The accused were asked to plead, which they did very softly. Trevor Theys pleaded guilty to nine charges of murder, one of attempted murder, one of robbery with aggravating circumstances, one of theft, and one each of the illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. Adam Woest pleaded guilty to seven charges of murder, one of attempted murder, one of robbery with aggravating circumstances, and one each of the illegal possession of firearms and ammunition. Woest pleaded not guilty to two murder charges—those of Sergio de Castro and Gregory Berghaus.

Both accused submitted the confessions they had made after their arrests as part of their pleas. However, since each implicated the other as the instigator of both the robbery and the murders during the crime, as well as indicated that the other had somehow compelled them to participate, Judge Erasmus entered pleas of not guilty.

Then the lights dimmed and a video was shown. It starts outside a house, with birdsong in the background. Then the camera moves inside and a voice singing becomes audible, music playing in one of the rooms. Inside this room lie four young men in a row, clad in jeans, some without their shirts, surrounded by blood. At first it appeared like the aftermath of an orgy of violence in some slasher flick, made in the tradition of the original Blair Witch movie. Their hands and feet are tied with washing line. Their throats are slit. Bullet wounds can be seen in their heads. Blood is sprayed on the ceiling in an arterial pattern. A fifth body lies a short distance away. In the next room there is yet another body, bound and shot in the head. In the passage the camera stops at a bloody knife lying on a coffee table. The kitchen tells in red streaks and drips of a struggle which could only have ended badly. In the bathroom, the overzealous FX guy had apparently deposited everything left in his blood kit. The sobs of the relatives and the trembling shoulders, however, shattered the illusion. This was not fake blood. This was a person's life coagulating on the bathroom tiles. The young men lying in pools of scarlet did not get up on their own after the footage was shot. They had left in body bags.

Woest and Theys watched the police video with interest, but it did not appear to move the men in any way. However, at the end of the day, Theys requested to be moved to another prison, since he feared some form of repercussions from Woest.

During the following days the state called a number of witnesses to testify. A forensic pathologist, Dr Denise Lourens, testified that only Aubrey Otgaar's cut was potentially fatal, as his carotid artery had been injured. Mark Hamilton described his discovery of the bodies, sometimes struggling with his emotions. Sgt. Ismail Jacobs testified as the first officer on the scene. A man who lived in the same building as Woest and had often shared the elevator with him, stated that he and his friend had been awoken by gunshots during the night of January 20, 2003, and had seen two men with yellow balaclavas over their heads and pistols in their hands, running down the road. This was confirmed by a second man, who had been sitting in a car with his fiancée on Marais Road, which forms a T-junction with Graham Road, on the night of the massacre. They had also heard gunshots and had seen two men with yellow balaclavas and dark clothes running in a "calculated, meticulous manner" towards a BMW, in which they had driven away without switching on the headlights.

On Monday, 26-year-old Quinton Taylor, at the time still in the Witness Protection Program and identified only as "Witness 74," took the stand. Behind him, a police officer armed with an automatic assault rifle stood guard, and more plainclothes detectives were interspersed among the attendees. Quinton spoke calmly and frequently looked at the two defendants. Theys did not look at his would be victim, but Woest stared back at times.

Quinton said that it had appeared as if Woest knew the owner of Sizzlers, since he had used Otgaar's first name and they had spoken as friends. Once the true nature of their visit had become known, Quinton described Woest as the one in charge, while Theys had been in the room with the masseurs most of the time. Before the violence started, Woest made a phone call about some kind of "lift," something Woest's attorney later said his client would deny. When it became clear that this ride was not going to materialize, Woest became increasingly aggravated, opening his shirt and perspiring profusely. Quinton's belief was that Woest was angry because they failed to find whatever they had been looking for. A short while later, Woest and Theys entered the room with knives and began cutting the men. According to the Cape Argus of March 9, 2004, Quinton stated that Theys had cut "with hesitancy" and had appeared more "compassionate." Woest was described as "the voice who gave the orders." Theys apparently told Woest to relax and to calm down.

Quinton is now deaf in his left ear as a result of the gunshots to his head. At the time of the trial, he still suffered from insomnia and post-traumatic stress disorder. He told the court, "I don't understand why people do what they do." He believes that he survived because he refused to be bound on his stomach, wanting to look his murderers in the eye. As a result, he believes, Theys did not make as deep of an incision.

And with this, the state closed its case, having called only a handful of its available 89 witnesses. State advocate Anthony Stephen submitted the psychiatric reports, declaring that the defendants were capable of comprehending the wrongfulness of their actions.

Judge Erasmus was not in a particularly sympathetic mood and he told the defendants 'once you have made your bed, you must sleep in it, nightmares and all.'

The judge did ask the attorney whether homophobia could have been involved, since Theys stated in his confession that he "had a girlfriend who is 20 years old, but she broke my heart with another woman." He had said this right before he described his decision to steal his brother's gun for the robbery. 

Mornay Calitz, the attorney for Woest, stated in his closing that there had been a struggle with Gregory Berghaus, during which the man had been shot. This had the point when robbery escalated into murder and finally a massacre. Judge Erasmus pointed out that there was no physical evidence supporting such a contention, and that forensic evidence indicated that Berghaus had not been shot at close range. He asked Calitz why Berghaus' throat had been cut if his death had been accidental, to which the attorney had no reply.

Thursday, March 11, 2004. Justice Nathan Erasmus found Adam Woest and Trevor Theys guilty on all charges. He quoted from the song playing in the background of the police video, pointing to the irony of the lyrics: "Tell it like it is, Don't be ashamed, let your conscience be your guide ... Life is too short to have sorrow, You may be here today and gone tomorrow." The judge noted that the defendants had taken firearms, a knife, washing line, duct tape, petrol, balaclavas and surgical gloves with them to the scene. He remained unconvinced that robbery had been the sole motive, but instead concluded that Woest and Theys had gone to Sizzlers with the intent to kill. Throughout the judgment, which lasted almost an hour, Woest and Theys watched the judge without expression.

Justice Nathan Erasmus pronounced sentence that same afternoon. Court Two had already been filled beyond capacity half an hour previously. Adam Woest and Trevor Theys each faced nine terms of life imprisonment, plus 20 years for the attempted murder of Quinton Taylor, 15 years for armed robbery, three years for the illegal possession of firearms and two years for the illegal possession of ammunition. Theys received an additional five years for the theft of his brother's gun, to be served concurrently with the other two firearms-related sentences.

Judge Erasmus told Woest and Theys that they should be permanently removed from society. "You not only intended to kill but intended to humiliate" your victims, he was quoted as saying in the Cape Times of March 17, 2004. He characterized their crime as one of "utter callousness." Their expressions of remorse did not appear convincing, but rather based on self-pity. 

During the entire time, Woest stared at the judge with his black eyes. When court was adjourned, Theys turned around to be handcuffed, but Woest continued to bore into the judge's back as he left the room.

More than an hour later, about 100 people still remained at the gate where the prisoners leave the court in police bakkies (which are pickup trucks with enforced canopies on the back). Woest was finally brought out alone. Members of the crowd ran after the bakkie and beat the sides with their fists. Theys was brought out later, and taken away with other prisoners.

The director of the MTN Centre for the Study of Crime Prevention, remains unconvinced that Woest and Theys were the only ones involved. Nor that their motive was robbery. "I would suggest that, while the offenders have tried their best to make it look like robbery was the primary motive, this is doubtful," he said in the Cape Argus of March 17, 2004. "It seems to me their intent was on committing mayhem and murder from the outset, and wanted to leave a grisly crime scene behind."