Norman Afzal Simons is the only person ever convicted in the case South Africans know as the Station Strangler. Between 1986 and 1994 about 22 boys were found dead on the Cape Flats, the sprawling working-class districts east of central Cape Town. Many had been lured away near railway stations, and the press gave the unknown killer his name. In 1994, the year of the country's first democratic election, police arrested Simons, a teacher at a primary school in Mitchells Plain. In June 1995 he was sentenced for kidnapping and murdering one boy, Elroy van Rooyen, who was 10.
He has never been charged with, tried for or convicted of any of the other deaths. DNA evidence from several of them, tested in later years, did not match him. After serving 28 years, the last stretch of them on a life sentence imposed on appeal, he was released on parole for life in July 2023. His release revived old grief and anger, and also renewed a long-running argument over whether the real Station Strangler was ever caught.
Mitchells Plain was built on the Cape Flats under apartheid. In a 2024 essay, the University of Cape Town film scholar Ian-Malcolm Rijsdijk described its residents as largely people forcibly moved from the city and the slopes of Table Mountain under apartheid segregation. He argued that the marginal position of these communities, and the political violence of the 1980s, gave the killer cover from police attention. A coordinated investigation, he wrote, began only in the months before the 1994 election.
The Mail & Guardian's 1995 trial report described how children in Mitchells Plain moved among relatives, and how families trusted the extended family to look after them. When a boy did not come home, it could take days to be sure he was not simply with someone else. Few households had telephones. In the paper's account, that trust and the good behavior of the children helped the killings go unnoticed for a long time.
Reliable sources do not agree on a complete list of the victims, their ages or even the spelling of every name, and several boys were never identified. None of these boys' deaths, apart from Elroy van Rooyen's, has been the subject of a criminal conviction.
According to a 2014 IOL account, the first boy, Jonathan Claasen, 14, was found in 1986 in Bellville. More boys were found in 1987, among them Yusuf Hoffman, Mario Thomas, Freddie Cleaves and Samuel Nqaba, along with boys who were never identified. One boy, Calvin Spires, 9, was found in 1988. After a gap of four years, Jacobus Louw, 10, was found in October 1992.
Then came January 1994. IOL reported that 11 bodies were found near Mitchells Plain that month. Elino Sprinkle was found on January 20, 1994. Jeremy Smith, 12, was found in Mitchells Plain on January 26, 1994. The Weekend Argus later described him as the 14th victim in the series. On January 27, 1994, according to IOL, six boys were found in one day, among them Fabian Willmore, Owen Hoofmeester, Neville Samaai and Marcelino Cupido, and a boy who was never identified. Other boys counted in the series include Jeremy Benjamin and Donovan Swarts.
Weekend Argus reporting in 2023 gave these ages: Elino Sprinkle 11, Donovan Swarts 11, Neville Samaai 13, Jeremy Benjamin 10, Owen Hoofmeester 12, Fabian Willmore 8 and Marcelino Cupido 10, plus five unidentified boys aged 10 to 14. A 2005 Sapa report gave different ages for two of them: Elino Sprinkle 9 and Marcelino Cupido 9.
The families behind those names have spoken to reporters over three decades.
Jeremy Smith lost his mother when he was about three, and he and his brother were taken in by an aunt. She described him to the Weekend Argus in 2023 as young and full of energy, a boy who loved his pet dog. On the day he disappeared he did not come home from school, and she was told he had already left. She said he had been taught never to go with strangers, which convinced her that he had been lured. She told the paper she still believed Simons had killed him.
Jeremy Benjamin lived in Mitchells Plain. When he did not come home, his aunt told the Mail & Guardian in 1995, the family searched first among friends in Macassar, then with his father in Stellenbosch, then with his grandmother in Eersterivier. Without telephones it took days to realize he was not safe with anyone. He was found six weeks later.
Neville Samaai's sister told IOL in 2014 that the family would never forgive Simons, and said he had been Neville's teacher. Donovan's foster mother told IOL in 2014 that Simons's release would bring only heartache. Elino Sprinkle's family said in 2023 that they learned of Simons's parole from television, and a cousin said the police had never visited them.
Several mothers and grandmothers of the boys sat through Simons's trial in 1995. The Mail & Guardian named the grandmother of Marcelino Cupido and the mother of Neville Samaai among them, though neither boy's death was before the court.
Elroy van Rooyen lived in Strand, a seaside town east of Cape Town. He was 10. (The Mail & Guardian gave his age as 9 at the time of the trial, and IOL did the same in 2014; most later reports give 10.) The Sunday Times reported in 2024 that his favorite toy was a red spinning top.
According to the Sunday Times, Elroy disappeared on March 11, 1994. He and his cousin had been pushing shopping trolleys at a supermarket in Strand for pocket money. A man asked for help carrying five boxes and offered a R10 tip. His cousin noticed the boxes were empty and urged Elroy to leave, but Elroy stayed, and the cousin later saw him board a train with the man.
Elroy's body was found after a search that the Sunday Times put at two weeks. He had been strangled. His is the only death in the series for which anyone has been convicted.
Simons was a teacher at Alpine Primary School in Mitchells Plain, according to a report by the University of Cape Town psychology professor Colin Tredoux described in the Weekend Argus in 2022. SABC News said he taught Grade 5.
Norman Jantjies, who later chaired the Mitchells Plain Community Police Forum, told the Cape Argus in 2023 that Simons had taught him isiXhosa. Jantjies also recalled that Simons had joined search parties looking for missing boys, and that two or three days before the arrest Simons laughed off his question about whether he was the Station Strangler.
The Mail & Guardian described Simons in 1995 as a teacher with a reputation as a scholar, a former convert to Islam who had returned to Christianity, and a man who credited his calm in the dock to his "faith in the Lord."
By early 1994 the Cape Flats were gripped by fear. The Mail & Guardian reported in 1995 that vigilante gangs hunting the Strangler had brought Mitchells Plain close to anarchy around the time of the arrest.
The investigation drew on new methods. Micki Pistorius, a psychologist who had joined the South African Police Service weeks earlier, worked on the Station Strangler case, her first with the police, according to Rijsdijk. In 2009 the Cape Argus reported that about 10 identikit pictures were produced during the investigations, and that witnesses gave varying descriptions of the killer and his car. Witnesses near one scene reported a suspicious car; it was traced, but its registration did not connect to Simons or anyone close to him.
Simons was arrested in 1994; when his trial opened in March 1995, the Mail & Guardian reported that he had been arrested almost a year earlier. The Weekend Argus, describing Tredoux's report in 2022, said that in April 1994 Simons was a patient at a local psychiatric clinic, and that a nurse at the clinic noticed his resemblance to a police composite sketch. The Cape Argus reported in 2009 that police held a photograph of Simons from an application he had made to become a police reservist, showing short hair, while the identikit based on a witness's account of Elroy's abduction showed longer hair.
Witnesses viewed him in an identity parade. Elroy's cousin identified him, according to the Sunday Times. Tredoux's report, as summarized in 2022, said that Simons was the only man in the parade dressed in bright colors, that one witness could not identify him and that another made a hesitant identification.
He made statements to magistrates and police soon after his arrest. In 2023 Tredoux told the Saturday Star that the statements were unclear, that they may have followed sleep deprivation, days of questioning and pressure, and that they did not say Simons had committed any murder; he had said he heard voices telling him to kill.
The trial opened in the Cape Supreme Court in early 1995. Simons was tried for the kidnapping and murder of Elroy. The Mail & Guardian reported that police had investigated him for the other 10 killings attributed to the Strangler in 1993 and 1994, but that the state had chosen to proceed on Elroy's case alone because the evidence on the others was not enough. No charges had been brought for about 20 other Strangler deaths.
About 40 people, most of them relatives of dead boys, filled the public gallery in the first week of March 1995, among them Elroy's mother and grandmother. When the charges were read, one of Elroy's relatives broke down; otherwise, the paper wrote, the families sat stoically through the evidence. Several of them could not read or write, and they leaned forward to follow the legal argument.
Simons stood in the dock holding a religious paperback. His only visible reaction was an occasional puzzled frown. Wearing a suit and tie and speaking with a middle-class accent, he struck some in the gallery as putting on airs; one woman said he sat taking notes "like a businessman." The families' view, the paper reported, was that he might escape the court, but not God.
A woman from the Strand was the first state witness to link Simons positively to Elroy's disappearance. She testified that she saw him with the boy that day, and that she remembered his face because he was a stranger in a town where everyone knew each other. Simons's advocate, Koos Louw, a former magistrate, cross-examined her and other state witnesses on how much they could reliably remember after about a year. He accused the investigating officer in the van Rooyen case, Sergeant Andre Oliver, of arresting Simons "without a grain of evidence." The court then heard a trial within a trial on whether Simons's statements to magistrates and police after his arrest could be admitted as evidence.
The Mail & Guardian noted that the arrest had come at a time of intense pressure on the police, and suggested that pressure might help the defense. Simons was convicted. Tredoux and others later said the conviction rested on eyewitness evidence, the identity parade and a confession that Simons retracted.
On June 14, 1995, Judge Wally van Deventer sentenced Simons to 25 years in prison for murder and 10 years for kidnapping, the terms to run concurrently, Reuters reported. Simons was 27. The judge said it was difficult to find any sympathy "for a child murderer." Reuters noted that police suspected Simons might be the Station Strangler, believed to have killed 21 boys and a young man over eight years, but that he had been charged only with Elroy's murder.
Simons appealed. In 1998 the Supreme Court of Appeal not only dismissed the appeal but increased his sentence to life imprisonment, TimesLIVE reported. Lawrence Venter, the regional head of the Department of Correctional Services in the Western Cape, confirmed in 2023 that the sentence had been raised to life after the appeal failed.
Simons served his sentence at Drakenstein, the maximum security prison near Paarl. In 2014 the Department of Correctional Services said he taught and mentored other inmates there. In 2022 the Weekend Argus reported that he lived in a single cell with a television, worked in an office during the day and taught other prisoners, and that a former inmate described him as healthy, pleasant and hard-working. He was not able to attend the funerals of his mother or his sister. Jantjies said in 2023 that Simons had taught warders computer skills and helped prisoners learn to read and write.
The other deaths were never brought before a criminal court. In August 2005 Simons was brought from Drakenstein to the Mitchells Plain Magistrate's Court for an inquest into the deaths of three boys: Donovan Swarts, Elino Sprinkle and Marcelino Cupido, whose case was added that morning. Armed warders escorted him, and he wore a bulletproof vest in the dock. Onlookers shouted abuse at him. One woman from Tafelsig, whose children he had taught in Bible classes, told reporters she still did not believe he was the murderer.
The prosecutor, Ralph Zeeman, said the inquest was meant to determine whether anybody was responsible for the deaths of more than 20 Cape Flats boys, and that the state would ask for all the Station Strangler dossiers. Louw said the defense would carry on investigating despite the cost. Simons agreed that further samples, including hair, could be taken from him for DNA comparison. Magistrate Marelise Roller postponed the matter to December 6, 2005. Photographs from the Weekend Argus show Simons at the Mitchells Plain court for the inquest in 2006.
The final finding of the inquest was not reported.
In December 2009 the Cape Argus reviewed what was known of the evidence. It reported that evidence from the scenes was scant, that some items, including hairs, had never been tested because police lacked the technology at the time. Notes were found near two of the boys; the contents of one were never made public. Biological samples from one scene were typed as coming from a person whose blood group shows in his body fluids; the paper reported that Simons is not such a person, so those samples could not be his. Fingerprints were lifted at two scenes. Louw had asked for untested evidence to be sent to police laboratories and for the prints to be checked against larger databases, without success.
The same report said Simons had given Louw a detailed account of his movements on the day Elroy disappeared, including meetings and telephone calls, which Louw said could be checked to show whether he could have taken the boy before 5 p.m.
In 2023 the Saturday Star and the Weekend Argus reported that DNA from Jeremy Smith's body did not match Simons, and that a police forensic document said DNA found on Elino Sprinkle did not match him either. The Saturday Star reported that DNA from the other 21 victims had never been linked to him. Mitchells Plain's station commander, Brigadier Jan Alexander, said police would investigate if new evidence emerged.
The doubts have grown louder over time. In 2022 the Weekend Argus reported Tredoux's view that the eyewitness evidence was "questionable and not reliable." In 2023 he told the Saturday Star, after researching the case with the Innocence Project in the United States, that "both the eyewitness identification and the confession(s) have flaws in the Simons case."
Michael Jacobs, a former chair of the Mitchells Plain Community Police Forum, told the Weekend Argus in 2022 that the man who fitted the profile owned a car, while Simons used public transport, that the identity parade was inconclusive and that there was no DNA evidence. He said he believed someone else was involved.
Koos Louw remained convinced of Simons's innocence, as his 2009 efforts to have the evidence retested show. A retired magistrate, Ruth Jakuja, obtained the trial records and wrote a book, The Station Strangler: In the case of S v Avzal S. Simons, examining what she called critical mistakes in the arrest and conviction. She told the Sunday Times in 2024 that she did not believe Simons was the Station Strangler, and argued that police only became active in 1994, when the world was watching South Africa.
Not everyone agrees. Elroy's cousin identified Simons in the parade and has said that his release reopened old wounds. Jeremy Smith's aunt said she still believed Simons had killed Jeremy, although the DNA reported from his case did not match.
IOL reported in May 2014 that Simons could be considered for parole in 2015, but the Department of Correctional Services said no parole would be granted at that stage. People's Post reported that parole was refused in 2019, and the Weekend Argus reported that the department had said around that time that Simons was considered a danger to society.
In September 2022 the Weekend Argus reported a campaign for his release by prison rights activists and Reverend Chris Nissen of the South African Human Rights Commission, who said Simons had served his punishment. The activist Golden Miles Bhudu said Simons should have been released after 13 years and eight months. A spokesperson for the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services said that once a life sentence is imposed, the decision on parole rests with the Minister of Justice. Nissen recalled being present when bodies were found and taking Nelson Mandela to the Samaai family's home.
In July 2023 the Daily Voice reported that Simons had been granted parole. The Department of Correctional Services met Mitchells Plain residents and families at the Lentegeur Civic Centre on the Sunday before the release, and outlined the conditions. "This person needs to do 25 years, he's now done already 28 years," Venter said. "I know this is quite an emotive issue, but the minister only has the one conviction legally that he can consider." The Pretoria News reported that he would not return to Mitchells Plain but would live with family in Parow.
Elroy's family opposed the release. A spokesperson for the family said they were not happy that he would be freed and that the government had failed them; they had been informed rather than consulted. The South African Human Rights Commission said the state had failed the families of the boys whose deaths were never solved, eNCA reported. In Parow, residents said they had not been consulted and feared for their children.
Simons was released on Thursday, July 20, 2023, after 28 years in prison. He went to live with relatives in Parow, in the Bellville magisterial district, under parole for life.
The conditions, as reported by the Department of Correctional Services and the press, included 24-hour house arrest; no leaving the magisterial district without permission; no contact with children; no speaking to the media without permission; eight supervised visits a month; attendance at the department's programs; and a requirement to seek work. He could not enter Mitchells Plain. Reports differed on how long he could leave the house each day or week for work, medical care and the department's programs. Any breach would lead to his re-arrest, People's Post reported.
In November 2023 the department said Simons was complying with his conditions and integrating well with a good support system. The chair of the Parow Community Police Forum, Shakir Smith, said he was a law-abiding citizen keeping to his conditions, and that he could go nowhere without his caregiver. "Let him live his life," he said.
In 2024 the streaming service Showmax released a documentary, The Station Strangler, directed by Nadine Cloete, which asks whether Simons was the killer. Families of Elroy van Rooyen, Neville Samaai and Marcelino Cupido watched its first screening together in Cape Town. A drama series based on Micki Pistorius's book, Catch Me a Killer, was released the same year. In 2005 Professor Richard van der Ross, a former rector of the University of the Western Cape, said he was researching a book on the case.
Families and community leaders have called for memorials to the boys and for the 21 unsolved cases to be reopened with modern forensic methods. No one else had been charged by October 2024.
Simons is often called the Station Strangler. That is a press label, not a legal finding. He was convicted of one murder and one kidnapping. Reported DNA comparisons from at least two of the other cases excluded him.
Some reports say he was charged with 22 murders; the 1995 trial reporting shows he was tried on charges concerning Elroy van Rooyen alone. Reports also disagree on whether the series numbered 21 or 22 boys, and on whether a young man was among the dead.
1986: The first boy in the series, Jonathan Claasen, 14, is found in Bellville.
1987 to 1988: More boys are found, including Calvin Spires, 9, in 1988.
October 1992: Jacobus Louw, 10, is found.
January 1994: About 11 boys are found near Mitchells Plain, including six on January 27.
March 11, 1994: Elroy van Rooyen, 10, disappears in Strand.
1994: Simons is arrested.
Early 1995: Trial opens in the Cape Supreme Court.
June 14, 1995: Sentenced to 25 years for murder and 10 for kidnapping, concurrent.
1998: Appeal fails; sentence raised to life imprisonment.
August 16, 2005: Appears at an inquest into three boys' deaths in Mitchells Plain.
May 2014: Correctional Services says no parole will be granted at that stage.
2019: Parole refused.
July 20, 2023: Released on life parole to Parow.
November 2023: Department reports he is complying with his conditions.
2024: Showmax documentary The Station Strangler released.