Stewart Wilken, a fisherman from Port Elizabeth known by the nickname Boetie Boer, was arrested on January 31, 1997. In police custody he confessed to ten killings over about seven years, most of which police had not connected to him. His victims, according to the press accounts of the case, were women who worked as sex workers and boys, some of them street children, and his own daughter, Wuane. In February 1998 the Port Elizabeth High Court found him guilty of seven murders and two counts of sodomy, and Judge Chris Jansen sentenced him to seven life terms. The judge said he would have sentenced him to death if that penalty had still been available.
He has been in prison since his arrest. In 2022, after almost 25 years, he applied for parole, and the prosecutor, his former defense attorney and a former police profiler who had interviewed him all spoke against his release. No decision has been reported.
The city is now called Gqeberha, and recent reporting uses that name. In the 1990s the court and the press called it Port Elizabeth.
Little has been published about Wilken's life before his arrest. The Herald, the Port Elizabeth daily, quoted his defense attorney, Alwyn Griebenow, in 2022 describing him as "a typical chokka fisherman". A 2023 IOL report also calls him a Gqeberha fisherman. He was 31 when he was arrested.
He married twice. His daughter Wuane was the child of his first marriage. After that marriage ended he married again in 1990, and The Herald links that second marriage to the year the killings began. His second wife had two daughters with him and stood by him through his trial. A 2023 television review in the Sunday Tribune wrote that he fitted into the neighborhood where he lived because he lived and worked like a local.
According to The Herald, after his second wife's parents made accusations against him concerning her two sons from an earlier relationship, he went to live rough in bushland in Port Elizabeth.
The Cape Argus reported in 2024 that his lawyers argued that his crimes had roots in abuse he had suffered as a young child at the hands of a church deacon. That is an argument made on his behalf, and it was not a finding of the court.
The court convicted Wilken of seven murders. Agence France-Presse, as quoted by the Cape Argus, reported at the time that he was found guilty of murdering four women and three children, one of them his daughter. Few of the victims' names have appeared in the reports of the case. Two that have are his daughter Wuane and a boy named in a 2023 IOL report as Henry Bakkers.
The women were sex workers in Port Elizabeth. The boys included street children. A reviewer of a 2023 documentary series on the case wrote that he did not choose his victims by race.
The victims were people with families and lives of their own. The reporting on the case, from 1998 to the present, has recorded far more about the man convicted of killing them than about them.
The Herald's 2022 account of the case sets out the sequence as follows.
On October 2, 1990, Wilken strangled a woman of 25 who worked as a sex worker. Three months later he strangled a second woman who worked in the same trade, after she told him he had to pay her. About nine months after that he killed a boy, who was also strangled.
Between June 1993 and January 1997, The Herald reported, he killed at least seven more people, Wuane among them. One of the victims in that period was a woman of 42.
The Herald's own wording, and the AFP report of the verdict, make clear that the killings ran on two tracks: women who worked as sex workers, and young boys. The 2023 Herald recap described his killing spree as lasting seven years, beginning with the first killing in October 1990.
The Herald does not say which of these killings were among the seven proved in court, so its list is an account of the killings, not of the convictions.
Wuane was Wilken's daughter from his first marriage. The Herald gives her age as nine; the AFP report quoted by the Cape Argus gives it as eleven.
According to The Herald, Wilken took her away with him after she told him she wanted to run away with him. He strangled her. He later claimed that he had done it to protect her from further harm. The Cape Argus, citing an AFP report of his statement, wrote that he said he had closed his eyes and asked God to forgive him as he sent his child's soul to God.
Her death was among the seven murders of which he was convicted, according to AFP. He later showed the police where her remains were.
Derick Nosworthy, a detective with the Port Elizabeth murder and robbery unit, arrested Wilken on January 31, 1997.
The Herald's account is that his final known victim was a 12-year-old boy, killed nine days before the arrest, and that by the time of the arrest police suspected him of at least ten killings, including his daughter's. IOL, writing in 2023, said he was arrested in connection with the disappearance of a 10-year-old boy, Henry Bakkers, and that in custody he confessed to killing the boy and nine other people whose deaths police had not linked to him. The two accounts give different ages, and neither says whether the boy killed nine days before the arrest and Henry Bakkers are the same child.
Micki Pistorius was the police psychologist whom Gérard Labuschagne later succeeded, in 2001, as head of what IOL called the police Investigative Psychology Unit. In her book Catch Me a Killer, Serial Murders: a Profiler's True Story, she gave Nosworthy the credit for getting Wilken to confess, according to The Herald. Nosworthy declined to comment when The Herald approached him in 2022.
A television reviewer who watched the 2023 documentary series described his manner under interrogation as completely calm at first, before a more menacing side came out and he confessed.
Pistorius later gave evidence at his trial.
Wilken was defended by Alwyn Griebenow, a Port Elizabeth attorney, and the advocate Terry Price, who has since died. Griebenow told The Herald in 2022 that he had spent many weekends with Wilken in a cell at the Mount Road police station, preparing for the trial.
His client, he said, was cool, calm and collected, rarely showed emotion, liked the attention of the press and seemed highly intelligent. Wilken gave him detailed accounts of the killings. "He had a sick mind and needed help," Griebenow said. Asked whether he had been afraid for his own safety, he said no: he did not fit the profile of Wilken's victims.
The prosecution was led by Leon Knoetse, a state advocate, with the junior prosecutor Marius Stander. The trial was heard in the Port Elizabeth High Court.
According to the Cape Argus, Wilken was charged with ten counts of murder and five counts of sodomy.
Two expert witnesses gave evidence: Pistorius and the forensic psychiatrist Toviah Zabow. Pistorius told the court that she had no doubt Wilken would kill again if he were ever released, and that he should never be freed.
Judge Chris Jansen found Wilken guilty of seven counts of murder and two counts of sodomy. On February 28, 1998, he sentenced him to seven terms of life imprisonment.
Jansen said that if the death penalty had still been available, he would have imposed it.
He also took an unusual step aimed at the future. He ordered that the evidence of Pistorius and Zabow, together with his full judgment, be attached to Wilken's prison file. Griebenow said in 2022 that the judge had wanted to endorse the warrant of detention so that Wilken would never qualify for parole. Knoetse remembered it the same way: the judge, he said, had specifically stated that Wilken should not be granted parole.
Wilken has served his sentences in a maximum security prison, The Herald reported in 2022.
In 2001 Gérard Labuschagne took over the police psychology unit from Pistorius. In 2006 he and Colonel Jan De Lange went to interview Wilken. Labuschagne told IOL in 2023 that the purpose was different from a normal police interview, which usually aims to obtain a confession or to have a suspect point out crime scenes. This one, he said, was meant to gather background: Wilken's thoughts and ideas. The two men prepared with copies of the case docket, his confession, information about his upbringing and statements from his family, and they expected that a man already convicted would be more willing to talk.
The recording of that interview, just over three hours long, became part of a five-part documentary series on the case broadcast by Showmax in October and November 2023. The Cape Argus reported that Labuschagne needed Wilken's permission to use it. The series' director, Jasyn Howes, met Wilken in prison while making it. He described an old man with no teeth, bifocal glasses and a bad arm, and said that Wilken's gaze was very unsettling.
In September 2022, almost 25 years after his arrest, Wilken applied for parole.
The Department of Correctional Services confirmed the application to The Herald. Its regional spokesperson, Nobuntu Gantana, said that although he was not due for parole, he had applied for release, and that his profile had been submitted to the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services for recommendations under the Correctional Services Act. "A decision in this regard has not yet been made," she said. The national spokesperson, Singabakho Nxumalo, said his profile was being considered and would be processed by the various structures that deal with prisoners serving life.
Jansen, by then retired and speaking from abroad, told The Herald that the matter was now in the hands of the parole board.
In January 2023 The Herald reported that rumors that Wilken had received a presidential pardon were untrue, according to Nxumalo, and that his profile was being considered for submission to the parole board. The same report described him as having become eligible for parole after almost 25 years; the department's statement in September 2022 had said he was not yet due. The difference is not explained in either report.
No decision on the application has been reported. A television review published in October 2023 described him as serving seven life sentences.
The people who knew the case best spoke against his release in 2022.
Gérard Labuschagne, a forensic psychologist and serial killer profiler, said it would be irresponsible for the authorities to consider it. "There is always great concern whenever a serial killer is considered for release as we don't know what their triggers are," he told The Herald. He said it would be almost impossible to judge Wilken's readiness from his behavior in prison: "Judging prison behaviour cannot be accurate."
Griebenow said he was surprised by the application, that releasing Wilken would be a travesty of justice, and that he doubted prison had changed him much. Part of the danger, he said, was that no one could know how Wilken would behave outside.
Knoetse, who had since left the National Prosecuting Authority, said Pistorius's evidence had suggested that Wilken could never be rehabilitated. The prosecution had always suspected there were more murders than it proved, he said, so release would be very irresponsible. He hoped the authorities would read what Jansen had said in his judgment. The trial, he said, was a period of his life he had tried to block out.
The number of victims. Wilken was convicted of seven murders. He confessed to ten, according to IOL. The Herald wrote in 2022 and 2023 that he had killed at least ten people by the time of his arrest, and the prosecutor said the state suspected there were more than the seven it proved. The three confessed killings that were not proved remain unproven in law, and the reports do not say which charges failed or why.
The sodomy counts. He was convicted of two counts of sodomy. The Cape Argus gives the charges as five counts and also says, in the same passage, that he was acquitted of the sodomy charges; that is inconsistent with the verdict reported by The Herald and by AFP, which both give the two convictions.
His daughter's age. Nine (The Herald, 2022 and 2023) or eleven (AFP, quoted by the Cape Argus).
The last boy. The Herald gives the final known victim as a 12-year-old boy killed nine days before the arrest. IOL says the arrest followed the disappearance of Henry Bakkers, whom it describes as ten. Neither report says whether these are the same child.
The sentencing date. The Herald gives February 28, 1998.
Parole eligibility. Correctional Services said in September 2022 that he was not yet due for parole; The Herald wrote in January 2023 that he had become eligible. The legal basis for either statement is not explained.
His childhood. The claim that he was abused as a child was put forward by his lawyers. It was an argument on his behalf, not a finding.
October 2, 1990: the first killing in The Herald's account, of a 25-year-old woman.
1990: Wilken marries for the second time.
About three months later: a second woman is killed.
About nine months after that: a boy is killed.
June 1993 to January 1997: at least seven further killings in The Herald's account, among them his daughter Wuane.
January 1997: a 12-year-old boy is killed nine days before the arrest (The Herald).
January 31, 1997: Derick Nosworthy arrests Wilken in Port Elizabeth; in custody he confesses to ten killings.
Trial in the Port Elizabeth High Court; Micki Pistorius and Toviah Zabow give expert evidence.
February 28, 1998: convicted of seven murders and two counts of sodomy; Judge Chris Jansen imposes seven life terms and orders the expert evidence and judgment attached to his prison file.
2001: Gérard Labuschagne takes over the police psychology unit from Pistorius.
2006: Labuschagne and Colonel Jan De Lange interview Wilken.
September 2022: Wilken applies for parole; Correctional Services says no decision has been made.
January 2023: the department denies rumors of a presidential pardon and says his profile is being considered for submission to the parole board.
October and November 2023: Showmax broadcasts a five-part documentary series on the case.
October 2023: reported to be serving seven life sentences; no parole decision reported.