WATCH: Police chase new lead in Van Rooyen murders

Forensic investigators are hopeful that the answer to the cold-case mystery of paedophile Gert van Rooyen - unsolved for nearly three decades - is buried beneath the sand at Blythedale Beach, near Ballito, north of Durban.

Crime-scene technicians lined the beachfront yesterday as an earthmover dug into the sand above a concrete stormwater drain. The top of the drain, which abuts a public toilet in the dunes, was nearly exposed after a morning of digging.

Examination of the site is expected to take several days, given the size of the area that has to be excavated.

Police spokesman Colonel Thembeka Mbhele would not reveal what had led them to the beach.

The beach is believed to be one of the sites at which girls kidnapped and murdered by Van Rooyen in the 1980s are buried.

Van Rooyen and his girlfriend, Joey Haarhoff, were accused of a series of child kidnappings more than 30 years ago. They are thought to have abducted and murdered at least six young girls between 1988 and 1989.

The police file on the investigation of Van Rooyen and Haarhoff is still open and an investigating officer is assigned to the case.

The victims' bodies have never been found.

Van Rooyen shot Haarhoff and then himself as the police closed in on them in Pretoria after their final victims escaped and raised the alarm.

He had previously served jail time.

In 1979 he abducted two girls aged 10 and 13 and forced them to perform sex acts but released them a day later in Pretoria. He was arrested shortly afterwards and convicted of abduction, sexual assault and common assault of the girls.

He served three years of a four-year sentence.