A seemingly innocuous pile of leaves lies alongside a woman's corpse, holding the key to solving the identity of the killer, exactly where she died and, ultimately, who she was.
This sounds like the stuff American prime-time crime shows are made of, but it is exactly what happened this year when crack police detectives used leaves to solve the murder of a Jane Doe who was found dumped in Sunnyside, Pretoria. Her body wrapped in a sheet and curtain.
TimesLIVE spoke to Lt-Col Jan de Lange of the police's investigative psychology unit, who explained how police were able to peel away the layers of the crime. The investigating officer in the gruesome murder called him in to assist after the body was found dumped in May.
“From the beginning, we could see that she had been dumped there. She was not murdered there. At the crime scene there was a black plastic bag, a curtain, a small wooden block and the body. In the plastic bag, we found leaves. It looked like all these things had been dumped there on the paving from inside a dustbin,” De Lange said.
The leaves had seemingly been raked up when a yard was cleaned.
Looking at the crime scene, De Lange said he believed the key to solving this crime lay in those leaves.
When it comes to investigations, you do whatever you need to do to solve a case and in this case, it paid off
— Lt-Col Jan de Lange
He took a long shot and enlisted the services of plant specialist, Owen Brett, to establish where the leaves came from. Brett agreed to assist and immediately said the leaves seemingly came from pecan and oak trees.
“I took him back to the crime scene and we started walking from the crime scene and, about five houses from where the body was found, we found these two trees inside this property,” said De Lange.
“He said to me, ‘I am positive these leaves come from this house’,” recalled De Lange.
They searched the area and found that there were no other properties that had both these types of trees in the same yard.
The property where they believed the leaves were from was a children’s day care centre.
At the time, it was closed because of the coronavirus lockdown. De Lange said they knocked and found the property caretaker, a Zimbabwean man, who denied any knowledge of the crime.
After speaking to him, officers got in touch with the property owner who gave them permission to search the premises.
“I told her [the owner] we found a curtain with the body. She said she had given some of her curtains to the caretaker and these were still kept in the storeroom at the back of the property. We went to the storeroom and inside one of the boxes we found a curtain that was identical to the one that was found on the crime scene,” said De Lange.
The caretaker was the prime suspect.
The investigating officer, along with other police experts, were called in to examine the caretaker’s room.
It was here that blood stains were found, along with a bloody panga — suspected to be the murder weapon, used to slash and bludgeon the victim to death.
De Lange told TimesLIVE that police also found three wooden blocks which matched the single one found dumped with the body. These four blocks had been used to balance each of the four corners of the caretaker’s bed. When police were there, one of the corners was perched on a brick. The block was missing.
Confident that they were standing in the middle of the crime scene, police arrested the caretaker.
They eventually identified the woman.
“She was a Zimbabwean. Her father had reported her missing just two days before her body was found,” said De Lange.
It was suspected that she and the caretaker were in a relationship.
The caretaker is behind bars, facing a murder charge. His trial is scheduled to start in January.
De Lange said that solving a crime in this manner was the “first of a kind” for him but he was pleased that latching on to what would have been an overlooked clue led to him cracking the case.
“When it comes to investigations, you do whatever you need to do to solve a case and in this case, it paid off,” he said.
De Lange is part of the SAPS investigate psychology section (IPS).
These are the crime scene experts who arrive at a scene and look for clues that go beyond what meets the eye.
“This unit was established to investigate psychologically motivated crimes — these are crimes which are usually not driven by financial gain. Most of the cases that we deal with are those of serial rapists, serial murders, muthi murders, bizarre murders, intimate partner murders and auto-erotic fatalities,” said Capt Favourite Selepe, who has been part of the unit for about four years.
Serial murders, she said, were not as rife as serial rape cases in SA and there have only been a few auto-erotic fatalities. These, she explained, were accidental suicides which occurred, usually during masturbation.
More recently, the IPS made headlines when it aided the police in catching a Pretoria man who allegedly murdered his ex-girlfriend, whom he was obsessed with, before fleeing the country.
After years on the run, he was arrested in Brazil and extradited to SA.
In the Sunnyside case cracked by De Lange, Selepe said an untrained or less-seasoned investigating officer may have simply dismissed the leaves.
“You can miss the investigation in its entirety if you do not get proper analysis at the crime scene,” she added.
But, Selepe said, there are challenges working within the unit, which is an extension of the police forensic unit.
“Our environment is not well known. There are a lot of things that pass through the cracks because they [other police units] don’t call us in,” she said. “The challenges include that of communication between our office and some investigating officers who sometimes say we are taking the cases from them but in fact, we are providing a service to them,” she added.
She said failure to link cases was also a hindrance in their field. While the police had technology in place to link cases of serial murders and rapists, there was an “under utilisation” of these systems, resulting in cases taking longer than they should to be resolved.
“We have a forensic DNA database which would be able to send ... an e-mail to investigating officers to say a particular suspect of theirs has been linked to another case,” she added.
She said it was important to note that the police had a broad range of skills.
“There are people who make arrests, there are people who analyse [a crime scene] and there are people who collect [evidence],” she said. “So there are many different aspects in looking into one crime scene."
While the leaves were instrumental in solving the Sunnyside murder case, academics have hailed SA for using other non-traditional methods to piece together crime scene puzzles.
Dr Dilys Berman, one of the country's leading pollen analysts from the University of Cape Town, said there had been growth in how pollen analysis was helping to solve criminal and civil cases locally and abroad.
The UCT Lung Institute that Berman is affiliated to said this was thanks to crime investigation television shows and publicity surrounding high-profile cases where forensic palynology (pollen analysis) was used to determine guilt or innocence and, in some instances, even overturning past verdicts.
Berman said that police in the Western Cape had, for example, in one case been able to trace where a body was moved between locations because of the pollen found on the clothing of the corpse.
“As the number of cases that pollen is successfully used as evidence increases, the range of its potential uses also increases. Pollen can be used to solve crimes related to forgery, illegal drugs, assault, robbery, rape, murder, genocide, terrorism and arson to name but a few,” Berman said.
“It can also be used to resolve various types of civil cases, such as the authentication of paintings, fake antiques, forged documents, removal of artefacts from historic or archaeological sites, illegal pollution of the environment or the poaching of animals and fish.”
Berman said to use plants to solve crimes, one needed to have a broad understanding of the thousands of different species and their characteristics.
“Pollen grains can remain at a crime scene long after the event. The fact that they are small, highly variable and found on almost anything that has been exposed to or interact with the air, make them ideal forensic trace materials. Pollen grains can be isolated from soil, rope, clothing, drugs, air filters, plant material, animal and human material such as fur, hair or stomach contents by using forensic tools.
“Each region also has its own unique pollen composition, almost like a fingerprint, which is relatively indestructible, even if you wash your clothes, a pollen print remains. If pollen samples are collected in a correct and timely manner it is even possible to tell when the crime was committed. Much of that has to do with knowing the pollination cycles of various plants, which is why pollen monitoring is important,” she said.
Despite all these aspects that go into investigations behind the scenes, Selepe said real life investigations were nothing like those seen on television.
“This is what we aim to tell people all the time. On TV, an investigation takes about a week whereas in SA or in reality, it takes much longer. To finally have the person charged and stand trial can take years,” she added.
