Roxanne van Eck has no desire to face the men who shot her father 52 times in the head and body with an AK47, but she hopes that by agreeing to meet them she will delay their release from prison.
Like other relatives of murder victims, the Table View, Cape Town, woman is facing the fact that though the killers have been sentenced to life behind bars, they now qualify to apply for parole. And she is hoping that a meeting with them will be difficult and time-consuming to arrange during lockdown.
“I have got nothing to say to them or ask them. But I have agreed to a victim-offender dialogue because I am scared that if I refuse, that box will just be ticked and I will have no other way to stop the process. So I will sacrifice my emotions and face them,” she said.
Van Eck was 17 years old when a police officer arrived at her school on July 23 2003 to tell her her 38-year-old father, Leslie Cilliers, had been shot dead in the line of duty.
Cilliers, a career policeman based at Table View in Cape Town, and his partner had been responding to reports of an armed robbery at the Standard Bank in Atlantis. The suspects had been pulled over by the police, who were waiting for backup before approaching them. As help arrived, the men began shooting and Cilliers was hit multiple times, as was his partner and another officer, both of whom who survived.
The robbers were caught as they tried to escape with R70,000. The trial took three-and-a-half years and two of the five original suspects were sentenced to three life terms for murder, attempted murder and armed robbery.
“My dad served his whole life — 21 years in the service. He was humble and gentle. He opened a creche in the Dunoon informal settlement and had so much more life to live and to give. And now his parents, my mom, his brother and me all have to go on without him.
“I have written to the president and to the justice minister, who has promised that families will have their views considered by the parole board before he makes the final call. I have a petition with over 3,000 signatures and I have managed to get over 200 community members to write letters opposing their early release.
“But it’s not just this case. We are one of so many, most of whom don’t even have a voice because their cases were never picked up by the media,” she said.
“It would be my biggest nightmare to hear that they have been released. I have a child now and I don’t want him to ever have to face this. Those murderers are in their forties now. They still have a full life ahead of them. My dad was younger than they are when he was murdered.”
Van Eck has teamed up with two others who have equally horrific stories. Leigh Visser, whose brother Warren was murdered in the infamous Sizzlers massacre, and Rob Matthews, father of murdered student Leigh Matthews. The killers in these cases — Adam Woest and Donovan Moodley, respectively — are also eligible for early parole.
Van Eck’s petition to keep her father’s killers in prison can be found at http://change.org/cop-killer
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