Author says he has uncovered new information in Inge Lotze killing

For former police officer turned author, Alan D Elsdon, no stone should be left unturned in finding Inge Lotz’s killer.

Elsdon, who in 2018 published a book on the murder, Bro­ken & Be­trayed, continues to carry out his own investigations, providing any leads he comes across to the Hawks.

In recent months, he has uncovered new information he believes is deserving of closer scrutiny.

In one of the most shock­ing cases in SA crim­i­nal his­tory, Lotz, 22, was beaten to death with a ham­mer and stabbed 17 times in her Wel­gevon­den flat out­side Stel­len­bosch in March 2005.

Lotz’s boyfriend, Fred van der Vyver, originally of Ko­mani, was ar­rested for the mur­der but was controversially ac­quit­ted in 2007.

As the years passed, Els­don, who recently moved from East London to Cape Town, took an in­ter­est, publishing his findings in Broken & Betrayed.

Sub­se­quent to the pub­li­ca­tion of the book, Elsdon sub­mit­ted a for­mal re­port de­tail­ing his find­ings to Rod­ney de Kock, the di­rec­tor of pub­lic pros­e­cu­tions in the Western Cape.

Ac­cord­ing to Elsdon, a huge po­lice cover-up took place at the time of the mur­der in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

He also al­leges that nu­mer­ous un­truths were made in state­ments sub­mit­ted to the po­lice by peo­ple close to Lotz, and var­i­ous wit­nesses com­mit­ted per­jury when they tes­ti­fied in the 2007 trial of Van der Vyver.

Elsdon’s re­port was sub­mit­ted to the Hawks in the Western Cape, which has been investigating the allegations.

Among his submissions is a pho­to­graph of Lotz at a shop­ping cen­tre on her last af­ter­noon alive.

This photograph, he said, sug­gested she was not alone but trav­el­ling with some­one very close to her shortly be­fore her mur­der.

Now he has uncovered what he says is important new information.

Elsdon, who has been working with a private investigator, has managed to access the case file during his six-year investigation.

Recently, he reviewed a video taken at Lotz’s flat after the killing, paying particular attention to items lying on the kitchen table.

These included her Samsung cellphone, car keys and sunglasses. These were taken by police as evidence.

However, after studying the first police video material and photographs taken at the crime scene, Elsdon noticed a “minor but crucial” difference existed between the cellphone discovered in Lotz’s apartment and the cellphone police sent a month later for forensic examination.

“We have had a chance to study the two phones and the speaker above the screen is different, for one thing,” Elsdon said.

He also had access to phone records, and alleged Lotz’s phone had been used to make “private calls” after her murder.

“This provided an opportunity to remove any incriminating evidence from Lotz’s cellphone,” Elsdon said.

Elsdon provided a screen grab and photographs of what he says are the similar, but different cellphones.

The Samsung branding on the phone left on the kitchen table appears to be much clearer, while in the photograph of the police exhibit phone, the branding appears more faded.

“The original cellphone found in Inge’s apartment was never put back.

“The second cellphone sent to the police technical division is the one seen in the exhibit bag,” Elsdon said.

“Clearly, someone of authority who exercised control over the exhibits, had swapped Inge’s handset containing her SIM card with a physically almost identical Samsung cellphone.”

Hawks spokesperson Zinzi Hani said the Weekend Post’s queries had been forwarded to the relevant officer for comment and she would revert soonest.

On Friday morning, The Herald reached out to the Lotz’s family lawyer, Johan Jordaan, about Elsdon’s findings.

A secretary at his office provided his e-mail address and detailed questions were sent.

Jordaan saw but did not respond to a WhatsApp message, and neither to the e-mail sent to the address provided.

There have been a number of theories on who killed the brilliant young student.

Two amateur sleuths, Thomas and Calvin Mollett, have posited in their own books, Bloody Lies and Bloody Lies Too, that there had been gross miscarriage of justice.

During Van der Vyver’s trial, the forensic evidence revolved around a bloody mark on the bathroom floor, an ornamental hammer and a fingerprint on a DVD cover.

Thomas Mollett told the Sunday Times in 2015 that the conclusion drawn by Pat Wertheim, a US fingerprint expert who testified on behalf of the defence, could not be true.

While experts said the fingerprint was a lip print, the Molletts said the print was that of a finger in a glove.

Thomas took the print to the woman who dusted the print. He said it matched “100%” and concluded that the tip was her nail.

“All the state had to do was fit a finger to the print and they would have nailed the case,” Mollett said at the time.

During the trial, the state claimed the murder weapon was an ornamental bottle opener, shaped like a hammer.

The defence denied this, but the Mollett brothers say the aspect wounds Lotz sustained were exactly the size of the hammer.

In a letter to Rapport in 2017, Prof Jan Lotz, Inge’s father, told Netwerk24 that he thought the Molletts’ work to be “outstanding” and “scientifically sound”.

“Of course the facts contained in the books have brought to an end my search for the truth about my child’s death.

“Thomas Mollett is a highly intelligent individual with a unique analytical mind,” he was quoted as saying

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