Mass killer freed: Apartheid 'hero' who Killed 39 Black People gets Parole

• Originally published in the The Guardian (London) - Final Edition October 30, 2004

Copyright 2004 Guardian Newspapers Limited  


By: Rory Carroll in Johannesburg


South Africa's most prolific mass murderer was released on parole yesterday after serving 12 years in jail for a shooting spree that made him an apartheid folk hero.

Louis van Schoor is believed to have shot 101 black people, killing 39 of them, including children, while working as a security guard in the port city of East London.

Praised by warders as a model prisoner, Van Schoor walked free yesterday thanks to a sentence reduction for all convicts issued by Nelson Mandela when he was president.

The 53-year-old - appearing relaxed and cheerful -spoke to reporters outside the prison gates. He said he would not return to the security business, but would take up farming and spend time with his fiancee, Eunice Cornelius, a Cape Town lawyer.

He declared himself "happy that the time has come to join society again", and said he hoped the public would forget his past and judge him on his future.

He had found God in prison. When prompted, he expressed sorrow to the relatives of his victims. "I apologise if any of my actions caused them hurt," he said.

Van Schoor was convicted in 1992 of killing seven people and attempting to murder another two under the guise of protecting business premises from thieves.

Survivors testified that he captured and killed burglars before calling the police. When there were no thieves, he would drag pedestrians from the street into the premises and shoot them.

Under apartheid, Van Schoor was protected by police officers and magistrates who commended his efficiency and overlooked the fact that all his victims were black or coloured and that not one carried a gun.

He was arrested when the white minority regime crumbled, but prosecutors were able to charge him with only a fraction of his crimes. Just after his final murder, and before he realised his impunity was over, the Afrikaner boasted to a journalist: "Number 39, pal."

During his trial, white residents drove around East London with "I Love Louis" stickers on their cars, decorated with three bullet holes through a heart. Black residents called him Jesus because of his flowing beard.

Van Schoor's daughter, Sabrina, ended up in another section of his jail in 2002 for paying a black man to slit the throat of his former wife, Beverley, on the grounds that she was a racist who objected to Sabrina's liaisons with non-whites.

Van Schoor said yesterday that he would miss his daughter now he was out, but promised to look after her own daughter, who is of mixed race. Embracing his fiancee, who may become his fifth wife, he told the Daily Dispatch newspaper that he had studied agriculture and worked in the prison's vegetable patch. There was a muted response to his release, which was ignored by most of the South African media.

Relatives of his victims, who were mostly poor and uneducated, made no protest, possibly because they were not aware of the news. Heidi Holland, a journalist writing a book about Sabrina van Schoor, said the port city's white residents still esteemed Louis van Schoor, adding: "There is no way East London is doing any soul-searching today."