Any evidence for this high success rate, Danie? I mean other than your say-so?
No. No, he didn’t. They found some bones that could have been human. Nothing was actually validated. So please check your facts and stop lying to your readers.
Krugel is a glorified rent-a-cop at the Central University of Technology in Bloemfontein. He’s not a scientist or an engineer. He didn’t become famous here by locating the “five South African girls who went missing during the Eighties,” presumably the Gert van Rooyen victims. Was it five or six he claims to have found? So please check your facts and stop lying to your readers.
It was 3rd Degree that first brought Krugel onto TV, not Carte Blanche. And the thing about those “six children” has yet to be authenticated. Lies do not become true just because you repeat them over and over.
The latest (October) issue of the SA edition of marie claire magazine has an article on Gert van Rooyen’s six victims. The article, titled “Do You Recognize these Women?”, features digitally processed photos of the six missing girls. The photos show what the girls might look like were they alive today, which is the selling point. The story, however, is mostly about the facts surrounding the disappearances themselves and van Rooyen’s alleged role therein.
I’d just like to clarify that this guy has been around a long time. I first saw an SABC 2 progamme about his amazing machine around 2004 (?) which utterly disgusted me that they could air such nonsense. Then coincidentally just a couple of months before Carte Blanche aired their show I saw an article in the paper about how the parents of a student who had gone missing had been led on a wild goose chase all over the country when Danie told them their son was “travelling north” and all sorts of other rubbish. A couple of months after he’d gone missing his body was found in the Knysna forest where he’d died of a fall or something, and lain undiscovered.
Even for journalists as shocking as South African’s appear to be, it surely wouldn’t take very long to find these people and interview them about what they think of DK. I doubt it would be complimentary.
The article you linked to seems to me only slightly more level-headed than several others I’ve read, but that may be more because Afrikaans is not my first language.
Now why would that be? If Krugel was in Portugal for four days in mid-July, and it is now almost mid-October (i.e. almost three months later), then there has been plenty of time for searching. And to keep a search of some seven to ten hectares (see below) a secret, especially in the high profile case of Madeleine McCann and the particular locality, is, I suspect, nigh impossible. So it seems that the investigators have some other reason for seemingly ignoring Krugel’s info.
That is, an area of between 700×(2×50) m2 = 70,000 m2 and 700×(2×70) m2 = 98,000 m2, or roughly seven to ten hectares. Hmm, in other of Krugel’s “successes” he allegedly was able to achieve much better accuracy than that, say a house of perhaps 300 m2. Whence comes the areal discrepancy of some two to three orders of magnitude? Scope creep, maybe.
And they ask, “What harm can it do?” Wasting time and resources that would be better utilised doing real investigation, for one. Emotional distress for another.
Towards the end, the Rapport article then asserts, “Maar hy het ook onbetwiste sukses behaal” [But he has also achieved uncontested successes], and lists the cases of the 15 year old Chadinha girl’s disappearance in November 2004, the housekeeper Nancy Moeti in July 2005 and the body of five year old Naledi Ntebele. The implication is that these apparent successes are due to Krugel’s magnificent hair locating technology, rather than, say, actual detective work. Moreover, the article neglects to mention Krugel’s manifest failures, which should not be ignored if for no other reason than the interests of “balanced reporting.”
Tonight’s edition of 3rd Degree on etv will examine the Madeleine McCann case. Perhaps a forum member with the necessary facilities could record it just in case Danie Krugel’s involvement comes up.
Almost predictably, Krugel has recently acquired a fan club.
I did, and it was the most meaningless regurgitation of known theories and fantasies imaginable. A nice flying holiday to the UK and Portugal for Miss Manas and crew. What utter crap!
Last night’s etv news bulletin reported that some bones had been unearthed during excavations for a swimming pool on a property adjoining that of alleged paedophile and child murderer Gert van Rooyen. The bones are thought to be of human origin and have been sent for forensic examination.
If these bones turn out to be human and can be traced back to one or more of van Rooyen’s victims, there will be a whole chicken coop worth of egg on the faces of Danie Krugel, Ruda Landman and Carte Blanche. It is, however, unlikely that this embarrassment will be acknowledged.
In a related matter, Madeleine McCann is still missing, while from Danie Krugel and his fan club only silence issues forth. It might be hoped that their silence is a mortified one.
A young girl, Anisha van Niekerk, went missing on the 25th November, sadly her body was found a couple of days ago. Eblockwatch sent me an email this morning with a run down of the search for Anisha van Niekerk, in the notes for the 30th November it says that Danie Krugel contacted Eblockwatch and offered to search for Anisha provided " the media is not informed of his involvement".
Here is the link: http://www.eblockwatch.co.za/index.php?view=missing&id=165
It makes for some interesting reading about how Danie Krugel works - how did he know about Anishas’ disappearance, he’s in Bloemfontein? Does someone from the SAPS contact everytime someone goes missing? What are his fees? He says he doesn’t charge the families anything, but who pays for all his travelling costs?
His excuse for as to why the “reading” may be a little off -
“Danie reiterates that the readings may be off course because storms in JHB and Bloemfontein affect the readings, to be more specific he offers to travel to Kempton to continue the search”
Reading about the frantic search for Anisha is heartrending.
Krugels’ involvement makes my blood boil - the man should be stopped.
His latest involvement was in the 11 day search for missing pilot Dirk Booysen.
The desperate family asked for his assitance, it appears.
You can follow the whole drama of the search on the AVCOM (Aviation Community) Forum.
In the main thread dealing with the search, a heartwarming story unfolds of aviators and aviation enthusiasts volunteering to help search or support the search for a fellow aviator under the most trying of circumstances. When Danie Krugel was mentioned, several pilots warned that he is a fraud, but his help had already been accepted.
After 8 days, the official Search and Rescue (S&R) mission was suspended and a team of private volunteers continued. The private team co-ordinator (Bessinger) was irritated by D.K’s involvement. They had to divert valuable resources to go check co-ordinates that D.K supplied. Evidently other clairvoyants were also involved, reporting that the pilot was alive, standing next to his Cessna, waiting for help. This didn’t help keep the family calm and rational.
In the end, sound reasoning by the coordinator and an experienced mountain helicopter pilot lead them to the wreck, near where the radar tracks and Vodacom signals indicated he may have gone down. D.K.'s coordinates were out.
After the pilot was found, sadly killed on impact, a short thread appeared in which Danie’s involvement was discussed again. This time the punches weren’t pulled.
If by “yet to be debunked” you mean exposing exactly what Krugel is up to, then you’d be correct. But if instead you mean that Krugel’s methods still need to be shown to be ineffective and based on hype, you’d be wrong: There are several cases where he has failed abysmally and it is in the nature of people and the popular media to push our collective “wowee!” button by punting the successes (without properly investigating them, either) and disregarding the failures. Moreover, the scientific approach demands that we regard such an implausible claim as false until the evidence in its favour compels us to change that view. Krugel’s only evidence is anecdotal, which is a kind way of saying “at best feeble.”
Thank you for that update – it’s yet another link in a long chain of Krugel’s deceptions. The really interesting question concerns just what it will take for Joe Public finally to see the jarring inconsistencies in Krugel’s accounts and come to the only obviously workable conclusion: Danie Krugel is either severely deluded or a liar.
Interesting. Owen Swart’s experience when approaching Danie Krugel very much mirrors our own on two prior occasions: a reply consisting entirely of deafening silence. Maybe Krugel thinks we’re just too sarcastic.
