‘She Was My Everything, My Baby'

As another site is excavated in search of Gert van Rooyen’s victims, the mother of Tracy-Lee Scott-Crossley tells her story

- Jana Van Der Merwe 

THE photos lie scattered on the coffee table in front of her. Looking up at her from them is her daughter, sporting short blonde hair and a shy smile. When we remark on their striking resemblance Noreen Breeds laughs quietly.

“Really? You think so?” she says, picking up one of the photos. She stares at it for a moment, tears welling in her eyes.

Tracy-Lee Scott-Crossley went missing in 1988 and was never found so these precious images – the few the police didn’t seize while searching for her – are the only ones Noreen (69) has of her 14-year-old daughter. It’s thought Tracy-Lee was the first of paedophile Gert van Rooyen and partner Joey Haarhoff ’s six missing victims.

Today Tracy-Lee would be turning 43 on 19 July. But Noreen never got to see her only daughter growing up. Almost three decades have passed but the disappearance of Tracy-Lee, Fiona Harvey (11), Joan Horn (13), Anne-Mari Wapenaar (12), Odette Boucher (11) and Yolanda Wessels (13) remain unsolved. SABC2 actuality programme Fokus brought the case into the spotlight again recently when it tried to find the girls’ remains.

Fokus’ investigation resulted in the police digging up parts of Blythedale Beach north of Ballito in KwaZulu-Natal. The beach is near Umdloti where Van Rooyen and Haarhoff reportedly holidayed and new leads suggested the girls might have been buried there. But the excavation failed to turn up anything new.

“I found the whole thing bizarre,” says Noreen, a retired beauty therapist. “It was like a wound that had started scabbing over then the scab is ripped off.”