Sizzlers: The hate crime that tore Sea Point apart
Nicole Engelbrecht
Melinda Ferguson Books (NB Publishers)
Review: Karen Watkins
In 2003, 10 men were brutally attacked over a three-hour period in Sea Point in what would become known as the Sizzlers massacre.
The owner of the massage parlour, a client and some of the eight sex workers, aged between 17 and 56, had come to the big city with dreams of making a living.
Instead they resorted to selling their bodies in a massage parlour in an innocuous looking house in Graham Road. The massacre was believed to have been a botched robbery.
As the sole survivor, Quinton Taylor dragged his badly wounded body to a nearby petrol station to raise the alarm.
With the help of Inspector Jonathan Morris of Sea Point police, Taylor identified the perpetrators, waiter Adam Woest and taxi driver Trevor Theys, who were both found guilty of nine counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, and sentenced to life in prison.
What prompted Blouberg-based author Nicole Engelbrecht to write this book is that one of the murderers became eligible for parole in 2018. Theys died in prison in 2008. None of the victims’ families had been contacted about the parole hearing.
When Leigh Visser, the younger sister of one of the victims, Warren Visser learned of the parole petition she started a petition against the murderers’ possible release.
She had meanwhile moved to Canada to escape bad memories of the massacre, but asked Engelbrecht if she could share the petition on her Facebook group of 20 000 fans of her true crime podcast.
For me, this book leaves more questions than answers. On finishing the final chapter I spent hours scouring news articles, photos and videos searching for details. All the gory details are there so why, if all this material is in the public domain, did the author not include it and create a more satisfying read?
In her author’s note, Engelbrecht writes: “I considered [the victims’ family members] with every line I wrote. The victims were extremely vulnerable as many were queer, and also because they were sex workers”.
Engelbrecht hosts South Africa’s true crime podcast, True Crime South Africa and the Showmax doccie, Devilsdorp. She’s ghost-written international true crime titles and has produced extensive content on the Krugersdorp cult murders.