Johannesburg - Several neatly labelled bags containing amputated female genitalia stacked tidily inside a freezer led to the arrest of a Danish businessman at his Free State home.
And on Monday the businessman faced a string of charges including sexual assault, intimidation, domestic violence and contravention of the Medicines Act when he appeared in the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court.
Crowds jeered the man — with some shouting “Satan!” — as police escorted him from the courtroom.
The accused was arrested last week after police made the gruesome discovery at his house in Langenhoven Park.
It was also established that the man, who owns two gun shops in Bloemfontein, is wanted in Denmark for illegally dealing in firearms.
According to reports, the man’s wife alerted authorities about the gruesome storage of body parts and police are investigating the extent of her involvement, said the investigating officer. Earlier, police said one of the man’s victims reported him to police.
Although police received a tip-off about the freakish contents that were believed to be inside the house, there was no way that they could prepare themselves for what they stumbled across.
Inside the freezer, they found 21 sealed packets containing female genitalia belonging to unknown women.
Scheduled anaesthetic medicine and surgical doctor’s operating equipment were also found inside his house, giving an indication that the women were in varying stages of consciousness while they were being mutilated.
“It comes down to mutilation of private parts of a woman, cut out and kept as trophies,” said Warrant Officer Lynda Steyn.
Hawks spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said they believed that the accused would lure women inside his house, sedate them and then mutilate their genitalia.
“The 58-year-old allegedly sedated his victims before performing illegal operations on them. Most of the victims were allegedly from Lesotho and investigations are under way to establish how he lured them into the country… as well as his motive,” said Mulaudzi.
The women believed to have been the victims of the mutilation are unknown at this stage and police are searching for them. Only one of the women has been traced, Mulaudzi said.
Steyn said: “He’s been doing it for a long time because one the genitals were marked with a lady’s name, the place Lesotho written on it, as well as the year 2010.”
It is also believed that police seized a cellphone and a camera from the accused’s house, allegedly used to document the process in which he removed the labia and clitorises of the women.
“There’s a lot of charges we are investigating, like contravention of the Medicines Act for impersonating a doctor, and there’s a possibility (he could be charged for) pornography as we’ve got evidence of him exposing himself to women and there was no consent,” said Mulaudzi.
He said the Hawks were working together with the police’s Family Violence and Forensics Units to try to establish “the number of women those parts were coming from”.
The accused is expected in court again next week for a formal bail hearing.
IOL has not named the man because under South African law he should not be identified until he enters a plea.
@Karishma_Dipa
The Star and AP