RedHanded - Episode 91 - Raymond Buys: "Not Man Enough"

Episode Date: April 25, 2019

On April 20th 2011, 15 year old Raymond Buys was pronounced dead. Some of the doctors who treated him were so traumatised by the injuries sustained by the emaciated young boy that they needed counselling to cope. But what really happened to Raymond at the Echo Wild Game Rangers Camp that promised to "make men out of boys" South Africa Expert & Accent Coach - Gita Du Toit Vote for us in the British Podcast Awards here: https://www.britishpodcastawards.com/vote   See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad-free. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. They say Hollywood is where dreams are made. A seductive city where many flock to get rich, be adored, and capture America's heart. But when the spotlight turns off, fame, fortune, and lives can disappear in an instant. Follow Hollywood and Crime, The Cotton Club Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hannah.

I'm Saruti. And Saruti's got a little announcement before we get going this week. Sounds like you're making me do it with a gun to my head because I was actually going to say, anyone who's listening and feeling like, shit, maybe Hannah's replaced Saruti with a younger, sexier, funnier smoker. She hasn't.

I just have a really bad chest infection. I wish. You wish, you bitch. You couldn't get anyone better than me. So, yeah, I have a chest infection. I feel so miserable. And it is Thursday night of the greatest weekend in British life. It is the start of the long Easter weekend. And I'm ill, so desperately ill. I could fucking cry. But before I crawl into my pit of self-pity, we are here. That's how committed we are, guys. No sick days at Red Handed HQ, I'll have you know.

Zero tolerance. Zero tolerance for illness. But no, before I do sink into that pit, I do have to remind myself of the case we're going to do today because it's fucking rough, guys. It's a rough one. It's as rough as my voices and it's not like it happened yesterday but i think it's uh it's a south african case so quite a lot of the coverage is actually in afrikaans so not that much of it has come over to britain so i think there might be or possibly even america i think it is quite an unknown one so i think we just better get on with it oh and welcome to red-handed by the way

forgot myself at the start broke with tradition no i welcome to red-handed by the way forgot myself at the start broke with tradition no I did also want to say to the guy who before we get into all the grimness to the guy who tweeted at us last week saying that my voice sounded really nice last week's episode you fucking jinxed me that's what's happened so yeah but with that let's get on with today's case oh another one other announcement I so sorry. I listened to a voice recording that Hannah's good friend, who is South African, recorded for us on how to pronounce all of these difficult words. I listened to it several times, but I am incapable of taking those words in. So I'm going to try my best. And anyone from that part of the world, just know, just because I'm pronouncing all of the words wrong doesn't mean I don't care. I just can't do it. Yeah, Geetz was so funny. Like I sent her a list of words being like, can you voice note me how to say these? And she was like, this is honestly the most ridiculous list of words out of context I have ever received. So we're trying. Be kind. In March 2011, 15-year-old Raymond Bice was admitted to a medical centre near Johannesburg in South Africa with 60 separate injuries, including broken bones, brain damage and severe dehydration.

His hair had been scoured off, the tips of his ears were missing and the rest of his skin showed chemical and electrical burns. He was emaciated, his kidneys were failing, and his entire body was covered with what could only have been cigarette burns. The injuries that Raymond Bice exhibited were among the worst the doctors at the centre had ever come across. They were so extreme that some of the doctors received counselling to help them cope with what they had seen.

Many of his injuries were over a month old, a clear marker of sustained abuse. Two months previously, Raymond had been sent to a camp that claimed to make men out of boys. He had been sent there by his mother, Vilna, in an attempt to discipline her wayward son. This attempt to scare Raymond straight would cost him his life. Just ten weeks after she dropped Raymond off at this camp, Vilna received a phone call from Alex Tukwerka. He was the guy who ran the camp. Vilna had trusted him with Raymond's life.

Tukwerka told Vilna that Raymond had been taken into hospital, but he gave no further explanation. During her son's time at the now infamous Echo World Game Rangers camp, Vilna had only been allowed to speak to her son three times, and only ever on speakerphone, while Raymond was stood next to De Quirker and his staff. When Vilna arrived at the hospital, desperate to see her son, she was told that he was unconscious, and that his injuries were so severe that the chances of his survival were virtually zero. Raymond Bice never regained consciousness and on the 20th of April 2011, the doctors were proven right when Raymond died. Vilna had been sent a

picture of her son by de Kwerker in the weeks before his death. And we'll post this picture on Instagram. He looks so thin. He looks emaciated. There are sores around his mouth. And to me, he looks quite obviously like he's in trouble. But this photograph of her emaciated son didn't seem to ring any alarm bells for Vilna. She just put the weight loss down to the training

that her son was undergoing at the camp. After all, it wasn't supposed to be easy. For me, this raises an eyebrow. You really have to see the picture, but I can't imagine looking at a picture of my son looking like that and feeling like there was no problem there. We'll put it on the Instagram, you can make your own mind up. But the question that we have to ask is why would a mother send her son to a camp like this? Many people entirely blame Vilna for Raymond's death. We're going to let you make your own minds up on that one. So in order for you to do that, here's what happened. Raymond was born in 1995 in Boxborough. It's about a half hour drive from Johannesburg. His dad wasn't around, but Vilna tried to give him the best start that

she could. Raymond caused his mum all sorts of bother when he was growing up. He was diagnosed with ADHD when he was just nine years old. He was prescribed Ritalin, but refused to take it. Raymond was also subjected to electrotherapy by a private physician, so literally attaching electrodes to his head. And apparently this worked for a little while, but didn't permanently solve any problems. Has it ever? Do they still do this? I think they do, you know. The image that you have in your mind when you think of like a horror movie set in a mental asylum. He's 15. I think he was even younger than that when they were doing that to him. I think he was about 12. Keep in your mind, this isn't a case that we're talking about from the 70s. This is, he was born in 1995.

Pretty scary stuff. I know someone who's got hyperhidrosis, like she sweats loads from her hands and feet. I won't say her name. And she went to some sort of electrotherapy thing where she had to just sort of sit in a bath and be electrocuted in her hands and feet to try and stop the sweat production from her hands. Wow. You can also get Botox injections to stop that, I think. Well, well i think she can now but i think when she was getting it done when she was because she's my age so when she was like 12 13 i don't think it was the same poor girl same situation then vilna was 49 and raymond was nine years old vilna met a man who would become her

long-term partner his name was heiss so if they got married and he took her name, his name would be Heiss Beiss. Let that sink in. I won't. You can't make me. So Heiss Beiss, it was a car salesman. And he provided Vilna with the stability that she was looking for. The couple had a child who they called Little Heiss. And like any child dealing with a new arrival and

a new centre of attention, Raymond found this adjustment very difficult. Vilna found it impossible to keep Raymond in school. He ran away often. He was argumentative and disrespectful at home. He started smoking and when he got really stressed, he would soil himself. And I think by anyone's standards, people do judge Vilna very, very harshly, and you will see why as the story goes on. But I do think in anyone's mind, this is quite a high stress family situation. And Vilna was certainly at her wits end. She had no idea how to control her son. And she had less of an idea how he would be able to function in the real world when he was older. This is where the political and economic climate of South Africa comes into play. Vilna and Raymond are Afrikaner. Afrikaans is their first language. And since the end of apartheid,

for obvious reasons, Afrikaner life has changed significantly. So just in case anyone listening doesn't know, apartheid was a political system that was active in South Africa from 1948 to 1994. That's just the year before Raymond was born. It was a system of segregation and discrimination based on race imposed by the white minority government. Everything was segregated. Interracial sexual relations and marriage were completely illegal. The comedian Trevor Noah, who's a mixed race South African comedian, he has a bit in his set about obviously being a mixed race child in South Africa and he talks about how his mum would have to drop his hand in the street because his existence was illegal. Fucking hell I mean if we talk about serial killers and we talk about people

who do the most depraved things but that kind of thing just proves how capable it is within all of us. Oh yeah. This is why on Red Handed we don't call people who are serial killers monsters because everyone's got the same stuff. The apartheid took the willingness of regular folk and their own self-interest to hold that. Legal doesn't always mean right. It's the argument I use with my mum. She's telling me I'm for something illegal. I'm like, well, apartheid was legal, mum.

Concentration camps were legal. You got it out of your system? Yeah. Good. Right. Sorry, we are off track already as ever. You're inspiring so many boners in our listeners. You're going to get some pretty sexy DMs after this episode, I think.

Do you think my voice sounds sexy? Why, thank you very much. I'm going to record that clip of you just saying that and send it off to Pornhub or something. I don't know. I do feel like I'm on some late night sex radio station, but I'm not. I'm here talking about segregation and apartheid. So the white minority in South Africa at the time of just 8% controlled 80% of the country's land. And there are way too many atrocities to count. But to give you a flavor of what life was like under apartheid,

the best example that we can give is an account we read from an Africana lady who was taught as a child that the pavement belonged to her, and if a person of color was walking on it, she was to stare them down until they moved. I don't think that needs any explanation. There you go. But after the end of apartheid in 1994, all that began to change. So when Wilma Bice told Damien Barr for The Guardian that, quote,

it's not like it used to be here. You can't just walk into a job. Make of that subtext what you will. It's also worth saying that the Bice family lived in a rural area. It's dangerous. Murder rates are high. And according to Heiss, quote, all the farmers are getting murdered. You hear about this a lot. Members of the right wing of South African politics call this phenomenon

a genocide. They claim that white farmers are getting picked off at alarming rates, meaning that some parts of South Africa are no longer safe for white people. And I do think it's important to say here, like we did when we were talking about the Stephen Lawrence case, is that I have no interest in just being like, well, Vilna was a fucking racist and so was High Spice. Like, that doesn't fucking get us anywhere. The point is, like we talked about with the Stephen Lawrence case and all the racism that was happening in Eltham, this is propagated and pushed forward as propaganda, exactly like Anna just said, by politicians. They want to keep you in control and the way to do that is to make other people the enemy and what easier way to do it than by the most distinguishing

feature that we have by the colour of our skin. So these people grew up in a rural part of South Africa hearing that all of their problems were because of this. So yeah of course their thinking is fucking stupid and flawed and backwards. But you have to think of where the blame really sits. And it's much higher up than Vilma. And you're absolutely right. Because that particular stat, the high murder rate stat comes from a guy called Peter Grunewald, who is the leader of the Freedom Front Plus Party. It's an Afrikaner party. And he claimed in 2017 that the murder rate on farms owned by white people was 133 per 100,000 people, whereas the national average is 34.1 per

100,000. And those numbers would be incredibly alarming if they were true. According to Africa Check, the murder rate for small farms is actually 0.4% per 100,000. So it's not even close to what Hunrold was claiming. But that's not to say that murder rates aren't high in rural parts of South Africa. They are. And the rural parts of South Africa are where many of these small white-owned farms are. But there's no evidence to suggest that that violence is ideologically driven. Katie Hopkins has also chimed in on this one, calling it anti-white racism, that's a direct quote, and this led to her arrest for spreading racial hatred. And also using the term genocide has been dubbed by the Southern Poverty Law Centre to be, quote, a lodestar for white supremacist

groups at home and abroad. So it's not just us. And if you don't know about the Southern Poverty Law Centre, and you're at all interested, they are a fantastic organisation. I would absolutely urge you to go look at their website. They have some amazing research on there. And we used it for things like the Dylann Roof case, and also this one. So the point is, for Vilna, Raymond was growing up in a very different world than the one that she had grown up in. She was 40 when Raymond was born. Mandela came to power in 1994. Vilna lived the vast majority of her life under apartheid. And obviously, we're not defending apartheid. The point here is that Vilna was concerned that her son would not

have the necessary skills to look after himself in what she perceived to be an ever more hostile world. Hostile to white people, we mean. When she was at the end of her tether with her son's behavior, Vilna's friend offered her a solution. Vilna had never heard of Echo Wild Game Rangers and the three-month training course for boys that the camp offered. Vilna's mate claimed that the course run by Alex de Kwerke had worked wonders for her cousin's difficult son. He had gone into it as a total nightmare and come out the archetype of an Africana gentleman. De Kwerke rather ominously and rather fucking cuntishly. That's the first C-bomb we have ever dropped on this show. I'm so irritable today.

I'm so ill. And if you're, you know, maybe like, well, she went a bit far. Dazley, you're listening to a story about a 15-year-old boy who died. So calm down. Did you see that guy who tweeted us? He was like, oh, listen to three minutes of Red Handed and turned it off immediately because they said fuck too many times. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I literally had to stop myself from tweeting back being like, oh, fuck, sorry. Fuck off. Fuck off. He's got my surname too. It's such a shame us Maguires can't stick together. Fucking jog on. I just don't give a shit. But anyway, if you're wondering, like maybe that guy was if I'd have gone too far.

Wait till you hear what this guy does. In addition to murdering a 15 year old boy he insisted that everybody call him the general quite sad isn't it and we certainly will not be doing that today no absolutely fucking not that's what he wants call him their poop deck scrubber i don't know enough about military lexicons i don't even know i just i don't know what a poop deck is it's just got a funny name but the thing is with this if you're wondering what really drew Vilna into this whole scheme, the best thing for her was that after the kids completed the three-month course, they weren't just sent off into the world. They would be offered a job working as a ranger in the park where the camp was based. And I totally understand why that is such a luring opportunity

for a mother. Like she's so worried about her son. He goes on this three-month training thing and then he gets a job. It's perfect. So Vilna thought that this sounded like the absolute perfect solution. The camp promised to transform her difficult son into an exemplary Afrikaner, and best of all, he would be employed afterwards. No more worrying for Vilna. But the course wasn't cheap. It cost 22,000 Rand, which is about like 1,200 quid. So it's expensive. Yeah, really expensive. So Vilna and Heiss were not wealthy, but they felt so strongly that this course was worth it that they took out a loan and got ready to send Raymond off to make a man out of him.

To this day, Vilna claims that she thought she was doing the right thing. She told the Telegraph, quote, I sent my son on this course to make him a better man, to give him a better future. I trusted Alex de Kuerke with his life. Heiss and Vilna visited the camp before packing Raymond off. Echo Wild, Game Rangers, is about an hour from Johannesburg, in an area called Muelander, I think. And like Boxborough, it's rural, and many farmhouses stand empty.

The couple were ushered into de Kuerke's study, which was adorned, unsurprisingly, with photographs of himself. He claimed to have trained over 300 boys, and every single one of them now had a job, most in the wildlife trade, and some were guards on farms. Heiss and Vilner signed Raymond over to De Quirker with a contract that promised We instill faith, discipline, rules and regulations, respect, hard work, hard education, tough physical exercise, bearing, literacy, numeracy, efficiency, reliability, teamwork, animal care and conservation and community defence.

I saw Hamilton last night, so I've been feeling a bit rappy all day. But it's the community defence bit of that long list that makes me feel the most uncomfortable. But again, it speaks to this idea of the Afrikaner community feeling as if they are under attack and no longer welcome in the land

that they call their own. It feels as if, at least in part, what de Koeka was promising at Echo Wild Game Rangers was not only employment, but a mini army of strong young men who are highly skilled and ready to protect their community should they need to. Feel like it goes without saying, but you can never be too sure, so here we go. All of the people that we are talking about in this story today are white, and the people that they feel under threat from are black. The paramilitary flavour of Echo Wild was further confirmed in their letterhead which read in

Afrikaans, but I'll just do the English, ex-military leaders. The walls of de Kwerke's office also sported an AWB flag. You'll have to look it up for the full effect but it really is not that far off a Nazi flag and the concerning thing, it's not supposed to be. And also when Hannah said that the letter had read, ex-military leaders, it's not ex as in former, it's ex as in the letter, ex. Yes, yeah. Just to be extra menacing.

As in American history, ex. Yes. And Vilna claimed not to recognise this flag and I find that incredibly difficult to believe. I don't think for a second she didn't know what that flag meant. I think for Vilna, it was just, whatever gets my son a job. Right. I don't want, I don't care.

I just care about my son. And that's it. AWB stands for, okay, this is the hardest bit of Afrikaans I've had to do yet. Geetha was like, don't eat any dairy before you record this. You're just going to be filling people's ears with like your disgusting phlegm. AWB stands for the Afrikaner Verstandsbeeren, I think, which in English means the Afrikaner resistance movement. And I asked our South African expert if they are neo-Nazis and she said yes, but they would never admit it. So the AWB first came to prominence in the 70s.

It was wielded by Eugene Ter Blanche, whose surname literally translates to white earth or land. Nuts, isn't it? I think that's a name we can safely assume he gave to himself. I don't know. How do you not think? Someone gave them to themselves. Someone did.

Maybe not him, but somewhere up the line, possibly. And what the AWB wanted was to instate a Boer state within the territory of the once Afrikaner Republic. And Eugene was a real character. He would frequently bring himself to tears at rallies whilst reciting his own terrible poetry. He's a real showman. Oh, yeah. He is really quite special. I watched a documentary about him, Nick Broomfield documentary. I mean, Nick Broomfield, a bit problematic,

but there's a documentary that he made about Eugene Terblanch and it's called The Leader, His Driver and The Driver's Wife or something like that. It's on 4OD. And he is just charismatic leader is a bit strong. He's just so ridiculously outlandish that you just sort of feel like, oh, how is anyone taking him seriously? But that's the point. I mean, he would even do like weird stunts, like falling off horses in public. Boer means farmer in Afrikaans. So like the original white Dutch settlers in South Africa would refer to themselves as a collective as

the Boer. So he would be like, I'm a Boer and that means like a warrior and I'm strong and I'm this and I can definitely ride a horse. I sleep in the stable with my horse like blah, blah, blah. And then he goes to a big rally and just falls off. All the falling off and all the weird behavior that he exhibits. Don't let that fool you. Eugene Ter Blanche was a teacher of hate, a terrorist leader. And the Guardian called him, in his obituary, a cross between Moses and Mussolini, which, I mean, I just don't even know what to think. I think that's the perfect description of him, honestly. Well done, The Guardian. Gold star for you. Gold star for The Guardian. So, Terre Blanche, as one might expect of a teacher of hate,

met quite a bloody end. He was hacked to death in his sleep in 2010. And since then, the AWB has never really been as strong. Terre Blanche famously said, whilst alive, that, quote, an unarmed white man is a dead white man. He preached that the Afrikaners were under siege and that they had to defend themselves and their culture at all costs. Terre Blanche and his followers in the AWB believed that the white man was made in the image of God and that any other skin colour was not. It's white supremacy in its purest form. And they're not just talking either. They're not just going to rallies and shouting about stuff. They are physically enacting these ideas as well.

The AWB perpetuated violence against the black people of South Africa for years. They did things like attacking women and children for using what they perceived to be an all-whites-only swimming pool. And that's only scratching the surface. In 1993, 3,000 members of the AWB and other far-right extremist groups stormed the Kempton Park World Trade Center. The building was being used to host multi-party negotiations to end apartheid during the country's first racially inclusive elections. And if that's not terrorism, I don't know what is. Whilst looking into Terre Blanche, I've been lurking in some pretty scary comment sections, and the most frequent argument I've

come across from his supporters is that he shouldn't get such a bad rap because his crimes were nowhere near as bad as those committed by the British in the Boer Wars in the late 1800s and early 1900s. I got detention at school for asking why we don't study the Boer War. I remember it so clearly. There's like a tight five line paragraph in the textbook about both Boer Wars. And I was like, why do we, why not? And apparently, I think it is taught in schools now, maybe, but like, it's not an in-depth sitch. No country teaches the bad shit about what they do, do they? No, because it is pretty bad.

Under the instruction of Lord Kitchener, who there is a statue of on Downing Street, by the way, South Africans were concentrated into camps where conditions were vile and disease was widespread. Lots of people use this as proof that the British and not the Germans invented the concentration camp. Although the British definitely have a lot to answer for historically, concentration camps, according to some, might not be one of them. At least not the initial concept of them right because herding your enemies into the same place and keeping them there is an ancient idea we're talking thousands upon thousands of years old but the first recorded

use of the term camps of reconcentration was actually during the cuban war of independence in the 1890s the spanish enclosed the Cuban civilians who were loyal to Spain in what was supposed to be safe areas. And 25,000 people died in those safe havens. In 1900, during the Second Boer War, concentration camps were instituted by the British to contain hostile civilians. I think that's the key difference. So mainly Boer of white Dutch origin. Black people were also interred in separate camps. We've read that 42,000 people died in these camps where diseases like typhoid were rife. 28,000 of those people were white. However, the record-keeping in the camps that house black people leaves much to be desired. So you may have to take that figure with a pinch of salt.

A case can be made for either the Spanish or the Brits inventing what we now understand to be concentration camps. I think the key difference is that the British imprisoned their enemies, but the Spanish misguidedly were interring their own in the midst of guerrilla warfare. The United States also used the concentration camp model in the 1900s, after they acquired the Philippines from Spain, and were met with a Filipino rebellion for independence. The US followed the Spanish model, and instated camps for their loyal civilians. Death and disease were widespread, however, in those camps.

And the reason the British camps in South Africa are more widely known about is arguably down to a lady called Emily Hophouse. Emily visited the camps and was so horrified by the conditions that she found there, she launched a campaign which eventually led to the camps being taken under civilian control and conditions greatly improved after this changeover. Also, I'm just like, everyone's at it now. Who isn't? I went to Cambodia. I went and saw all the atrocities by the Khmer Rouge. It was like within lifetime. And then people are like, you know, leaving signs saying like,

lest we forget. We do it constantly. But I'm like, there are people right now in concentration camps. We've already forgotten, lest we forget. I understand the sentiment. I'm not mocking that feeling. Of course, you're moved by it, but everyone's at it. It's happening right this minute. So I find it hard to believe like we can look back on that and say somehow something has changed. Anyway, I'm so emotional. I'm so emo. I'm so emo today. I love it. More emotional politics hour. The Facebook group just explodes. So, get this. The Ontario Liberals elected Bonnie Crombie as their new leader. Bonnie who?

I just sent you her profile. Check out her place in the Hamptons. Huh, fancy. She's a big carbon tax supporter, yeah? Oh yeah. Check out her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes her record as mayor. Oh, get out of here. She even increased taxes in this economy. Yeah, higher taxes, carbon taxes. She sounds expensive.

Bonnie Crombie and the Ontario Liberals. They just don't get it. That'll cost you. A message from the Ontario PC Party. He was hip-hop's biggest mogul. The man who redefined fame, fortune, and the music industry. The first male rapper to be honoured on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Sean Diddy Combs. Diddy built an empire and lived a life most people only dream about. Everybody know ain't no party like a Diddy party, so.

Yeah, that's what's up. But just as quickly as his empire rose, it came crashing down. Today I'm announcing the unsealing of a three-count indictment charging Sean Combs with racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, interstate transportation for prostitution. I was up. I hit rock bottom. But I made no excuses. I'm disgusted.

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post by a person named Loti. It read in part, three years ago today that I attempted to jump off this bridge, but this wasn't my time to go. A gentleman named Andy saved my life. I still haven't found him. This is a story that I came across purely by chance but it instantly moved me and it's taken me to a place where I've had to consider some deeper issues around mental health. This is season two of Finding and this time if all goes to plan we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding, and this time, if all goes to plan, we'll be finding Andy. You can listen to Finding Andy and Finding Natasha exclusively and ad-free on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

So Lord Kitchener, as well as the camps, also did some other fucked up stuff in South Africa. He employed scorched earth tactics. The British tilled salt into the soil so nothing would grow. And they also set farms ablaze. The Second Boer War ended in 1902, and it recognised British rule over the territory. The peace treaty granted amnesty to Boer soldiers. Out of this treaty came the government of the new Union of South Africa.

In 1914, the National Party was formed and it was under their rule that apartheid was enacted. The party disbanded in 1997. So the comment section dwellers argue that apartheid was a direct result of the British mistreatment of the Boer during the war, and specifically because the British employed black people as guards in the camps that housed white South Africans. The theory is that I've seen argued is that apartheid happened because white South Africans were afraid of black South Africans because of the British. And obviously, before you all implode, that's just a comment section. I am by no means saying that that is what all white South Africans think. To say that apartheid grew out of the concentration camps of the Boer War isn't

incorrect, but I do think it's reductive. White supremacy was already alive and kicking amongst the Boer and they didn't need too much help from the British. So there you go. History lesson concluded. Quiz to follow. I'll send it in the post. Talking about the comment section, can I tell you something really funny? Please do. I need to hear it. I mean, it is slightly racially tinged, but I found it quite entertaining. At work, we do this fun game at lunchtime where we do facts day. Well, not facts day. That sounds wrong. I don't know what we call it. We don't call it anything. We pick a different topic every day and then we have to tell each other facts on that topic.

Person with the best facts wins. Okay. I know. We're so funny. That sounds like my idea of a fantastic time. It's so funny. So we've done space. We've done the Mormons. We've done rivers.

We've done Ebola. Oh, I bet you absolutely smashed the Mormons. Oh, I did. Fucking won that round. So one day we were doing Genghis Khan, because why not? We like to go niche sometimes. So we were talking about this, and obviously the way that this works is everybody Googles Genghis Khan facts, and then we all end up on the same page,

and we just yell over each other the facts that we think are the best. So when we were doing this, my friend decided to go off the whole thing about him being related to like, is it one in every 10 like man in Central Asia or something ridiculous. I threw that fact out there. It was quite bait, but I like that fact. So my colleague then went, Googled that specific fact and came across a Daily Mail article, bullet pointed and everything. We've talked about how Genghis Khan is a mad shagger before on this podcast let's not pretend that this is the first time we're bringing this up but when he read that daily mail article he scrolled down into the comment section and there I just saw the most perfect comment my body is ready this is an article headline is Genghis Khan like wild shagga one in ten Asian men related to

Genghis Khan comment section daily mail ah I guess that's why they all look the same you've just destroyed me there you go and then the best thing that my colleague said though was huh it's got 37 likes and it had one dislike just the one the one socially conscious daily mail reader that just hides out in the comment sections being like no not allowed exactly just for the record I don't think we Asian people all look the same there are are so many types of Asian. We know this. I am one of you. Yeah, you can say what you like.

I'm keeping my mouth firmly shut. I also didn't say it. I just read it out. But anyway. That's true. There we go. Yeah, how dare you take credit for a joke from a comment section in the Daily Mail.

I'm dead. I'm dead. Oh, God. So let's get back to apartheid, shall we? All of the history stuff is relevant because Alex de Kwerke was not only a member of the AWB, he knew Eugene Ter Blanche personally. He was a member of the... Oh, fuck me. He was a member of the Jösterhütte, which translates to Iron Guard.

The Iron Guard was a paramilitary wing of the AWB. De Kwerke joined the AWB after he completed his two years of national service. And yes, I think in two years, you can all safely bet that he did not achieve anywhere near the role of general. I don't think he did in the Iron Guard either. Of course he fucking didn't. But de Kwerke retained his army uniform and maintained his camps

and the boys that he trained in a very military fashion. Of course he did. And there were usually about six boys living on the Echo Wild camp at any one time. But here there was no running water, no toilets, no electricity. De Kwerke promised desperate parents that this harsh discipline and harsher environment was to make men out of their boys. But was there a more sinister ideology behind Echo Wild? Some people say that it is actually a gay conversion institute, and others claim that it was an AWB training camp, one of a network of many secretly preparing for the war that Eugene Terblanch was so sure was just around the corner. Reports from the camp seemed to support this. Very little wildlife training appeared to be

happening. Even if it just stopped there, I could buy that. Why waste your time just traumatising children unless you were just an absolute sadist? Like, there is a purpose here. They know what they're doing. Yeah, they're not just learning how to, like, catch snakes. Exactly. And this idea was fully confirmed in a 2007 police report, which listed that the paramilitary-style training presented on this course was not normal ranger training. I'm not sure what normal ranger training consists of,

but I'm almost certain that it is not what befell Raymond Weiss. He was 15 on the 12th of January 2011 when his mum dropped him off, for what she thought was three months, but turned into forever. Everyone at Echo Wild Game Rangers was addressed by military rank, and they did a lot of endurance running, cutting grass with machetes and building of stone walls. De Kuerke had one special accomplice who was particularly active in doling out punishment. Once a student of the camp himself, Michael Erasmus lived in Echo Wild full time with his girlfriend. In 2011, Michael was 20 years old. De Quirker was well into his 40s. Michael Erasmus had escaped Echo Wild several times

after being physically assaulted by De Quirker. But every time, he was dragged back to the camp until, eventually, he stopped trying to leave. And if you can't beat them, join them. Erasmus and de Kuerke quickly targeted Raymond Bice as the odd one out in this particular cohort of trainees. He was by far the weakest in the pack. Raymond had ADHD and possibly other learning difficulties that we don't know about. He was perceived by Erasmus and de Kuerke to have an attitude problem, and he was also quite effeminate.

Raymond was the opposite of the masculine ideal, and de Kuerke was going to make him pay for it. According to Harald Oosdijsen, who shared a tent with Raymond during his time at Echo Wild, the torture of Raymond was relentless. Raymond was too weak to complete some physical tasks, so he was beaten with planks, pipes and sticks when he failed. Raymond was scolded with boiling water and beaten as a punishment for not completing chores by Michael Erasmus. Once Raymond knocked over a box of soap powder, Erasmus forced him to eat it, which obviously made Raymond violently ill. On a separate occasion, Raymond Buys was forced to pick up his own faeces with his mouth. Three weeks into his stay at Echo Wild, Raymond attempted to hang himself in the middle of the night. He was caught

though by camp instructors and every night after that, he was chained to his bed to prevent him from trying again. Vilna and Heiss had no idea what was going on at the camp. Heiss drove by one day and found it empty, but he just assumed that they were all out on field exercises and thought nothing of it. In early February, Raymond escaped the camp, but he wasn't free for long. One of Tukwerka's neighbours returned Raymond back to his abusers. On Valentine's Day, Alex Tukwerka turned up unannounced on Vilna and Heiss's doorstep. Tukwerka reported that Raymond was kicking up a fuss at the camp and not eating.

Vilna claims that she told Tukwerka to bring her son back to her, but Tuk said that there was no need he felt sure that he could win Raymond over later on Vilna would say quote I think they knew they were going to kill my boy and I think I agree with her otherwise why else come to the house he doesn't want to send Raymond back home but he goes all the way to the house to sort of like lay the foundations, you know? That's exactly what he's doing. Like he, because I wouldn't say that if he went there and said, you know, we're really struggling with him. I think he needs to come home. But he doesn't say that. He says, no, he doesn't need to come home.

I'm just letting you know that shit's going down, but don't worry, I'm going to sort him out. Yeah, he's just putting, he's planting that seed that there are problems caused by Raymond in Vilna's head. And he knew, I think, to sort him out. Yeah. He's just putting, he's planting that seed that there are problems. Right. Caused by Raymond in Vilna's head. And he knew, I think, at this point as well, there was no way that he was ever going to be able to return Raymond to his mother

without her knowing what they had done to him. So, like I said, he was laying some groundwork with this home visit. Tukwaka knew exactly what he was doing. He was arrogant. And like so many abusers, he could be incredibly charming when he wanted to be. So after his impromptu home visit, Dukwerka returned to the camp. Vilna still had a lot of questions,

and after she threatened to call the police if no one told her what was going on with her son, Dukwerka agreed to a call where Vilna would be able to speak to Raymond. But of course, as we know, this was on speakerphone, with Dukwerka standing to speak to Raymond. But of course, as we know, this was on speakerphone, with de Kwerke standing right next to Raymond. So what real chance did he have of telling his mum the truth of what was going on? But Raymond did manage to say, Mum, I'm not doing it to myself. But nothing happened as a result of this call. Raymond stayed at Echo Wild Game Ranges. On the 24th of March, Michael Erasmus stripped Raymond Bice naked and plunged him into a plastic barrel. Then he sat

him on a chair and covered his head with a pillowcase. Alex Dukirka then repeatedly tasered Raymond as he sat soaking wet and defenseless. I think they know at this point that there's no going back, like we said. But instead of, and obviously I'm not ever condoning killing someone, but instead of like, I don't know, poisoning him or suffocating him or doing it in some painless way so they don't have to pay for it, they fucking taser him to death. They're doing it to hurt him. I don't think death is the end game. No, no, this is what I mean. I just mean if anybody was like, they're killing him because they can't do anything else with him.

But they don't pick the easiest way to kill him. They pick the most fucking sadistic way they can think of, which just proves how sadistic they were. This wasn't something that got out of hand. And then they were like, let's finish it and slit his throat. They fucking taser him to death. After Dukerka had finished tasering the 15-year-old boy, he and Erasmus tied Raymond, naked and unconscious, to a flagpole.

So they're displaying him. They're not ashamed of what they've done. Soon it became obvious that Raymond was not going to be revived. So a panicked de Kuerke drove him to the nearest medical centre, 20 minutes away. From there they called Vilna Beiss. Initially she was told that Raymond was just in for some tests. When Vilna arrived she was told that she was not allowed to see her dying son because de Kuerke had told medical staff that Vilna was physically abusing Raymond. And as we already know, Vilna was also told on arrival that her son was not going to make it. To this day, Vilna claims that she had no idea what she was sending her son into.

And she has to live with that for the rest of her life. She sent him to his death. And I believe her. I think she's incredibly ignorant and she's incredibly naive. But she paid all that and she's incredibly naive. But she paid all that money to send him there. Why, if you just wanted your son to be horribly murdered? She thought she was doing the right thing. She's just very, very naive. Yeah, I agree. I think that school wasn't helping him. Private doctors weren't helping him.

She's desperate. She couldn't handle it. Yeah, she was desperate. You're absolutely right. But some people say that she should have known. Because shockingly, this wasn't the first time that Tukwerka had been responsible for the death of a teenage boy at one of his training camps. This had happened before. Are you ready?

Twice. Four years before Raymond Bice was driven unconscious to a medical centre, Tukwaka was charged with the deaths of two young men. That had happened under his care at another camp in Swartztruggens. Swartztruggens. I think that's a guess. I forgot to ask Geeta that one. Like it matters for me.

Under his care at another camp in Swartztruggens, a two and a half hour drive northwest of Johannesburg. So you'll see some people will report that these two kids died in Echo Wild. They didn't. It was a separate camp. So he was running a separate camp, shuts it down, moves on to Echo Wild. And just a few months apart, 18-year-old Eric Kalitz and 19-year-old Nicholas van der Vult died at this training camp.

Eric Kalitz was sent to the camp because he found it difficult to hold down a job, according to his sister Matilda. Eric had asked to leave the camp, but de Kwerke denied his request, telling him that he was not a moffie, and this is a homophobic slur, and he said that he would make a man out of him. This process of man-making left Gallitz with severe brain damage, which cost him his life. His family were informed of his passing via text message. His cause of death was listed as a seizure, then dehydration, but he actually died from bleeding on the brain. Months later, Nicholas met a similar fate at Tukwerka's camp

and we know a lot less about the circumstances of his death but we do know that his cause of death was eventually ruled to be a heart attack even though he appeared to have been strangled with a seatbelt. As you might have guessed from the slurs being thrown around by Tukwerka there are definitely gay reparative undertones connected to the camps that Tukwerka ran. We don't know whether Raymond, Eric or Nicholas were definitely gay, but they were perceived as such, and they were victims of homophobic violence. The young men were perceived to be unmanly by their peers,

and to be a man like that, as far as de Kwerke was concerned, that was equivalent to being gay. These camps may not have been the standard pray away the gay places that we are familiar with, but there's no doubt that it's in the small print. De Kwerke faced trial for the deaths of Eric and Nicholas. He received a suspended sentence for Eric's death. And unbelievably, he escaped charge for Nicholas's death entirely. Dukerka's own children were not taken away from him, and he was not barred from working with other people's children either. There was basically no consequence for two boys dying on his watch. Their parents even paid for the privilege. But one thing did come out of that trial.

Eugene Terblanch denied knowing de Kuerke, despite photographic evidence of them together. Terblanch also denied the existence of the Iron Guard, claiming that it had been disbanded. So there was no way that de Kuerke could have been running training camps. After Raymond Bice died, de Kuerke went on the run for a week before handing himself in. Just before his arrest, he released a statement on stormfront.org, the very same that we came across in our Dillon Roof episode. In this statement, he claimed to provide, quote, crucial services to protect the farmer's community. He described Raymond as cast away due to his rebellious nature by his mother and her boyfriend. They dropped him off at the gate.

They were willing to pay thousands of rand just to be rid of him. The young man's behavioural deviations were noticed immediately. He doesn't really explain what those behavioural deviations might have been. After their arrest, Quirka and Michael Erasmus were charged with the murder of Raymond Bice, along with child abuse and neglect. Their trial began in 2012, and they both pleaded not guilty. Tukwerka did all he could to delay the court proceedings.

He changed lawyers loads of times, and in a bizarre Bundy-esque move, he married his second wife right there in the courtroom. He thinks he is hot shit. He really does. He's like I've got away with this twice before what's going to be different this time? And if you take anything from the character of this man the whole calling him the general everything is he's so arrogant like so many abusers. And to Quirker's defense in court was a blanket denial of everything. He claimed to have no knowledge of Raymond's injuries and claimed that Erasmus

was a bully who carried out all of this abuse totally unaided and uninstructed. De Kwerke also offered to read transcripts of conversations that he'd had with Bice. He claimed that these conversations were recorded, but he didn't actually submit the actual tapes of evidence, which seems odd. Yeah, right. Why would you be like, oh, I've recorded these, but actually I don't have them. I'll just read them to you.

This is my Raymond Bice voice. Like, come on. And in these transcripts, Tukwerka tells Raymond to stop hurting and damaging himself. But I really don't think that they're real. They were, of course, just a flailing last attempt to look like he had Raymond's best interests at heart. How that was permissible in court is fucking beyond me. I have no idea. Tukwerka painted himself as, yes, a tough disciplinarian, but one with a heart.

He was trying to help Raymond. This soft portrait was soon shattered though, when Gerhard Oosvijsen... Gerhard Oosvijsen. There we go. The kid who had, like, and he is the kid who shared a tent with Raymond, until he took the stand and cried as he told the courtroom every detail of the abuse that he had witnessed. Tukwerka's own son, Anthony, renounced his father in court too.

He said that he was just telling, quote, blatant lies. Alex Dukurka took this quite badly, claiming that his son hated him and also blamed Anthony for Raymond Bryce's death somehow. Dukurka claimed that Raymond had burned himself with boiling water and refused to eat and cut himself with wire because he was mentally ill. When Michael Erasmus was called to the stand, he said that he had been abused by de Kwerke himself, who told him to hit Raymond to get him on the right path.

Erasmus claimed that he was simply following orders from a man who housed and fed him. He told the magistrate, if you don't think like Alex, you get hit. Erasmus also claimed that he had noticed Raymond's initial weight loss and expressed concern to de Kwerke, who just said that Raymond must have had AIDS. I really think de Kwerke thought he was going to get away with it. He'd done it twice before, and there were a great deal of people, this is important too, that didn't think he had done anything wrong. For him, he was providing a service. All Raymond, Eric and Nicholas were to him were collateral damage, too weak to survive.

But this time, de Kuerke was not going to get away with it. Magistrate Reiter Willemse, who oversaw the trial, called de Kuerke a pathetic witness, who didn't want to return Raymond to his mum for fear that he would lose money. Willemse ruled that Michael Erasmus, although only young, was not just following orders. He acted under his own initiative and his house and payment were an incentive to continue. On the 18th of April 2015, Alex de Kwerke was sentenced to 20 years for the murder of Raymond Bice and a further five years for child abuse. He has always maintained his total innocence, claiming that his only crime was trusting Michael Erasmus. Erasmus got a 12-year suspended sentence for murder. Today, Echo Wild Game Rangers doesn't stand empty. Damien Barr visited it whilst carrying out the research for his novel,

You Will Be Safe Here, which is dedicated to Raymond, and draws parallels between modern-day camps and those in which South Africans were imprisoned during the Boer War. When Barr approached the farm, he was met by multiple men, who told him that de Kuerke was in prison now, but they were keeping the camp for him until he got back. Some say that the resurgence of the far-right in South Africa is to blame for the deaths of Raymond Bice, Eric Kalitz and Nicholas van der Veldt. But I'm not sure that it ever really went away. If you can train people to hate a certain group of people because of something like the colour of their skin

and they can be conditioned to do that, this is like when you have vigilantes, when people will be like, oh, but they just do this. No, because people always spiral. How easy is it then to convince people, oh, now we also hate these guys because they're slightly effeminate and because they must be gay. Or maybe they are gay. And I think this is the theme that we see throughout this entire case. Yeah, I mean, it's just so sad.

Kids, man. kids man like it's and that's that archetypal idea of you know what the perfect man is and any sort of deviation from that being so unacceptable that it's not that much of a problem that you're dead like that's the really scary thing for me is that there are quite a lot of people that think Alex docker did the right thing of course because this is again that conditioning of if you can attribute a certain amount of value to people you can say that these people because of the color of their skin these people because of their sexual orientation these a certain amount of value to people, you can say that these people, because of the color of their skin, these people, because of their sexual orientation, these people, just because of their mannerisms, are deemed less worthy. Killing them, therefore, is not a crime. And that's the saddest thing, is how little the value of human life is when they see something that is just other enough. And that's just part of the human condition, but not to that extent.

Hopefully with you guys, our lovely listeners. So thank you so much for listening. I know that was a rough one. And also my voice is rough on your ears today, but we got through it. We did it. And if you would like to be part of the conversation, you can do so. You can follow us on all the social medias at Red Handed The Pod. You can also head over to patreon.com slash red handed and make a pledge to help support the show. It's massively appreciated. And also if you're listening on the day of release, we're going to be at a top secret location tonight,

hosting a Q and a with Joe Berlinger, who's the director of the new Ted Bundy film, which is called say it right. They're sponsoring. Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile. That's what it's called. So we're going to be hosting a Q&A after a screening of that tonight, and we are going to podcast it, and it will be out on the 30th of April, so make sure you check that out, courtesy of Sky Cinema.

And that is a bonus episode, so you are welcome. Yeah, it's not instead of a normal one. And Joe Berlinglinger the director he also directed i'm sure you guys already know you're screaming at me telling me to shut up he also directed the bundy tapes the ted bundy documentary that's on netflix so we have loads of questions for him and we're super excited so yes back to patreon thank you to these people you want me to do it smoky robinson thank you so much over to you victoria evelyn darren mccalpine katherine clemens ender striker tisha wells mildy kira lee ellie mason hannah rudman jacqueline

quach madeline doss emma scarpetta jamie lynn sweeney cindy redad lisa greely kendra megan clayton jj kristin otola kat Katie Kerwood, Alexia Gordon, Hannah Page, Jennifer Goering, Angel Jackson, Michaela Zurner and Meredith, oh no, Logilski. Sorry, Meredith. Thank you very much for supporting the show. Yeah, thank you guys so much. It's going really well. We will see you next week because I need to stop talking.

See you next week when Cerise will have a new voice, hopefully. Absolutely. Goodbye. Or maybe she'll have died and it will just be me. Oh, bold. Cool. Bye. You don't believe in ghosts? I get it.

Lots of people don't. I didn't either, until I came face to face with them. Ever since that moment, hauntings, spirits, and the unexplained have consumed my entire life. I'm Nadine Bailey. I've been a ghost tour guide for the past 20 years. I've taken people along with me into the shadows, uncovering the macabre tales that linger in the darkness, and inside some of the most haunted houses, hospitals, prisons, and more. Join me every week on my podcast, Haunted Canada, as we journey through terrifying and bone-chilling stories of the unexplained. Search for Haunted Canada on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.

Harvard is the oldest and richest university in America. But when a social media-fueled fight over Harvard and its new president broke out last fall, that was no protection. Claudine Gay is now gone. We've exposed the DEI regime, and there's much more to come. This is The Harvard Plan, a special series from the Boston Globe and WNYC's On the Media. To listen, subscribe to On the Media wherever you get your podcasts.