Cape Town – Moyhdian Pangkaeker, the 57-year-old father who was caught on camera with 8-year-old Tazne van Wyk hours after she disappeared from a tuck shop in Elsies River, has been found guilty in the Western Cape High Court.
Pangkaeker pleaded “not guilty” to the rape, kidnapping, murder and mutilation of 8-year-old Tazne van Wyk.
The little girl disappeared on February 7, 2020 as her parents made a plea to the nation for her safe return, not knowing that their daughter had already been killed.
Her body was discovered two weeks later, on February 19, 2020. She had been dumped in a stormwater drain along the N1 in Worcester.
Two days before she was found, Pangkaeker was arrested in Cradock for her disappearance.
The trial kicked off in May this year as the State set out to prove that Pangkaeker lured the little girl away from a tuck shop in Clare Street and travelled via Connaught Road to Parow Station.
Witnesses testified that Pangkaeker was seen with Tazne in Worcester, where the State argued that based on circumstantial evidence, she had been raped and killed by Pangkaeker.
Pangkaeker had testified that he had no knowledge of how Tazne was killed and denied that he took her without her parents’ consent.
He said the reason why Tazne had been with him was because she had joined him out of her own will.
This version, however, did not hold water, as Acting Judge Alan Maher rejected it as fantastical and wholly implausible.
Maher said that because he was the last person to see her alive, “The obvious conclusion to draw is that he knew Tazne was dead and he knew because he was the killer ... The only person who could have killed Tazne was the accused.”
Maher said the only conceivable reason Pangkaeker kidnapped Tazne was due to his “sexual predilection for young girls” and based on the facts, the State had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that he had raped, killed and mutilated the little girl.
Maher, in a judgment that took three days to deliver, described Van Wyk’s disappearance as the “catalyst” for the myriad other sexual offences Pangkaeker was found guilty of.
He noted that the widespread media coverage of Tazne’s disappearance and the image of Pangkaeker being sought in relation to her disappearance had prompted witnesses to come forward about the sexual abuses they endured years ago at the hands of Pangkaeker.
Pangkaeker was charged with 23 other counts of rape, assault, kidnapping, incest and sexual assault dating back to 2016.