Cape Town - A lengthy judgment against accused child rapist and killer Moyhdian Pangkaeker, is expected to culminate in a conviction for the man accused of eight-year-old Tazne van Wyk’s kidnapping, rape and murder.
Acting Judge Alan Maher paced through the trial evidence in the Western Cape High Court, where repeat offender Pangkaeker faces 27 criminal charges including 11 counts of rape, murder, three counts of common assault, three counts of sexual assault, two counts of kidnapping, incest and desecrating a corpse and absconding from parole monitoring.
Pangkaeker, who was arrested just days after Tazne’s disappearance, maintained his innocence throughout the trial after having pleaded not guilty.
The State, in heads of argument, argued that Pangkaeker concocted “fantasy” versions of the alleged criminal acts he had committed, including that of incest where he fathers a biological son with his biological daughter.
State prosecutor Lenro Badenhorst had submitted during closing arguments that one of Pangkaeker’s rape victims, a minor at the time and who had testified in camera, suffered “so many incidents that she became confused what happened in what sequence”.
Pangkaeker had allegedly lured the girl from her Clare Street home in Connaught Estate before he disappeared with her on February 7, 2020.
Tazne’s lifeless and desecrated corpse was found in a stormwater pipe near Worcester on the N1 after Pangkaeker had led police to the site. Her left hand, on which she had an operation scar, had been sawn off.
Badenhorst poked holes in Pangkaeker’s testimony relating to the charges he faced for Tazne’s murder, submitting that the evidence of the accused was “false” and he “could not consistently remember day-to-day what he said”.
In a plan hatched between police and a former lover of the accused, he was lured with the promise of R8 000, and was arrested on February 17, 2020 at Cradock in the Eastern Cape.
Cape Times