Moehydien Pangaker, accused of the 2020 rape and murder of eight-year-old Tazne van Wyk, on Wednesday pleaded not guilty at the Western Cape High Court.
The trial finally got under way after it had been delayed since May 2021. The National Prosecuting Authority said on Wednesday that parts of the trial would be heard in camera because of the sensitivity of the case.
Pangaker faces 27 charges that include kidnapping, raping, and murdering Van Wyk.
The previously convicted criminal also faces other charges of rape, assault, kidnapping, incest and sexual assault that also involve minors and dating back to 2016.
The young girl was last seen walking to a tuck shop near her Connaught Estate home. Her attacker, who is believed to have lured her, was arrested a week later in Cradock in the Eastern Cape.
On parole at the time of Van Wyk’s murder for the crimes dating back to 1981, Pangaker led the police to the girl’s mutilated body in a stormwater pipe along the N1 highway near Worcester in the Western Cape.
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