Not too long ago, Showmax streamed “Catch Me A Killer”, an 11-part true crime series based on the high-profile cases from the ‘90s worked on by South Africa’s first criminal profiler, Micki Pistorius, in the 90s.
The first two episodes of the series were based on the Station Strangler.
While that was a re-enactment of real-life events, Nadine Cloete’s documentary feature, “The Station Strangler”, provides a more intimate look at one of the biggest cases in the country’s history.
Norman Afzal Simons, dubbed the Station Stranger, was a teacher suspected of killing 21 young boys and one adult between the mid-80s and mid-90s.
He was only convicted of one of the murders. After being behind bars for 28 years, he was released on parole in 2023.
After giving viewers “Action Kommandant”, Address Unknown, “Miseducation” and “Net Ons/Just Us”, Cloete makes a departure from her usual genre with this project.
She explained: “I became involved with IdeaCandy to direct a project. At first, I said yes because I wanted to work with IdeaCandy given their great reputation in the documentary arena.
“And when I learned that the project was ‘The Station Strangler’, it interested me because it was stuff I had grown up with.
“I haven’t done crime before per se. My previous work has been on beauty and identity. Crime might feel far off from those subject matters. But again, I gravitated towards it because I felt like I could still delve into identity issues within the story.”
Cloete continued: “The cases playoff between the late 80s and mid-90s because the perpetrator was caught in 1994. All of that plays a role with 1994 being a very important year in South African history.
“Also, the fact that the killings started around 1985-1986 and they started to only build Mitchell’s Plain around 1976.
“So when the killings started, Mitchell’s Plain as a community was only about 10 years old. And that community was made up of those who were forcibly removed and first-time homeowners.
“It’s a very interesting space where the story plays out and that shouldn’t be ignored.”
In this feature, Cloete revisits those troubled times for the community through the first-hand accounts of the people from the community, families of victims, the investigator and prosecutor on the case as well as media covering the story.
Raw footage of Afzal Simons walking his legal counsel through the treatment he received during his interrogation, news clips of the coverage of the court case, eye-witness testimony as well as the community outrage of being failed by the police, is included in the feature.
Cloete is grateful to have had Pistorius agree to be a part of the feature.
She said: “I mean this Station Strangler case was the first she had worked on and it was the first that the South African Police had included a criminal profiler on. In that sense, it was quite a historic moment in terms of investigation and South African policing.
“Meeting her was quite a moment. That interview, for me, was quite challenging because she goes into the mind of the serial killer and takes you on a journey with her as she explains various theories, how she came up with a profile, and what the clues at the crime scene told her. Things become a lot more real when speaking to her.
“I think she framed that picture well. Throughout the documentary, we want to paint quite a nuanced picture even of the perpetrator, saying nothing is black and white.”
Cloete continued: “We wanted to have a layered approach when it came to the community and how we addressed Norman Simon.
“I think what was interesting about Micki when she started working on the case was that it was also the first time that they released her profile to the public.
“It was widely publicised in newspapers. It narrowed things down quite well for the community.
“She said this would be someone who knows the community well. This would be someone who would be like a teacher or a pastor or such a figure.”
On delving into such a sensitive topic, especially for the families of the victims and the Cape Flats community, she noted: “I think those wounds have never been closed. Living in the communities that we do, the understanding is that you have to move on after the trauma but you are constantly being re-traumatised.
“I tried to make the interviews as collaborative as possible with the retelling of their experiences. If they wanted to talk more about Norman, they could,
“There are people who have done interviews that said it would be too overwhelming to see the film.”
Cloete said that although there were specific families whose family members were killed, it left an entire community disrupted and broken. Even those dunes that became the Station Strangler’s graveyard were where kids used to play.”
Cloete tried to encapsulate the fear that plagued the community and robbed children of their freedom to play outside.
Although she got lead investigator JD Kotze and Dr Allan Boesak on camera, too, she had other pertinent names on her wish list.
The director shared: “We couldn’t interview Norman’s family due to the conditions of his parole. I would have liked to speak to him but that was not going to happen. Maybe in the next 10 years, once his parole conditions are relaxed, one should try again.
“I would have liked to speak to more families. We spoke with three families. It would have been great to interview more people are hear different experiences. Koos Louw, his lawyer, has passed on. I think that would have been someone great to interview.
“Some people in the police force didn’t want to give an interview as he went on a point-out missing, which is in the film. So voices like that would have been great.”
IdeaCandy, synonymous with award-winning and compelling documentaries à la “Devilsdorp”, “Rosemary’s Hitlist”, “Stellar Murders”, “Tracking Thabo Bester” and “School Ties”, delivers another gem of a documentary.
It doesn’t merely present the facts as we know them to be, it also raises questions about the Station Strangler’s innocence as there was circumstantial evidence connecting him to most of the killings.
The crime genre might be foreign to Cloete but she has done such a commendable job that she can proudly add this new forte to her portfolio.
∎ “The Station Strangler” is streaming on Showmax.