Abrie Potgieter is Not Dead
Created | Updated Feb 10, 2005
The above statement contradicts the conclusion of a Gauteng coroner, who signed Abrie's death certificate in the March of 2004.
The authorities recorded an open verdict. In other words, they chose not to declare whether the deceased was the victim of an accident, of suicide or even of murder. Whichever applied, his departure was nonetheless spectacular. The chilling facts were reported at length in the press, for anyone to read. The public were, and still are, fascinated by the whole case.
The road tanker contained nearly thirty thousand litres of liquefied petroleum gas. Shortly before dawn on January 18th, it struck a bridge parapet on a remote Highveld road a hundred miles east of Johannesburg. Though apparently slowing just before the impact, it still collided with the structure at an estimated sixty kilometres per hour. The estimate is tentative, however, because most of the physical evidence was destroyed by the ensuing fireball.
The forensic team concluded that the explosion was not instantaneous. The slivers of windshield glass recovered from the top of the embankment proved this. They were of vital significance at the inquest, because analysis showed conclusively that the blood on them was Abrie’s.
Hurled into the windshield by the force of the crash, Abrie's body fell back into the cab. Moments later, the shattered and bloodied glass was blown outwards by the colossal blast, and some of the fragments were propelled beyond the range of the inferno that soon engulfed the whole scene. That, at least, was the inquest's version of what must have happened.
The unit belonged to Satoil and the man who should have been at the wheel was Abrie's nephew. Unfortunately this relative had consumed a great deal of alcohol the night before, in the company of his uncle and a couple of other men who were never traced. The dispossessed driver was severely admonished for his carelessness with the keys, but the police were finally satisfied that he had played no further part in Abrie's demise.
The destruction of Satoil's asset was complete by the time that its negligent custodian awoke. It burned for two hours, and spent much of that time at temperatures above a thousand degrees. Everything in the vicinity was consumed. The little fire tender that was despatched from the power-plant at Kendal could not get near it.
The upper part of the cab was gone completely by the time that examination became possible. Some fatty deposits and flakes of charred bone were found in what was once the footwell beneath the steering column. These might have been human residues. From the same general area came the fused remnants of a belt-buckle and a ring. Both of these were hesitantly identified by Abrie's next-of-kin.
It needed the DNA from the glass to convince the authorities, though. Abrie had plausible motivation for suicide, but he had even better motivation for contriving his own disappearance. He had already been interviewed in connection with a four million Rand payroll robbery in Benoni. By the time of the crash, the police were closing in.
They later found threatening e-mails, some incompletely deleted from his personal computer hard-drive and a couple still unopened. These were sent in the hours after the crash. Accomplices, as yet unidentified, appeared to be after their share of the stolen money. The investigation continues, and none of the money has been recovered. Only Abrie has been accounted for.
When all the evidence is considered, however, it is very probable that Abrie Potgieter did not die at all. Some of this evidence was not available to the inquest and indeed has still not been disclosed to the police. It is revealed here for the first time.
It is not possible to say with certainty how Abrie carried out his deception. Nonetheless, the recognition that a forensic examination would be thorough enough to find the scattered glass fragments was not particularly profound. It would also have been quite straightforward to draw some of one's own blood, smash a hole in the tanker's windscreen and mix the blood into some glass slivers, before strewing them at the top of the bank. The bone-dry soil of a Highveld January would bear no footprints. Planting the belt-buckle, the ring, the bone-fragments and some gobs of animal fat would have been easy, too. The biological matter could even have been burned in advance to ensure that it was beyond conclusive genetic examination.
The risky part would seem to have been in leaping clear of the cab just short of the parapet. If the tanker had detonated instantly, as it surely might have done, then Abrie would probably have perished after all. Presuming the requisite luck, though, the subterfuge becomes more straightforward once more. On a deserted road at dawn, there would be time to set light to a crashed tanker. A trail of fuel could be used for remote ignition, allowing an escape with safety. The intensity of the fire could be trusted to obliterate all traces of such devices.
In the end, though, it is not necessary to know the details of Abrie's trick to know that he survived. It is possible to say with absolute certainty that his accomplices did not kill him, and this seems to rule out the murder hypothesis. The accident theory was never plausible anyway, because Abrie had no motive for stealing his nephew’s vehicle unless it was to stage a deliberate inferno.
That leaves only suicide as an alternative explanation. Now, there is one thing that the police did not know when they searched his house, and concluded that no possessions beyond a set of clothes and a wallet were missing. Abrie had made a cash purchase only a couple of days previously, of a new set of motorcycle leathers, gauntlet and helmet. They have never been recovered, but they would be the perfect apparel for someone intending to leap from a speeding truck. And in addition to this, there is one other crucial fact that the police do not know. This last one surely clinches Abrie's survival.
The money isn't where we left it.
