Mystic pizza

Today I got the information I need for two massively huge, earth-shattering stories.

The downside is that the source of these impressive scoops is somewhat dodgy: a woman who refers to herself as a mystic.

She describes herself as a "weird" woman with psychic powers that enable her to see exactly what happened to murdered people, missing kids and the like. She can channel the dead - either in person with you present, over the phone or via skype. It seems technology has aided telepathy indeed. At a price of course. A heft one actually: R700 for her to remove spells, R1 500 to take bad energies out of your house and R700 to speak to your child's invisible friend for 45 minutes. In English or Afrikaans. Payment in Rands, Euros, Pounds or dollars.

She works from her home in Alberton and apparently solved both the Leigh Matthews and Sheldean Human murders although the top cop credited for the successes pretends he doesn't know who she is. She has sessions with clients all over the world apparently and is apparently one of only three people on the planet with her level of psychic abilities. Last week she led the cops to the body of a murdered woman and the killers. The reports I have seen on the murder make no mention of her and refer only to ordinary detective work for the success, but I have not yet followed this up with the police themselves so it all could be legit.

It was while getting the whole lowdown on the murder she solved in Joburg's southern suburbs that I slipped in some subtle questions that gave me the info for my two big scoops.

Mystic: Yes, I have solved a lot of murders. The police call me up all the time and I just work through another dimension and connect with what happened. I can't really explain how this works.

Jozi Journo: So do you perhaps know what happened to the six missing girls that everyone thinks Van Rooyen snatched.

M: Well, I have never, ever told anyone this before. But one day I was on holiday in Durban when a woman came up to me on the beach and asked me to go somewhere with her. My husband didn't want me to go, but I knew I would be fine and told him not to worry. This woman put a blind fold on me and took me to somewhere I don't know and introduced me to a man. I knew immediately he was one of Gert van Rooyen's victims who had never been identified and had been hiding since he ran away from home as a child. He told me all the things Gert and Joey Haarhoff used to do to them - torture, electric wires on their private parts and rape them and horrible things like that. Gert murdered those girls and took them to a funeral parlour up the road from his house where he hid them in coffins underneath the bodies of dead people, so they got cremated and the bodies will never be found.

JJ: Ooookay. So why does this guy not want to tell anybody else his story? Why would he not want to give the information to the police, or the families?

M: Well, he's very freaked out mentally and I did promise him that I would never, ever tell anyone about him. And also he is still scared because there were other people involved.

JJ: And would you perhaps know what happened with Madeleine McCann?

M:Yes. Her uncle did give me a call and I told him to have them spray the flat with luminol and they would see the child's blood everywhere. Those two guys you saw on the TV after her disappearance, those are the ones who killed her. I saw them throw her body overboard on a boat somewhere. So that's why she has never been found.

So there you go - two of the biggest mysteries clarified.

Why would I doubt her?

When I was leaving she said she also runs a non-profit organisation that feeds white children. She often takes clothes and food to one of the houses nearby where these destitute children stay, and the woman looking after them apparently gave her a funny feeling. She couldn't put her finger on what was wrong til she went there at the wrong time one day and bust the woman selling the clothes that were meant for the poor white children. AND she suddenly saw that Albany was giving the woman "200 breads every day", which the woman was also selling. Could I please investigate this matter and expose her?

So I am thinking that someone who charges lots of money for her insights - more than a psychologist in fact - should have been able to pick up on that one!

I asked her for the Lotto numbers. Seems she can't see these. Her psychic powers however do enable her to predict winning horses, but she only ever betted once to win the R16 000 she needed to divorce her first husband.

I am not sure how I am going to write up this story!!