Urban's 02: Psychic Traditional Cache

This cache forms part of our Urban's Series which follows unsolved mysteries, Urban legends & unexplained events in Durban and surrounds. For a full list of the caches in this series click here

Urban's 2: Psychic

Look at a local newspaper in February 2013, and it is all about the Oscar Pistorius case. The level of obsession was the same back in 1957 when it was the Clarence van Buuren case. The vicious murder of Joy Aken (18) by Clarence Gordon van Buuren (33) in 1956 made news throughout South Africa, and many of the questions it raised still remain unanswered.

Joy lived with her parents in Old Main Road, Pinetown. Back then, Pinetown police station was right next door to the Aken home. Van Buuren lived in Pinetown Flats on the opposite side above the tearoom. He worked at the Umgeni Power Station in Pinetown until he was fired for theft and then worked in Smith Street as a rep, with the position came a 1951 Ford Anglia. Joy worked nearby at British Motors. On October 2, 1956, when Van Buuren saw her sitting at the bus stop, he offered her a lift in his company car. Joy knew him slightly so she accepted – she wanted to get home early so she could attend dancing lessons. Joy left work that afternoon and waved goodbye to two friends as the Ford turned into Aliwal Street with her aboard. That was the last time anybody except her killer saw her alive.

A picture of Joy Akens before she was murdered.

Eight days after Joy's disappearance, her brothers visited a well-known psychic, Nelson Palmer, who lived at 11 Cheriton Drive in Pinetown (On the corner from where the cache is placed), a stone’s throw away from the Van Buuren and Aken homes. It was afterwards reported that Palmer, in a trance, stated that Joy’s body would be found in running water, about 60 miles down the South Coast. The next day Palmer and Joy’s brothers drove down the coast, and after searching for a while in the wrong place moved downstream, where Joy’s body was discovered, pushed into a culvert. She had been shot a number of times and then mutilated.

Psychic Nelson Palmer helped Joy's family find her body.

Van Buuren lay low until October 11, when he emerged from the bush behind Pinetown High School while police were searching the area, and fled across the school sports field towards Old Main Road. Shots were fired and Van Buuren dropped his pistol and surrendered. From there he was marched straight across the road, through a hostile crowd of local residents, to the police station. Van Buuren’s defence was a pack of lies from beginning to end. He claimed that, even though he was giving Joy a lift home so she could leave early for her dance lessons, he’d stopped off at a pub on Durban’s beachfront after picking her up, leaving her alone in the car. He said when he wanted to leave after an hour or so he discovered the car was missing, and thinking Joy had taken it, he went back into the pub for a few more drinks. When he emerged again he saw the car was now parked near where he’d left it, and when he opened the door Joy was lying dead on the floor behind the front seats.In a panic, he drove around for the rest of the night, stopping at a petrol station and various pubs where he consumed numerous brandies, before dumping her body where it was found south of Durban. Of the mutilation he knew nothing.

Clarence Gordon van Buuren on trial

The Judge President of Natal, Mr Justice Broome, sitting with two assessors, didn’t believe his story, and sentenced the murderer to death.Van Buuren was hanged on June 10, 1957, the day before his 34th birthday. He was tried, found guilty and hanged, protesting his innocence right up to the gallows. To this day, nobody knows exactly where Van Buuren killed Joy, or what happened between when he picked her up at work and when her body was discovered.