Unsolved Murders SA is a new podcast series that explores the most intriguing cases that continue to puzzle South African police.
Unsolved Murders SA: Who killed Priscilla Du Toit?
In the first episode of our new podcast series, we delve into the complex investigation into the death of 41-year-old Priscilla Du Toit, a fitness guru whose battered body was found inside her Fourways residence, on Thursday 17 October 2019, three days after she was last seen alive or heard from.
According to reports by Douglasdale police, the fitness guru was murdered in the late evening on Monday 14 October 2019.
To put everything into context, let’s revisit the facts of the case that were provided to us by members of the Du Toit family.
The last time anyone heard from Du Toit was on Monday 14 October 2019. At approximately 21:46 she had posted an excerpt from Steven Furtick’s sermon about purpose, on her Facebook page.
Between then and when her barely recognisable body was discovered three days later, Du Toit was met with an extremely violent end to her promising life.
Neighbours had stumbled on the gruesome discovery on that Thursday morning and alerted Douglasdale police. At the crime scene, Rosslee was with his mother Freda and close friends of Du Toit, including three males who had a personal relationship with the deceased.
Alarmingly, responding officers did not cordon off the scene. Unauthorised people were granted leeway to trample all over the evidence and according to Rosslee, the forensics team did not even bother to collect the victim’s broken nails that were strewn all over the floor.
“We had to package the broken nails and send them in at the police station begging the guys to have a look at it for foreign DNA,” the brother claimed.
Sure enough, 17 days later, when national’s homicide unit reconstructed the crime scene in search of forensic traces, none were ever found.
This, we’ve come to understand, was due to the fact that Du Toit’s home was cleaned by domestic workers on multiple occasions in the days after her body was removed from the crime scene.
“Can you believe that no fingerprints were ever taken? I mean, not a single fingerprint was lifted by those guys. Tell me, how is that normal?” Rosslee charged.
With no physical evidence acceptable in a court of law, no concrete suspects and very few people willing to come forward with information, Du Toit’s murder investigation has hit a dead-end.
For the family, a year has passed and the hope of finding closure in the loss of a daughter and a sister is slowly diminishing.
Du Toit’s death, much like cases of many South African women who die in the hands of unscrupulous men, remains unsolved.
