WARNNG: DISTRESSING CONTENT Alison Botha, 27, was kidnapped, assaulted and almost decapitated by a pair of psychopathic devil worshippers who left her looking like a “creature”
Alison Botha was just 27 when she was kidnapped, raped, disembowled and had her throat slit 16 times – but managed to survive thanks to her bravery and quick thinking.
She was on her way home from seeing her friends in her hometown of Port Elizabeth, South Africa in December 1994, when a stranger jumped into her car just as she pulled up outside her house.
“You live in number one, don’t you?”, he disturbingly asked.
The intruder was Frans du Toit, a serial rapist who was out on bail after having previously kidnapped and violently assaulted two other women. Du Toit had also been diagnosed as a psychopath and narcissist, and had confessed to worshipping the devil.
Du Toit demanded control of the vehicle and threatened Botha’s life, telling her his name was “Clinton”. When she told du Toit just to take the car and leave her alone, he told her he “wanted company”.
Commandeering Botha’s car and driving them both around the neighbourhood, du Toit passed his friend and accomplice in his previous convictions, Theuns Krugeras, who was waiting for them by the road. Du Toit slowed the car and let Krugeras get in, telling Botha, “Theuns doesn’t speak good English.”
From there, Du Toit drove the three to a quiet, forested nature reserve and stopped the car on a sandy embankment. He dragged Botha from the car and threw her to the ground before brutally raping her.
Krugeras began assaulting her too, but shouted, “No, I can’t do this,” and called out the names “Frans”. Botha, realising “Clinton” had been a pseudonym, was determined not to forget this name.
Once the assault was over, du Toit said to Botha, “If we take you into town now, you’ll go to the police.” He then asked Krugeras, “What do you think Oom Nick would want us to do with her?”
“Oom Nick” is the Afrikaans name for Satan. Krugeras replied: “I think he wants us to kill her.”
The pair then callously attacked Botha. Du Toit choked her until she was unconscious, apologising as he carried out his attack.
When Botha regained consciousness, she felt a man’s arm around her face and a searing, tugging pain across her neck. Du Toit was slitting her throat. He would make 16 cuts in total, almost ripping Botha’s head from her body.
Botha gruesomely recalled: “I tried to hold my breath, but I realised I had no control over my breathing. I moved my hand to cover my neck [and] my whole hand disappeared into it.”
The violence, after a short while, stopped. One of her attackers asked the other if he thought Botha, lying on her stomach on the ground, was still alive. “No one can survive that,” the other responded.
The pair left Botha, still aware of everything happening to her. Remembering the names she had heard, she carved the words “Theuns” and “Frans” into the sandy ground, as well as the words “I love mum”.
She recalls seeing herself from an out-of-body perspective: “It was as if I’d cut moorings. As I hovered there, I recognised the person down below. I knew it was me, and I felt such a strong connection to that bleeding, mangled girl lying on her stomach.”
Then, Botha noticed lights in the distance – a nearby road, which was closer than she had originally believed.
Realising this was her chance at survival, she pushed herself to her knees but felt something “tepid, wet and slimy” slide from her stomach.
She looked down and realised her attackers had also slashed her stomach so deeply that her intestines were leaking from her body. “It was horrifying,” she said, “there was just so much of me on the outside. I tried to scoop it all up with my hands but everything just slithered away again.”
Naked, with her half-decapitated head falling almost to her shoulder blades and keeping her intestines barely inside her with a piece of cloth, Botha crawled toward the light.
She waved, and a car thankfully stopped. She heard a woman scream in horror as a young man, Tiaan Eilerd, crouched beside her. Eilerd was a vet and had been on his way home from visiting friends, just as Botha had been just hours before.
Using his medical knowledge, he checked Botha’s vital signs and helped slow the bleeding. He described Botha as resembling “a creature straight out of a Dickens novel”.
Miraculously, Botha survived. Du Toit and Krugeras were arrested and sentenced to life in prison in 1995, although in 2023, both were released on parole.
This decision caused such an outcry in South Africa both were rearrested soon afterwards and had their parole revoked, the first time this had happened in the country’s history.
Du Toit complained about Botha choosing not to forgive her attackers and that the ordeal had traumatised him.
Botha, who wrote a memoir and a film about her experience, hoped her story would help inspire others.
“I have always hoped that by sharing my own journey with others, it would give them hope and courage for their own,” she said.
“To have my story and ultimate triumph shared means that so many more people can see the power of choice that we each have; and might also choose to triumph over life’s hardships.”
