A BELLVILLE family are living a nightmare as the body of a 94-year-old mother remains missing after six months.
After the death of Rachel Trussell on 18 August 2024, her children wanted to give her a dignified burial.
But having believed she was cremated, they discovered they were given a stranger’s ashes.
They were then told that she was buried as a pauper, only to learn that someone else was in fact in her grave.
Undertaker Petrus Booysen of St Francis Funeral Services was arrested last week by SAPS detectives and made his first appearance at the Kuils River Magistrates Court on Friday, on five charges of fraud and was granted R1 500 bail.
He is expected to be back in the dock on 14 March 2025.
Trussell is one of the five persons who police and the State believe was allegedly buried in a pauper’s grave in Welmoed Cemetery in Kuils River.
But her family are yet to learn where the ouma’s remains are.
Trussell’s granddaughter, Wendy Damon and daughter, Freda Fortune said their suspicions were raised shortly after receiving three cremation certificates.
By 11 September 2024, the family received what they believed was their mother’s ashes but did not have a cremation certificate, only an apparent reference number which they later learnt belonged to another deceased person.
Fortune says: “I even placed candles around these ashes believing it was my mother’s.
“We had planned to bury her at the family plot, Gate 5, Maitland Cemetery but were told the area was water logged and that it was better to do a cremation and that we could bury the ashes there once we got the grave booked and the cremation certificate.”
Booysen had allegedly stored bodies at Blackheath Mortuary and removed five bodies on 18 September 2024, as the fridges were to be shut down.
But later the family learnt that her body had only been removed from Blackheath Mortuary by 26 September 2024, long after the other persons were buried as paupers at Welmoed Cemetery.
They also discovered that Booysen had allegedly stored ten bodies at another mortuary following the shutdown.
The family said they were informed by police that Booysen had allegedly asked a cemetery worker to exhume the body of Trussell as he had mistakenly buried her as a pauper and that the worker had refused to do the job.
Fortune says: “We want to know where our mother is.”
“If he [Booysen] only removed her body on 26 September 2024 from Blackheath Cemetery, whose body was buried in the grave the City records shows as our mother’s?”
The City of Cape Town also confirmed the matter was being investigated by police and said they would not be commenting at this stage.
Police spokesperson Captain FC van Wyk has confirmed Booysen was facing five counts of fraud.
