It’s been 13 years since six-year-old Kim Abrahams was brutally murdered, and her family says they hope police have not abandoned her case.
The family says they know the killer, and believe he can still be convicted if cops do a proper job this time around.
Kim went missing on the evening of 13 August 2005 after being sent to a neighbour’s house to borrow R5 for a loaf of bread.
She was found hours later, strangled and lying face down in a stagnant pool of water in the then “Bush of Evil” in the Hague, Delft.
Neighbour Jerome Holmes was arrested and charged for the murder, but in July 2009, he was acquitted at the Blue Downs Magistrates’ Court, as there was no DNA evidence or witnesses who could link him to the murder.
Cops discovered blood spots on Holmes’ T-shirt on the day he was arrested, was his own.
Holmes claimed he saw Kim’s father, Gerald Abrahams, carrying the child on his shoulder just after 9pm the night she vanished.
He claimed Gerald asked him to join him in the bush, and that Kim was making a “ gorreling” sound.
Cops arrested Gerald but released him again.
REMINISCENT: Colleen and Vincent Koeries. Photo: TRACEY ADAMS/ INLSA
Kim’s ouma, Colleen, 53, still has hope that the killer will be nabbed.
The granny says she still has a teddy bear which belonged to Kim in her lounge, together with her photograph.
“Kim would have been 20 years old this year, a young woman, and look how brutally her life was taken away,” she says in tears.
“The police failed Kim, they messed up the case. We know who the killer is, we know who did this to Kim.
“There is not a day that goes by where we do not speak about Kim. We miss her so much and we owe her this.”
She says the family has lost all contact with Gerald.
Police did not respond to queries by last Thursday evening.