S01.E07: Stewart Wilken

[Snazzy Daisy]

Quote

In Port Elizabeth, a missing boy sparks a frantic search. Micki arrives to testify in the trial of the 'cannibal killer,' Stewart Wilken. However, the sensationalized press complicates her efforts.

Air Date: February 21, 2024

[Snazzy Daisy]

Micki is struggling with the fact that she couldn’t hate these killers. Hate the sins, not the sinners.

Boetie Boer, the cannibal killer. He killed 6 children (5 boys + his daughter) and 4 adult women - all prostitutes.

The profile of Boetie Boer is uniquely creepy:

• He has oral fixation due to extreme sexual abuse he endured as a young child.
• Abandoned by his mother at 6mo. He wasn’t breastfed. He mutilated the victims’ breasts to get to the milk, symbolically.
• He ate some of the nipples. Cannibalism is also associated with oral phase that takes place between birth and 2yo.
• He killed 2 distinct types of victim. Prostitutes - women who resembled his mother. The young boys - represented himself. Killing them, he’s effectively killing the child he once was, over and over again.
• In early age, he learned to act in sadistic ways as a defence. He frequently bit his foster mother and went on to the same on his victims. They were bitten on toes, breasts, genitals.
• He also has a fixation in the anal phase of development, hence sodomizing the victims.

Stewart Wilken is currently serving seven life sentences, running concurrently. His hallucinations and belief that the ghosts of his victims are haunting him continue. In 2022, at the time filming, Wilken applied for bail after 25 years in prison.