Welkom satanic murderer’s letters sold on internet

The sadistic and spine-chilling letters are fetching between R350 and R650 on an American website

Letters and signed photographs of Chané van Heerden, which appeared for sale on the website Serial Killers Ink as “memorabilia of an occult murderess”, have opened up old wounds for her family and the victims’ family.

The website, Serial Killers Ink, belongs to Eric Holler (Eric Gein) of America. It is described as a website that memorabilia and art of convicted serial killers are sold and serves as a meeting place for people who are interested in such atrocities and related paraphernalia.

Van Heerden and her fiancé, Maartens van der Merwe, were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Michael van Eck in 2011.

Van Eck, according to descriptions in the letters on the website, was lured by the two to the Welkom cemetery, where they cut off his limbs and removed his eyes. The skin of his face was then peeled off with a technique that Van Heerden learned from her step-father when they went hunting.

It is believed that Van Heerden wrote the letters to someone after she and Van der Merwe committed the gruesome murder.

In one of the letters Van Heerden said she personally believes everyone has dark fantasies of their own. She added that she hopes the recipient of the letter gets a chance to experience every fantasy he or she has, whether good or bad. She also expresses the hope that the person who will read her fantasies should do so without criticism or judgment.

The letters prices range between R350 and R650. Van Heerden’s parents expressed dismay over the letters and pictures on the internet.

“Only recently our lives started being normal. Now everything is being uncovered from scratch.”

According to her father, the items looks like evidence the police took during the investigation, which mysteriously went missing from the docket. He said that the handwriting on the letters looked like Van Heerden’s, but the signature on the photograph that was sold for R1 500, is definitely fake.

Questions are now being asked about how the documents ended up in the possession of the owner of the website.
According to police spokesperson, Captain Stephen Thakeng, assistance has been called in from the police’s cyber crime investigation unit to assist with the investigation.

Van Heerden’s parents, Van Eck’s parents and several police officers who were involved in the murder investigation, have since declined to cooperate with several writers who want to write a book about the sordid saga.