Danie Krugel: A critical look at media claims

[For a summary page about all my Danie Krugel posts, click here]

Since Danie won’t let the machine be tested independently, the best we can do is to critically examine each reported success (and failure), using all the information available and some plain, old-fashioned common sense.

Please feel free to let me know of cases I have missed, or about any detail that could cast further light on these matters. I’m especially interested to hear from people who were actually involved in these cases.

The cases

With the exception of his own unconfirmed claims like locating his own son while working on the device, or the implied higher-than-average hit rate for finding diamonds in old mine dumps, I have been able to find the following reports regarding people or things that Danie tracked:

1. The body of an apparent suicide victim in the Pelonomi hospital morgue. Reported in the original Carte Blanche episode here. This is the first mention by Carte Blanche of Leon Rossouw, the renowned Bloemfontein cell phone tracker/private investigator. The very interesting bit is the fact that Carte Blanche lists Leon as the contact person with regards to the Danie Krugel episode, which implies more than occasional contact with Danie. I can’t help but wonder if Leon is a member of the mysterious anonymous ‘group of Bloemfontein businessmen’ behind the whole thing. Apparently these businessmen approached Danie (an ex-cop working as head of campus security at CUT), to develop a quantum physics-GPS-secret-power-source device to find minerals. Makes perfect sense to me
2. The cameraman from the original Carte Blanche episode. They fail to mention that the cameraman is an old acquaintance/friend of Danie’s. See my post regarding that case here.
3. Some oil hidden near a conspicuous dolomite hill, only a few minutes’ drive from where Danie waited in his car. Again, the same cameraman was probably present, and Danie had the cell phone details of the people hiding the oil. Remember his friend the renowned cell phone tracker? See my post regarding the oil here.
4. The daughter of a certain Dr Chadinha. This case in particular has reported elements that make cell phone tracking seem very probable. See my discussion here.
5. A murder suspect in the Navalsig area. Very vague information here, and in the original Carte Blanche episode here. Again, Danie’s contribution can very easily be explained by means of cell phone tracking or the use of informants and non-quantum physics detective skills.
6. A Ms van Zyl and her baby, who eloped with her boyfriend, as reported here. Careful reading will show that no-one was actually found in this case. Danie simply pointed the private investigator in the direction of Port Shepstone, where further investigation seems to confirm the presence of the trio. Again, cell phone tracking or normal, run-of-the mill detective skills are just so much more likely than advanced quantum physics.
7. Rayno Gouws, as reported here, and VERY importantly, here. The first is a neutral-leaning-to-positive description of how Danie supposedly tracked the missing person, from what seems to be a Danie Krugel fan site. See how it ends quite abruptly with no closure? That’s because the entire operation was a miserable failure on the part of Danie. The second is an interview with the mother of the missing man, who gives us the real story: How Danie sent her and her husband on an 8-month wild goose chase, while their son’s dead body was very much stationary in the Knysna forest. When confronted with the truth, Danie apparently became quite angry, and told the mother that forensic evidence regarding the time of death was a lie, and that it is impossible to tell when someone had died. It seems that Danie provided locations that closely follow those that the detective on the case found in his investigations by interviewing witnesses.
   
8. Madeleine McCann. Just Google it to see the incredible amount of attention this got. And the result: Absolutely nothing. Danie spent a lot of time, interfered with the local search, upset the parents, and eventually caused the media to have to apologise for sheer bad reporting. Piece together the parts of the fiasco here, here and here.
9. The last part of that article mentions another failure on Danie’s part, this time while working with the South African police to find the body of a missing police constable. His unwillingness to have the machine scientifically tested is also mentioned.
10. The Gert van Rooyen victims, as reported here. Do yourself a favour and read the entire thing. It is one of the best examples of bad science reporting, intentional misleading and the ability of a desperate reporter to make an hour of quackery and hot air sound like cutting-edge investigative journalism. If you don’t want to, then read Moonflake’s eloquently critical summary here (look for the bullet list). A stain on the Carte Blanche reputation, as pointed out here. Also, some of Danie’s most extraordinary claims to date: Tracking the ‘DNA’ molecules in almost 20-year old buried bones from 400km away. All this by using an equally old hair sample, with no roots and therefore no DNA other than mitochondrial, which would point to each and all female blood-relatives of the girl, all over South Africa. And don’t forget the helpful psychic that was called in. Would make for great comedy, until you see the interviews with the mothers of the missing girls. Also, am I the only one to think that
    1. you don’t need a magic quantum box to point to a deserted, semi-secluded field within easy driving distance from the killer’s house as a possible burial site, and
    2. you are almost guaranteed to find some bone fragments when digging in a deserted dumping ground that used to be a farm decades ago?

    Common sense people, common sense! The bone fragments turned out to not match the parents of the missing girls in any way. Thus, another resounding failure, but hailed by Carte Blanche as the biggest success story of all. More here.

11. The De Deur murder case. Very sketchy, leaves open cell phone tracking and normal detective skills as probable techniques.
12. Anisha van Niekerk, as reported here. Danie apparently gave two readings, but it still took a member of the public answering the call of nature to stumble upon the body. Another failure, but notice the lack of media coverage.
13. The body of Naledi Ntbele, as reported here. The body was found in a field criss-crossed with footpaths, only 800m from where the girl was last seen. Again, there’s no way to completely rule out plain old common sense and detective work.
14. Another failure: The search for missing pilot Dirk Booysen, as reported here. Danie’s coordinates were nowhere near the actual wreckage site. I cannot find the link to substantiate it, but a colleague who followed the entire thing says Danie at one point claimed the man was moving around and therefore alive. Imagine the emotional effect and eventual disappointment for family members.
15. The ability to detect cancer, as reported here, translated here. A Google search for Dr Frieda Pienaar will lead you here, where it is claimed loud and clear that she is also a firm believer in the healing power of prayer. So miracle believers endorsing miracle machines as science. And exactly how does Danie ‘load’ the machine with samples of cancer? More here, as always.

In each of the so-called successes reported above, cell phone tracking, fraud, normal detective work and just the willingness of worried people to want to see results where none exist, are far more plausible than a quantum-physics-GPS-DNA-finding box.

UPDATE 10 OCTOBER 2008: Support the initiative to stop Danie Krugel.