“Stephan must simply stick to his story. The man with the most money will win the case.”
These were among the strange words and behaviour of Dr Lawton Vosloo of Jeffreys Bay two days after the deaths of his son and his son’s fiancée in the controversial Kareedouw murder case. The Hoon family say these remarks prompted them, already after the joint funeral service, to seek the assistance of renowned private investigator Mike Bolhuis. When it became clear that Bolhuis’s services would be too expensive, they appointed another private investigator, Leon Rossouw, to allay their fears and attempt to find answers to troubling questions.
These revelations by the traumatised Hoon family come a week after sentencing in the contentious case in which the well-known Kareedouw farmer, Kevin Pretorius (53), was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment without bail for the alleged “gassing death” of Jéan Vosloo (25) and Mari Hoon (28) in the shower of the popular Kouga Kliphuis on Pretorius’s family farm, Zuuranys.
Pretorius’s neighbour’s son, Stephan du Plessis (now 30), discovered the couple in the shower on the Sunday morning after he had invited them, with Pretorius’s permission, to come and braai and relax there free of charge, even though the Kliphuis was officially closed to guests during the Covid-19 lockdown. Pretorius has been held in the high-security St Albans prison since last Friday while awaiting a court date for his new legal team’s appeals against the conviction and sentence.
Sakkie (66) and Maria (61) Hoon and their two daughters, Michelle (40) and Suné (36), have for five years carried a double burden of disturbing questions and uncertainties surrounding the strange death of their beloved youngest daughter and sister.
Since the rapid cremation and joint funeral service on 2 May 2020, arranged by Dr Vosloo and his wife Christel in Jeffreys Bay, they have been trying to get someone in authority to pay attention to their questions and objections. This follows allegations that the Vosloo couple had already removed all the couple’s clothing and belongings on the same day the bodies were found in the shower on Sunday morning, 26 April 2020. The Vosloos also washed some of the clothing, and reddish-brown stains on Mari’s jersey that they claimed they could not remove were dismissed as red wine stains.
Dr Vosloo allegedly also declared the couple dead at the scene himself and has since played a leading role in all aspects of the police and post-mortem investigations, the autopsy, cremation and joint funeral service — all of which were completed within a week.
Dr Lawton and Christel Vosloo
When Suné and her husband Rudi went to the Vosloos’ home in Jeffreys Bay the afternoon after the funeral service and insisted on getting Mari’s cellphone back — which the Vosloos had earlier refused to return with her other belongings — they were allegedly told the phone could not be returned because the police needed it. Suné then suggested that they meet the Vosloos the following day at the Kareedouw police station where she would hand in Mari’s phone if the Vosloos would also submit Jéan’s phone. This apparently caused the Vosloos to change their minds.
“If there is anything on this phone that contributed to my son’s death, I will sue you and your entire family.”
Dr Lawton Vosloo allegedly closed the front door and left them standing outside while he went to fetch the phone in the house. The phone was fully charged and sealed in a zip-lock bag when he angrily handed it to her with those words. Suné says she was so taken aback that she replied: “But if they died of carbon monoxide poisoning, how could something on the phone have caused their death?” Vosloo allegedly responded only: “No, no — I’m just saying.”
The Hoon family were so traumatised by the strange circumstances in which the couple died, the inadequate police investigation — in which no cellphone analyses or proper cross-examinations were conducted — and the swift cremation, that they all lost their jobs and at one stage lived and worked together on a farm.
What particularly continues to haunt the two Hoon sisters is the scene in the mortuary in Jeffreys Bay. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic there was a massive backlog with autopsies and the waiting list was reportedly three to five weeks. Thanks to Dr Vosloo’s influence they apparently managed to move quickly at the Jeffreys Bay mortuary.
When the Hoon sisters had to rush Mari’s favourite clothes there on 29 April 2020 and insisted on doing her make-up themselves for their final farewell, Mari was reportedly deathly pale compared to Jéan’s purplish-red colouring. There was also allegedly a deep dark indentation on the right side of her skull, blood on her left ear and a wide white plaster around her neck.
When they asked the undertaker about this, he allegedly said it was due to the autopsy. When asked why Jéan did not have similar marks or a plaster on his neck, they were allegedly told it was “because he received a different type of autopsy”.
Rossouw, the private investigator who has since reportedly disappeared, said when approached that he could not obtain access at the time to the original police photographs and court records, even though he worked through an attorney as is customary. Both he and the Hoons personally contacted the state prosecutor, Johan Jansen, to pass on new information, but he allegedly said he was not interested and did not work with private investigators.
According to Rossouw, he later also brought WhatsApp messages between Mari Hoon and a friend in Pretoria to the attention of Kevin’s attorney, Alwyn Griebenow, to confirm contradictions in the state’s timeline. Griebenow was supposed to call him back later, but apparently never did.
The Hoon sisters both spoke publicly in recent weeks in separate interviews after the involvement of forensic expert Dr David Klatzow and the appointment of a new Cape Town legal team led by Advocate Francois van Zyl.
Suné said in candid discussions that the Hoon family had suspected from the beginning that something was wrong and had searched for answers, but because of limited funds, they could not conduct further investigations themselves.
“Dr Lawton’s strange words and behaviour so soon after their deaths, and Stephan’s testimony that he knows nothing about what happened that night, were very strange and disturbing to us. Also the extremely rapid autopsies, cremation and funeral within a week before any investigation had been conducted or before we could even begin to process our grief and properly say goodbye to Mari.”
They had wanted Bolhuis or a private investigator to examine the original autopsy reports and check the cellphone records of Stephan and Jéan, but when Rossouw achieved nothing and did not return to them, they no longer knew what to do.
“When even the state prosecutor showed no interest in following up on our information, we were astonished. But these things still eat away at our family like a cancer and prevent us from finding closure,” she said.
Michelle Hoon and her husband Niel also revealed in an interview with Dr David Klatzow that the couple were not as happy as media rumours had suggested and that Jéan was extremely possessive and jealous. He allegedly often took Mari’s phone and confronted her aggressively. Michelle also confirmed the remarks Dr Lawton Vosloo had made at the time in the presence of witnesses in a signed statement.
At Kevin Pretorius’s very first court appearance — when he was suddenly formally charged with double murder — Mari’s mother, Maria, specifically informed the state prosecutor, Johan Jansen, about the questions and irregularities troubling them. She also told him about a disturbing late-night WhatsApp conversation Mari had with a family friend in Pretoria on the night in question.
This nearly hour-long conversation from 22:29 to 23:19, in which Mari apparently wanted to reveal “serious matters”, contradicted Stephan’s testimony that Jéan and Mari had gone to shower at about 20:30 and 21:00 respectively and were supposedly overcome by carbon monoxide. Jansen reportedly said they could not introduce that information because it would harm the state’s case.
Suné said: “When our family arrived in Jeffreys Bay on 28 April, all of Mari’s clothes and belongings had already been removed from the cottage on the Kenmore farm where Mari and Jéan had lived together and were neatly stored in the Vosloos’ garage.”
The couple and several other young people lived and worked on the Kenmore farm of Grasslands Agriculture about 37 km outside Kareedouw.
“Aunt Christel (Vosloo) gave us Mari’s weekend and make-up bags, as well as the clothes she had worn at the Kliphuis. She cried and said she wanted to return the clothes clean. She said she could not remove the reddish-brown stains on the jersey where Mari had probably spilt red wine on herself. She also gave us Mari’s earrings, but not her engagement ring or cellphone. When my mother asked about it, she said Jéan had worked hard and paid a lot for it, and she had decided to keep it herself because they were not yet married.”
“It was extremely upsetting for our parents that they could not pack Mari’s belongings themselves in the places where she had lived and spent her final night. My parents then went with Aunt Christel into their home on the Kenmore farm, while Michelle, her husband Niel, and I stood outside with Dr Vosloo waiting. It was then that Dr Vosloo suddenly said, ‘Stephan must just stick to his story. The man with the most money will win the case.’”
“We were stunned, because it was only two days after their deaths and there had been no talk of a court case yet, as everyone still saw it as a tragic freak accident.”
Other aspects troubling the Hoons are that Mari allegedly still had her earrings in when the couple were found naked in the shower. According to the sisters, it had always been a family tradition never to shower or sleep wearing earrings or jewellery.
When the Hoons first visited the Kouga Kliphuis on 1 May 2020, there was no sign of a cordoned-off crime scene. There were splashes and stains that looked like blood near the steps of the braai area, and when Stephan was asked about it, he allegedly said it was sauce and juice from the boerewors they had braaied on the Saturday night. Other similar splashes that were photographed in a bedroom and in the shower were apparently never questioned or investigated. Neither were strange finger and drag marks on the inside windows of one of the bedrooms.
The Hoons are struggling to find closure while so many unanswered questions continue to trouble them.
“We felt sorry for Pretorius from the beginning because we believed he would never deliberately cause anyone’s death, but we also wanted answers and justice. When all the evidence against him began emerging in court without counter-evidence from his legal team, we started believing that he must be guilty, even though all the other issues still troubled us.
“It was only when all the questions we had struggled with from the beginning began appearing in the media, and Dr Klatzow confirmed everything, that we regained the courage to fight for the full truth about what really happened that night. We are not hateful and do not seek revenge — we only want the full truth to come out so that we can understand, justice can be done, and we can find closure.”
Two families mourning a beloved child, brother and sister. The Vosloo family (left) believe a beloved Kareedouw farmer must pay with imprisonment for their son’s death so that they can find closure; the Hoon family believe the full truth must first emerge before they will truly be able to make peace with the death of their beloved daughter and sister.
While the controversial and exhausting court case continues after five years, family and friends of Kevin — who have visited the Kouga Kliphuis for years — helped in December 2025 to clean and renovate the building and surroundings after it had stood empty for so long. The hundreds of people who have spent wonderful times there over the past 25 years remain firmly behind him in proving his innocence.
A crowdfunding campaign has meanwhile been launched to raise funds for his legal costs:
https://www.backabuddy.co.za/campaign/help-kevin-pretorius-fight-a-grave-injustice
Also read the Afrikaans version here: