Woman who was disemboweled, raped and nearly decapitated during horrific South African attack writes book about experience
Alison Botha was just 27 when she was subjected to a sickening attack that left her having to hold onto her intestines as her partially-decapitated head 'flopped backwards and almost rested between [her] shoulder blades.'
She was working as an insurance broker when, on December 18, 1994, after spending an evening with friends, she drove home to her apartment in Port Elizabeth.
Alison had just parked her car and was reaching to the passenger seat to get her laundry when the nightmare began.
She recalled how a blonde man pushed his way into her vehicle and left her frozen with fear.
Frans DuToit, a police officer's son, threatened to kill her, stating he didn't mean any harm but needed to use the car for an hour.
In a desperate attempt to build a rapport with her kidnapper, Alison offered him the vehicle.
But he insisted he 'wanted company', according to Morbid, a true crime podcast, citing her book I Have Life: Alison's Journey.
Alison (pictured recently) has bravely recounted her harrowing ordeal and remarkable survival through her book 'I Have Life' and its movie adaptation 'Alison', which premiered in August this year
After travelling a distance from the town, Du Toit passed by a crowd of people on the street twice, his eyes scanning for one individual - Theuns Krugeras.
The short man, who was dressed entirely in black, approached the driver's side and climbed into the car.
Du Toit, who had introduced himself under the false name 'Clinton', adjusted the driver's seat forward as Krugeras got in, introducing Alison (who was also using a pseudonym) as his friend Susan.
The journey to a suburb outside Port Elizabeth was eerily quiet until the deafening silence was broken by Du Toit declaring 'Theuns doesn't speak good English.'
Approaching a wooded area, Du Toit slowed down and parked on the sand.
Krugeras exited the car and Clinton proceeded to rape Alison.
Krugeras began to assault her too but abruptly stopped, exclaiming, 'No I can't do this' inadvertently shouting 'Frans' at his accomplice. Alison committed this name to memory.
Frans then warned Alison, 'If we take you into town now you'll go to the police.'
Du Toit then asked a terrifying question, saying: 'what do you think Oom Nick would want us to do with her.'
Oom Nick is an Afrikaans reference to Satan.
Krugeras responded, 'I think he wants us to kill her.'
The evil duo forced Alison to remove her rings and clothes before Du Toit strangled her until she passed out.
Disturbingly, Alison remembered Du Toit apologising to her in the moments before she lost consciousness.
She then woke up surrounded by rubbish before she saw a man's arm slashing in front of her eyes and came to the terrifying realisation that he was cutting her throat.
Alison has described the horrifying moment she 'could hear the flesh slit' in her book.
It was later determined the men slit her throat 16 times, and Alison was nearly decapitated.
The attack then stopped abruptly and Alison managed to turn over onto her front.
She remembered: 'I tried to hold my breath, but I realised I had no control over my breathing - I moved my hand up to cover my neck - my whole hand disappeared into it, but it seemed to have worked - the sound was silenced.'
Pretending to be dead, one of her attackers asked the other if they thought they thought she had died.
'No one can survive that,' one of the men responded.
Holding on to hope that her assailants would face justice, Alison scrawled her attackers' names in the sand, adding 'I love mom.'
Recalling the sensation of her horrific injuries, she said: 'It was as if I'd cut moorings.
'As I hovered there I recognised the person down below - I knew it was me and I felt such a strong connection to that bleeding mangled girl lying on her stomach.'
She then spotted some lights and realised she was closer to the road than she initially thought.
Alison managed to muster enough strength to push herself up to her knees before she touched her stomach and felt something 'tepid, wet and slimy'.
Looking down, she was confronted with the disturbing sight of her intestines hanging out from a gaping wound.
She described the scene as 'horrifying' and said: 'There was just so much of me on the outside.
'I tried to scoop it all up with my hands but everything just slithered away again.'
Alison added: 'My head had flopped backwards and almost rested between my shoulder blades. I expected to feel something but was completely taken aback when my hand disappeared inside me almost like I had swallowed myself.'
After being stabbed in the abdomen over 50 times, Alison used a shirt to hold her intestines inside her body while debris and broken glass sliced into her hands and knees.
With part of her thyroid protruding from her neck, she realised the trail of blood she left would devastate her loved ones if they knew the suffering she had endured in her final moments.
With one hand holding her head stable and the other on her stomach wound she managed to reach the middle of the road, where she lay horizontally to force drivers to stop.
Despite desperately waving for help, the first car swerved to avoid her.
But eventually a woman and a young man came to her rescue.
It was 2.45 am by the time she was found - meaning the time period between her abduction and her discovery had taken only an hour and a half.
It was Tiaan Eilerd, a vet, who stumbled across Alison that evening.
He checked her vitals and pushed her thyroid back into her throat - an act that Alison later referred to as a 'lifeline'.
Tiaan was shocked that Alison was still alive, describing her as a 'creature straight out of a Dickens novel' with her neck split open 'almost ear to ear'.
Alison's intestines had been stabbed multiple times, and her abdominal muscles were badly damaged.
She later revealed that one of the men told her they were intentionally trying to mutilate her reproductive organs.
However, miraculously, she went on to have two children.
After hours of surgery, Alison was transferred into the ICU.
As news of her attack spread, police discovered that the pair were already on bail for rape.
Both men claimed to be Satanists and pleaded guilty to kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder.
Du Toit had raped another woman but said the 'urge to kill her had passed' after he raped her.
Both men were sentenced to life without the possibility of parole in 1995.
When there was a chance the law might change in 2012, Alison said, 'can you imagine if just 100 lifers were reintroduced to society without rehabilitation.'
Her campaigning efforts were instrumental in ensuring that such prisoners remained behind bars.
But, on July 4, 2023, Du Toit and Krugeras, who had served only 28 years of their life sentence, were granted parole without anyone notifying Alison.
On her Facebook page, Alison expressed her shock: 'The day I hoped and prayed would never come. When I was asked 'How will you feel if they ever get parole?' – my immediate answer was always – 'I'm hoping I'll never find out.''
Alison has bravely recounted her harrowing ordeal and remarkable survival through her book 'I Have Life' and its movie adaptation 'Alison', which premiered in August this year.
She has also tirelessly spoken to hundreds of people, inspiring others by sharing how attitude, belief, and choice helped her survive.
Recognised for her incredible courage, Alison was awarded the prestigious Rotarian Paul Harris Award for 'Courage Beyond the Norm'.
In the same year she was the first recipient of Femina magazine's 'Woman of Courage' award as well as being chosen as Port Elizabeth's Citizen of the Year.
Upon the release of the movie, Alison said: ''I have always hoped that by sharing my own journey with others, it would give them hope and courage for their own.
'To have my story and ultimate triumph shared on screen would mean that so many more people would see the power of choice that we each have; and might also choose to triumph over life's hardships'.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
BBC News
12 hours ago
- BBC News
Nigeria goment withdraw charges against Ibom air passenger Comfort Bob, restore license of valueJet pilot
Nigeria goment don withdraw di cherges against Ibom Air passenger Comfort Bob. We dey update dis tori...
Times
20 hours ago
- Times
Sandy Grimes obituary: CIA analyst who helped to catch traitor
In 1991, after three decades with the CIA, Sandy Grimes was winding down in anticipation of her retirement. Then a request came for her to take on one last assignment. It involved Dmitri Polyakov, a Soviet general who had been the CIA's highest-ranking double agent during the Cold War. Grimes had been one of the analysts working on the intelligence he had provided. Then he had gone 'silent' in 1986 along with at least eight other CIA 'assets'. It later emerged that they had been tried for treason by the Soviets and executed. At the time Grimes had been chief of the CIA's Africa branch, and in response to the disappearance of the assets she had been tasked with a large-scale (though secret) overhaul of security procedures. Would she stay on to investigate who in the CIA had betrayed Polyakov? ' 'Without hesitation,' I replied. They had made me the only offer I could have never refused,' she said. 'Our dead sources deserved advocates and so began my participation in what later became known as the Ames mole hunt.' Joining a team of four, Grimes investigated what had gone wrong — there had either been a mole in the CIA or their system had been hacked. It was exhausting work that eventually led them to Aldrich Ames, the CIA's counterintelligence chief for Soviet operations. Ames and Grimes had been friends since the early Seventies, when they were case officers together. 'We grew up together,' she recalled. 'We car-pooled. I had seen what I always called the old Rick. I liked him and if anybody had ever told me in the 1970s that Rick Ames would be one of the most famous spies of all time for the opposition, I never would have believed it, never in a million years.' Although she recalled how much he changed in the mid-Eighties — 'It wasn't the capped teeth, it wasn't the clean fingernails, it wasn't the Italian suits and the $600 shoes and the silk men's hose,' she said. 'His posture was different. He stood erect. He exuded arrogance' — she needed concrete evidence. This came through methodically and retrospectively documenting Ames's every move: where he went for lunch with his Soviet contacts, his cigarette breaks, his credit card charges. The final breakthrough came when they discovered that on May 17, 1985, Ames had reported a lunch with his contact, Sergey Dmitriyevich Chuvakhin, the first secretary of the Soviet embassy in Washington. The following day there was a deposit into his bank account for $9,000, one of three such payments. 'It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell what is going on here,' she said to colleagues. 'Rick is a goddamn Russian spy.' Ames was arrested in 1994 and handed a life sentence without parole. The mole hunt was a masterclass in data-collecting — it was the first time a spy had been discovered through sheer analysis — but there was congressional wrath over how long it had taken the CIA to catch him. And Grimes, for her part, had a hard time understanding his motivations beyond the money (he sold the CIA's secrets for a reported $2.7 million). 'I think Rick has always wanted to be special, to be important,' she proposed. 'I do know he felt himself intellectually superior to all of us. His career was not going anywhere. He was not being recognised for his abilities. And maybe this was revenge.' Sandra Joyce Venable was born in Poughkeepsie, New York, in 1945, 'a certified product of the Cold War', in her words. Her parents, Isaac and Mary (née Twitty), were Tennessee natives who met working on the Manhattan Project, the covert project during the Second World War to develop the world's first atomic bomb. Schooling began in Los Alamos, in the hills of New Mexico. From there Sandy moved to Denver, Colorado, where she attended a string of schools before leaving for college in 1963. Swapping physics for a Russian language course, she joined the Slavic languages department of the University of Washington, one of few women on the course. She was recruited to the CIA four years later — out of sheer luck, she noted, rather than any wish to travel or sense of patriotic duty to serve her country. She had run into an old boyfriend one afternoon who said that the CIA was recruiting on campus and that she would make a 'perfect spy'. Assigned to the Soviet Bloc division as a secretary, her first case was to cover Polyakov. 'I was what I described as the low man on the totem pole,' recalled Grimes, who ran the Xerox machine and filed 'personality information' that Polyakov reported on Soviets on a typewriter that she didn't know how to use. 'I used Scotch tape and scissors to extract his reporting on particular subjects,' she said, 'and I cut and pasted.' Gradually handed more responsibility, she was eventually made a senior intelligence analyst and converted to 'professional status' in 1970. During the interview she was asked if she planned on getting pregnant, for motherhood, the officer said, would probably end her career. 'Taken aback by the inappropriateness of such a question,' said Grimes, who sported an Anna Wintour bob and steely, measured gaze to match, 'I responded by inquiring as to his plans for additional children.' Shortly afterwards she gave birth to two daughters, neither of whom compromised her career. As an officer in the Soviet division for the next 11 years she was brought, one by one, into the cases of Soviet assets until in 1981 she transferred to career management staff: it was a relief to shift from a world of spies to 'secretarial-clerical personnel management', she said, though it was also, pointedly, the year that the CIA lost contact with Polyakov. A year earlier he had left a posting in Delhi on what they assumed would be a short trip to Moscow. 'He did not return,' she said. 'I waited for a year, hoping he would reappear in the West or re-establish contact with us in Moscow, but there was silence.' By 1983 Grimes was back on the front line of CIA activity against the Soviets as chief of operations in Africa, the division in which Ames worked. At the time the CIA's operations against the Soviets were successful — they knew more about the KGB, Grimes said, than most individuals within it — and they had no indication of the 'impending disaster'. By the end of 1985 four agents had been arrested and Grimes was tasked with overhauling the staff communications system within the division. Cable traffic between HQ and the field stations was scrapped: case officers would indirectly travel to meet a source in a safe house and transfer encrypted notes back to Washington from a laptop. Grimes led the operation, which became known as the 'back room', at the same time as heading the Africa division. By the late 1980s she had been made chief of the Soviet and east European branch. She is survived by her husband, Gary Grimes, and two daughters: Kelly and Tracy.+ In 2012 Grimes published an account of the mole hunt, Circle of Treason, with her colleague Jeanne Vertefeuille. The Ames case always felt personal for her. Polyakov had been her first 'teacher' and his execution in 1988 made her reflect on the nature of her work. 'I was devastated,' she said. 'He became a personal friend. I thought he would have survived. It was a terrible, terrible reminder of the seriousness of what we did for a living.' Sandy Grimes, CIA chief, was born on August 10, 1945. She died from complications of Alzheimer's disease on July 25, 2025, aged 79
The Independent
21 hours ago
- The Independent
Mali's former prime minister Maiga taken into custody amid corruption probe
Former Malian prime minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga was taken into custody on Tuesday on accusations of corruption, his lawyer said, as the West African country 's military junta has ramped up arrests of top politicians in recent weeks. Maiga's lawyer, Cheick Oumar Konaré, told The Associated Press the former prime minister was taken in for questioning earlier this month by the National Economic and Financial Unit, which is responsible for fighting corruption, as part of an investigation into allegations of misuse of public property. 'Former Prime Minister Choguel Kokalla Maiga has been taken into custody by officers from the brigade of the National Economic and Financial Unit,' Konaré said. 'We are contesting his detention because the former prime minister has no intention of fleeing the country or destroying evidence,' he added. In November 2024, Maïga was dismissed from his role as prime minister, days after he criticized the military regime for postponing elections. Following his dismissal, Maiga continued to criticize the military regime in the media. Earlier this month, another former prime minister, Moussa Mara, was imprisoned after tweeting his support for jailed critics of the ruling military junta. Mali has been ruled by military leaders since a junta seized power in 2020 and staged another coup the following year. In June, the country's leader, Gen. Assimi Goita, was granted an additional five years in power, despite the junta's earlier promises of a return to civilian rule by March 2024. The move followed the military regime's dissolution of political parties in May.
