and numerous appeals by the police, the identity of the victim remained a complete mystery. A second piece of the puzzle unfolded at Wemmer Pan, Johannesburg, on Saturday 7 November. In the middle of a School Rowing regatta a suitcase floated to the surface, and when opened, proved to contain the Boksburg Lake victim's dismembered legs. It was also thought, by the man who pulled the case from the water, that there had been "something else" in the case which sank to the bed of the dam. It may have been the head. Immediately the area was cordoned off and police frogmen searched frantically for several days but nothing was found in the drained dam. Finally the police concluded that the "something" was, in fact, a foetus which had been devoured by underwater insects and larvae. The finder was Mr Joseph Whiteside Cole of Germiston. Then, on 17 December, two boys fishing at Zoo Lake in Johannesburg hooked a plastic bag containing a woman's toothless head. It was in an advanced state of decomposition, making the features unrecognizable, and clearly had been in the water for some weeks. Forensic pathologists and artists spent the next 24 hours putting together a set of drawings of the victim's face. These were published on 18 December and the police were confident that it would be merely a matter of time before the victim's identity was established. In fact it took almost four years before a positive identification was made. This was in spite of the fact that the victim's daughter, Catherine Cronje, gave the police the correct identification of the victim (Mrs Catherine Burch) and was certain that the victim was her mother. However, her family and fiancé talked her out of visiting the mortuary. Almost a year later an inquest was held in Boksburg, where the verdict was given as 'death unascertained'. The remains were buried in a pauper's grave. In August 1968, Catherine (now Mrs van Coppenhagen) decided that she would wait no longer and told a certain Police Captain, James Beeslaar, of her fears and convictions. He reopened the case and, in particular, started searching for the dead woman's husband, Ronald Burch, who had not been seen for four years. Burch, who had matriculated at Boksburg High School, was a ladies man and had been married and divorced three times before he met Catherine Cronje, whom he married shortly after