After getting booked into the prison, he gets led down a long corridor with cells situated left and right. The sound of inmates cheering and talking nearly deafens him. He gets lead to his cell – cell 23 in the trial awaiting housing unit better known as the admission centre in cell block A generally housing the dangerous criminals accused of murder or kidnapping. The smell of urine floods George’s nose. While being led down the corridor by the prison warden, they come to a sudden stop in front of a tiny cell. A cell approximately 2, 5 by 2 metres with a tiny window facing the north is shut tight, welded. This will be George’s new home.
George enters and takes a seat on the bed with its prickly grey and white striped blanket. He stares at abhorrence at the graffiti with its loathsome slogans written on the dirty walls. I will never get out of this hellhole! Many thoughts flow through his drained thought mind.
How could he allow a mentally sick man, a psychopath, blackmail him? How could Anna do this to him? She was highly successful in her career, so why all the lies? Why the secret life? They were madly in love, so happy or was it just simply not enough for her to be with a man who worshipped the ground she walked on?
George hears a calling from the cell next door – cell 24. “Pssst!”
He ignores the call out. He is certainly not in the mood for small talk with his neighbour.
“Hey you, next door, don’t you have a spare cigarette? I don’t have any,” the man calls out once again.
George still doesn’t react to the man calling out.
Then a sudden banging against the wall echoes through the cell.
“It’s not going to help you in any way if you keep yourself all so high and mighty. Since you don’t know what’s going on in this hellhole. You are going to need my help some or the other time. So, I’m asking you again: do you have a spare cigarette for me?” A finger with a dirty, uncut nail gets poked through a hole in the wall. “Give it to me through here.”
Silence fills the cell for a few minutes.
George wants to send the man to hell and beyond, but instantly rethinks. He doesn’t want to make any more enemies than he already has. He’s probably here for the rest of his life. Who knows, just maybe the man is right. Maybe he will need his help sooner or later.
George stands up from his bed and walks to the wall where the finger is peeping from, removes a cigarette from his packet of Chesterfield. He kneels down onto his haunches and slides the cigarette through. It’s not before long when a retina peeps through.
“I’m Khalid Assam. Who are you?”
A moment of silence breaks, out once again, before a reply follows.
“George Knox.”
“Wait. You are not the George Knox I’m thinking of, right? The guy who smashed his wife’s head in leaving a huge hole in her skull and then who also killed his best friend and his girlfriend too? It was on the SABC 2 News, my friend.”
George slowly walks away from the wall back to the bed.
“Yes, I’m that George, but I didn’t do any of that.”
Without any further explanation, the man carries on talking.
“I told the other inmates just last night when we saw you on TV that you are going to come join us. I heard the wardens talk about you. You are surely as hell a man with his priorities in order. But don’t worry, my brother, I killed my girlfriend too. Shot her – one shot to the bloody head and she was like a lifeless snoek, man. She deserved it, especially after cheating on me with my best homie – friend since our days in the Cape Flats. Just too badly he got away but not to worry, I will get him. I’ve been waiting for the last two years for the right opportunity to come along to get out of here,” Khalid says with his Mitchells Plain accent and nearly out of breath.
Khalid’s home life was somewhat troubled; relatives have described his mother as domineering and have said that young Khalid witnessed more than one violent argument between his parents. As a young child, Khalid was tested with an IQ of 59, signifying below average intelligence. He did very poorly in school. He was described as largely forgettable. This troubled him and left Khalid with no other choice than to start committing crime in the very dangerous suburb, Cape Flats, of Cape Town. This escalated throughout the years until he met Mary-Jane, his girlfriend, in Mitchells Plain. Khalid became over possessive and abusive towards Mary-Jane and that left her with no other choice than to leave Khalid and seek for a better life and love somewhere else. Is only she had known that it would lead to her untimely death.
A nauseous feeling lands on the crop of George’s stomach. He needs to get out of here and as soon as possible.
“I didn’t kill anyone. I’m innocent,” he murmurs under his breath, nearly unhearing.
A laugh escapes from Khalid’s mouth emitting from his stomach.
“Everyone who enters these four walls say so, my brother. If you are truly innocent then why are you in this hell hole?”
Without replying, George wonders how he explains to a murderer that he had no other choice than to say he had committed these crimes. His family’s safety is the most important to him. But now he wonders how on earth he will still be able to protect his family now that he has been placed between these four walls. What is preventing the real murderer in any case from killing them one by one to get to him?
George slides another cigarette on the cold cement floor through the hole. He will do anything to stay in Khalid’s books of good deeds. Khalid already knows the routine of the wardens and when and what happens. He can help George escape. He will just have to win Khalid’s trust.
“The real reason of the little hole being in the wall is for us neighbours to pass on contraband like smokes or just to talk. For the wardens not to notice we place a dirty blotch of toilet paper in the hole to blend in with the wall. My friend who was locked up in your cell for killing his grandmother and I started chipping away making the hole about a year ago,” Khalid informs George nearly out of breath of constantly talking non-stop.
George had quickly learned on how to fit into the daily routine for the past two months. The daily life of a prisoner takes place according to a very strict schedule.
At 06:30 a.m. all prisoners wake up, leaving them with fifteen minutes to exercise, cleanse themselves and tidy up their cells. Nearly an hour gets given to the inmates for leisure time for those who do not work and they are also allowed to make phone calls. Thereafter breakfast is served in their cells which normally consist out of a spread of porridge and coffee or juice. This is followed by more phone calls and a morning roll-call in which takes place in the cells. Thereafter a prisoner gets escorted by guards to school or to their daily jobs with a return time for students at twelve with lunch being served at one in their cells. At five, dinner gets served in the cells hereafter they have until eight for more leisure time followed by an evening roll-call. At eight thirty it’s time for retiring until the next morning.
While a cell search was being conducted in cell block A, all inmates were placed in a holding area until after the search. Many gang members from the 26 and 28 gang groups were among other normal inmates without any gang ranks. Umdota Tshipo, a leader of the 28 gang was staring at George, rolling his thick thumbs. Because George was white and had no gang member number, he was despised among the 28’s.
Tshipo called out at George and walked closer: “Hey, whitey?” When reaching him, he grabbed George by his shirt.
“Boys, I have this whitey,” he told the rest of his gang made out of ten members.
They all gathered around George and started kicking and beating him before removing their entire make shift weapons from their person. Khalid could not do anything but look. Slowly with worried eyes he went to Warren, the leader of the 26 group.
“Please, brother, help the man out. He is a friend, homie. He can’t get beaten like that,” Khalid pleaded.
It was not before long when the 26 gang members and 28 gang members were fighting and stabbing each other with George lying hopelessly on the cold ground. Khalid qui
ckly crawled up to him without being seen by the twenty one men fighting.
“George?” he asked out of concern, whispering in his ear.
He grabbed George and dragged him to a nearby cell which was open and unoccupied.
“You are pretty beat up,” Khalid said.
George moaned in pain.
The prison alarm sounded. Seventeen wardens arrived with their guns aimed and black battens raised at the inmates.
“Get down, get down, get down!” they ordered.
The inmates all dropped to the ground before getting taken one by one back to their cells. Five members from the 26 gang were badly beaten and transported to the Groote Schuur Hospital for treatment.
The accused inmates appear before a prison board where they will get sentenced for the crimes they have committed. The guilty inmates each got placed in a small cell called ‘the hole’ for ninety days without proper nutrition and proper exercise facilities. One day the inmates will get their full meal course and the following day without anything to eat followed by only half the very next day. The routine will be carried out for the entire time of ninety days.
After the assault, George decides he had had just enough of the life threatening prison life and decides to write a journal for his beloved family so that they can understand why he had done what he is busy planning.
Life behind bars is not easy - not by a long shot! Whoever says prison is like a five star hotel should get his head examined. It is hard, emotionally very lonely, physically demanding and for some reason all inmates inevitably end up with a chip on their shoulder towards someone. Behind all the friendliness or hostility there are traces of slyness. Most of the inmates are quite skilled to con and subtly get out of a prison deal, and then some also carry around an attitude of: You owe me. It sucks being here. Prison sucks! For the record: all those movies that you see on TV are not at all what South African prisons are like. It’s worse.
He bends down to the little hole in the wall and peeps through. Khalid is lying on his bed smoking, surrounded by grey clouds of smoke. The smell of Chesterfield penetrated George’s nose making him long for the taste of a cigarette butt. Too bad his packet is empty.
“Pssst, Khalid!” George whispers without letting anyone else hear him. “I need to talk with you,” he continued.
Khalid gets up from his bed with a sigh of irritation. He walks over to the wall and bends by the hole. Their eyes make contact.
“Khalid, please help me. I will do just anything to get out of here. I need to prove my innocence. Do you have any ideas to get us out of this dump?” George asks through his swollen, beat up lips.
Khalid looks around his cell before replying.
“Look under your bed. There is a metal plate panel bolted and welded together. You need to loosen it with tools from the tailor shop. It leads to the old catwalk. It has not been used or patrolled for years by the wardens,” he whispers with his retina still peeping through the hole.
George crawls under his bed and finds the metal plate. He inspects it to see how it has been bolted and welded shut.
“What bloody tools am I going to use to loosen this thing?” he asks with a frown upon his face.
Khalid laughs.
“Are you serious? Steal a hammer and chisel to break the welding off!” he informs George, still with the chuckle in his voice.
Just after eight a.m. on October nine, George and Khalid enter the prison’s tailor shop. They were the only two working there. Their duty was to make clothes and ragged dolls which will be sold at the annual Pollsmoor Charity Market to collect funding for the local welfare organisation. Snipping away with the scissor cutting pieces of material for a ragged doll, George looks to see if any guards are watching before slipping a small chisel and hammer into both his shoes. Those were the tools used in carving out a wooden mannequin for one of the outfits Khalid had made a week before.
“Knox, get back to work and stop lazing around,” a warden instructs George before walking back to behind his desk.
“Time is up. It’s eleven. Gather your things, pack it away and come,” the warden instructs them. George stares at him while packing the material and tools into a wooden crate and leaves it on the table.
“Warden Larsen, we are done,” he says and starts walking towards the door with Khalid following a few steps behind.
“Warden Larsen, could we perhaps take our two stuffed dolls and work on them further in our cells?” George asks politely hoping for a yes.
Warden Larsen looks him in the eyes before answering.
“I’m not allowed to do it, but yes. You guys can take the dolls to your cells. Just hide it under your beds when hearing someone approaching,” he replies with a smirk.
George runs back to their working station to take two needles and two balls of cotton to work with, hands a ball of cotton and needle to Khalid.
Warden Larsen shows them the door and walks behind them to their cells. The cell doors open. Khalid goes into his cell and George into his. At once the two doors slide close and the warden walks away. Silence whispers into George’s ear. Everything is quiet.
“Just after dinner, we need to start making plans. I took myself tools to lift the plate on my side,” Khalid croons through the hole.
After sitting in the cell waiting for the kitchen staff to push their trolley up the corridor to deliver food, George hears the screeching noise of the trolley’s twisted wheels approaching. A man with a hair net on his head, wearing a white apron arrives at the cells.
“Spaghetti and orange juice,” he calls out before slipping a tin plate and cup through the flap in the door.
The last sun rays lay upon the horizon slowly fading away into the night sky. George takes the chisel and hammer out from his shoes and crawls under the bed, feeling for the bolted heads. Gently he places the chisel against one and softly tap-tap’s against it before it breaks off and rolls up against the wall. The sound of a banging noise travelling through the little hole in the wall from Khalid is heard. George stretches his arm out and feels with his finger if the one bolt is broken and moves to the next one. After a long period all of the bolts have been chipped away and the welding bits have broken off. The plate is now loose.
“My plate has one bolt to go and then it’s open,” Khalid informs George.
“I’m about to lift mine now,” he replies.
George crawls out from beneath the bed grabbing the rag doll, tucking it into his bed to replicate him sleeping. He then crawls back under the bed, places the chisel under the one lip of the plate and gently knocks it loose and lifting it up with his hands.
“I’m going on,” he informs Khalid in a soft but excited voice.”
I will be free if everything goes according to plan, George says to himself smiling.
He lifts the plate up and rests it beside him. He gently enters the catwalk legs first and drops down to the bottom. George reaches for the plate once again and positions it back in place. It’s not before long and Khalid is beside him. Khalid walks over to George out of mere joy and they embrace each other with a hug. The thought of escaping prison with a highly dangerous murderer is life threatening but a chance he has to take. They make their way walking on the metal platform leading to a large steam pipe.
“Shoot!” he says. “I did not bring my chisel and hammer,” he continues with a devastating tone in his voice.
Khalid reaches down for his shoes and removes his tools showing it to George.
“I brought mine, don’t worry,” he says.
George sighs out of relief.
Upon reaching the steam pipe Khalid starts to chip away on it. Making sure that the pipe is not hot, he places his hand on it.
“It’s safe. The heat has been turned off,” George informs Khalid waiting for him to break them out.
Khalid nods and carries on chipping away. After a lengthily process of chipping away with a blunt chisel, a huge piece of metal falls into the steam pipe. Out of joy they high five each othe
r before climbing into the pipe heading left. Before going any further he draws a smiley face with the black dirt laying on top of the pipe with ‘have a nice day’ written underneath the smiley.
After crawling for some time they reach a manhole about 400 feet beyond the prison walls.
“Knox,” Khalid says. “We made it. We are free,” he continues while tapping George on the shoulder.
Out of excitement he pushes his way in front of Khalid and pushes the manhole’s lid as hard as he possible could until it popped open.
Chapter 12
Durbanville
For the first three days after the escape, police and Correctional Services officers mainly searched the fields and woods near Tokai, home of the Pollsmoor Correctional Facility. Without any success of tracking George and Khalid, the officers searched the very well-known Tokai forest but could not find a single lead.
George and Khalid stayed low and headed towards a nearby railway road depot. The same depot where prisoners from Pollsmoor had opened a manhole in remnant for a railway in the early 1940’s which is now nothing but vandalized and left unattended and providing a perfect hideout for escaped convicts and vagrants.
A warden who was supervising part of the perimeter of which had been driving south of Cape Town towards Table Mountain and the Silvermine conservational park stopped a homeless-like looking man in just a pair of briefs, walking on Harvey Road. Whilst driving by, the warden quickly came to realize that it is Khalid Assam.
Khalid noticed that something was off and darted for the nearby conservational park heading for the dense tree line.
The warden stopped the vehicle next to the road, drew his gun from the holster hugging his side and went after Khalid running with his rather large stomach wobbling. The warden shouted.
“Stop, Khalid or I’ll shoot!” not getting a reply or Khalid to stop, he fired three shots, striking Khalid in the lower back, leg and head.
Mystery of The White Rose Serial Killer Page 6
