The joint efforts by the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) and National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) ensured that Cassidy Hartzenberg (20) is serving a long time behind bars after entering into a plea and sentence agreement in terms of Section 105A of Act 51 of 1977. On 01 March 2024 the Cape Town division of the High Court sentenced Hartzenberg to an effective 26 years’ imprisonment.
The court imposed the sentence as follows:
Count one: Murder, 20 years’ imprisonment.
Count two: Theft of motor vehicle, six years’ imprisonment. The court ordered that count two will run concurrently with count one.
Effectively Hartzenberg will serve 20 years’ direct imprisonment.
This emanates from 10 September 2022, when the body of Miss Romay Van Rooyen, was discovered at her home in Muizenberg and it was established that she was strangled. Van Rooyen was employed by the Department of Justice as a Magistrate in Vredenburg. It was also established that her vehicle went missing.
Investigation by the Hawks’ Serious Organised Crime Investigation led to recovery of the deceased vehicle in Mitchell’s Plain which was followed by the arrest of Hartzenberg on 27 September 2022.
The Hawks Provincial Head in the Western Cape Major General Mathipa Makgato commended the collaboration between the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation and the National Prosecuting Authority in ensuring that perpetrators of heinous crimes do not go unpunished.
