Missing woman’s mother losing hope

The grieving mother of a Paarl secretary who went missing three weeks ago has started to lose hope that her daughter is still alive. And while the search for Nicola Pienaar, 28, continues, the case against her boyfriend, arrested in Port Elizabeth at the weekend, has been transferred back to the Western Cape. Jacobus Oosthuizen, 32, faces a provisional charge of vehicle theft after he was discovered sitting in the Peugeot which belongs to Pienaar’s mother, psychologist Marlaine Pienaar-Vice. Pienaar was reported missing by her mother on January 8, after she was last seen leaving their home in the gold-coloured Peugeot.

“Too much time has passed now and I can only fear the worst,” Pienaar-Vice said yesterday. “I can only wonder now if my daughter’s remains will ever be found. He must tell us where she is.” Oosthuizen, who was nabbed while sleeping in the vehicle outside the KFC in Five Ways at the weekend, later told police that he and Pienaar, who had been dating for the past year, had had a fight and he had then dropped her off in Oudtshoorn. He appeared briefly yesterday in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court, where it was said he must now appear in the Paarl Magistrate’s Court on February 2.