Authorities have spent over a year looking for a 6-year-old Black girl who went missing in South Africa. However, authorities recently identified the person who was behind her disappearance which turned this missing person’s case into a straight up human trafficking investigation. The suspect in question is an even bigger plot twist to this story.
Joshlin Smith went missing from outside her home in Saldanha Bay near Cape Town, South Africa, in February of 2024, per BBC’s report. Her disappearance sparked a nationwide search. The community came out to support the girl’s mother, Kelly Smith, and even volunteered to help authorities look for the girl, per ABC News. On every news station circulated the picture of the girl smiling at the camera, with golden skin, bright green eyes and pigtails with big bo-bos on the ends.
However, the investigation into her vanishing revealed that this wasn’t a case of a child wandering off and ending up in the wrong hands. Police suspected she was sold.
Smith was eventually arrested in connection to her daughter’s disappearance. She claimed she left the girl with her boyfriend, Jacquen Appollis, and hadn’t seen her again, per SkyNews. However, prosecutors claimed Smith and her daughter were last seen getting into a white vehicle with a bag of clothes the day she vanished, the report says. After Smith was implicated in her daughter’s own disappearance, the support she received quickly turned into protests, demanding answers on where Joshlin was taken.
Smith was taken to trial on kidnapping and trafficking charges in March. Witness testimonies revealed a horrifying suggestion on what happened to Joshlin. A local pastor testified that back in 2023, Smith had talks of selling her kids for 20,000 rand a pop ($1,100 in USD), per BBC. The report also says Joshlin’s teacher took the stand, claiming Smith told her as community members searched restlessly for the girl, Joshlin was already “on a ship, inside a container” and “on her way to West Africa.”
In the most startling testimony, Lourentia Lombaard, Smith’s neighbor, claimed Smith told her she’d done “something silly” and sold the girl to a traditional healer or “sangoma” who wanted her for her eyes and skin, per BBC. The report says these healers are known for making traditional “cures” and crafting “good luck charms” from bodily parts.
On Friday, May 2, after these damning testimonies, a jury found the mother guilty of her charges. A jury also convicted Appollis, Smith’s boyfriend, and their friend Steveno van Rhyn, on the same charges in connection to Joshlin’s disappearance.
However, while justice has been served on one front, police still have no idea where Joshlin is.