A former employee of underworld kingpin Mark Lifman claims he was “cruel and sadistic”.
Lifman, 57, was gunned down on Sunday, November 3, in the Garden Route Mall parking lot in George.
Two men, Johannes Jacobs and Gert Bezuidenhout, have been arrested for his murder.
Speaking to IOL, the former employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he was homeless and living on the mountain in Sea Point when Lifman employed him.
Before this he skarreled by trading second-hand goods at the Grand Parade.
He says while passing 79 Ocean View Drive, a dilapidated three-storey house, a man he knew called him and offered him a job to help look after the place for a rich man.
“He told me it was a very wealthy man called Mark and that he was very powerful and he assumed the guy was involved in illegal activities because he always had bodyguards with him and strange people were constantly trying to get into the place,” he told IOL.
“These were apparently guys that were at odds with Mark and they were fighting for control of Sea Point. When he mentioned this, it dawned on me that he might very well be talking about Mark Lifman. He immediately recognised the surname and confirmed it was Lifman.”
He said people came to the property at all hours “to exchange packages and money and meet each other.”
He said Lifman called once to speak to him and explain to him how things worked.
“I had known of Mark Lifman from before I became homeless. I had heard all sorts of stories especially in the gay community because people thought him despicable because of his well-known preference for very young boys”
He said things went smoothly for a while and while the neighbours kept calling the cops, no-one ever came to investigate.
He says Lifman asked him about gay clubs and then invited him to a party in Gardens and even provided designer clothing and leather bondage gear for him to wear as well as drugs “to help relax him”.
“I arrived at the venue in Gardens and couldn't believe the scene. There were naked men all over and different rooms were allocated to various sexual preferences and fetishes.”
He claims he saw Lifman whipping and strangling a very young boy.
“He would slap him, spit on him, urinate on him. I felt sick.”
The man says he nearly lost his life days later, when he was shoved through a hole at the house and fell three storeys down.
At the hospital, a female doctor allegedly wanted to place him in a mental institution and he decided to make a run for it in the middle of the night.
Now nearly two years later, he is still living in fear as he had seen how pimps who brought disobedient boys to Lifman mysteriously disappeared.
“Lifman thought I would be a good link for him to get him young boys from the more disadvantaged backgrounds. He liked boys that were a little rough and tough, so that he had reason to punish them for insubordination later on during his power play with these boys.
“(Lifman) put on this business persona that would fool the most astute businessman but he had a cruel and sadistic side. A side that damaged many young lives.”