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Former police officer Danie Krugel, whose "magic box" was featured in a Carte Blanche programme on the missing girls connected to paedophile Gert van Rooyen, may be working on another device.
And there are rumours he sold the first device, the Matter Orientation System (MOS) to an overseas buyer for R13-million.
He says the MOS uses "compassionate quantum physics" to track the dead or vanished.
After his second appearance on the M-Net show Krugel, a Christian who shuns psychics, has been derided by sceptics. But Susan Puren, a Carte Blanche journalist, believes the detractors are wrong.
For Krugel, she says, it was an emotional journey to Pretoria's lower-middle-class suburb Capital Park where, he said, investigators could locate the remains of the missing girls.
He said his contraption found their traces on neglected Spoornet land a few blocks from Van Rooyen's "house of horrors" in Malherbe Street.
He also said one of the girls, Yolanda Wessels, was buried under a eucalyptus tree that is now marked with a large white "Y" and candy-striping.
Two others, Fiona Harvey and Anne-Marie Wapenaar, were placed either in or near a dam, since bulldozed. Rubble, a dry pan littered with detritus, and dense reeds used as a toilet by workers are all that remain.
Puren said she met Retha Meintjies, the deputy director of public prosecutions, at her Church Square office to relay Carte Blanche's information. But Meintjies - prolific in dealing with sexual offences cases - did not return calls.
Krugel says that, mostly using hair, he is able to trace missing people, or their remains. The MOS works "primarily with DNA using GPS infrastructure", he says.
No one has yet examined the device. Puren's understanding is that "what must be" a computer of some kind occasionally jerks to life and shakes briefly when it makes contact, which is why he must be alone when working with it.
It is for this reason that there might be questions about the alleged sale of the device to a mystery consortium abroad.
Even Brandfort police station's Superintendent Johan Gelderblom, who speaks regularly to Krugel and knows him as a crime-fighter and faithful parishioner, says he believes the machine may have been sold.
Although several messages to Krugel's cellphone went unanswered this week, the information was that Krugel was leaving "at any moment" on a business trip overseas, but Gelderblom would not comment on a rumour the MOS was bought for R13-million.
Puren, also abroad, said her understanding is Krugel is developing another "even more incredible" device. She suggests Krugel reluctantly parted with the rights to his "DNA GPS invention" after the Ministry for Safety and Security failed to take an option on it.
The ministry's Charles Nqakula was on e.tv's 3rd Degree, expressing his enthusiasm for the device and speculating the police could make good use of it. But Phuti Setati, the police media relations director, says Krugel refused to work with them to have the device tested.
"The police welcome any initiative that is aimed at the prevention and detection of crime. However, protocols have to be followed before the acquisition of any scientific device."
Setati said police had worked with Krugel, unsuccessfully, to find missing constable Frances Rasuge, whose killer, William Nkuna, was sentenced to life in 2005, although her body has never been found.
A prevailing view is that the MOS is a scam. Jacqueline Burke, a Johannesburg consulting scientist, questions what she calls "the basics".
"A dead person has no magnetic field, no energy - nothingness. Unless you have a device planted in you, it's impossible, even if dealing with tracer chemicals. There are no ions charging through you."
There's also a degree of anger, especially in the scientific community, about what some would say is hubris disguised as humility.
Albert Einstein's reply to the Uncertainty Principle, trying to determine both the position and momentum of a particle, was that God does not play dice. But Krugel's claims may be read as his having all but conquered the atomic world.
Some of Krugel's former police colleagues in Bloemfontein and the small Free State town of Brandfort believe it's all a gift from God.
The inventor's champions consistently refer to Krugel's successful discovery in March of Naledi Ndebele, 6, who was missing in Brandfort.
After a door-to-door and community search went cold, Gelderblom called in Krugel who drove from Bloemfontein and, after getting five strands of hair from Naledi's clothing, marked two co-ordinates about 900m apart on a Google Earth printout.
Krugel departed and within an hour he and a trainee policeman found Naledi's body covered with sheepskin and hidden among dongas and rocks.
The police search had not yet extended to that area, although it is next to where Naledi's parents live.
However, the crime has still not been solved, and the superintendent says he has implored Krugel to help again.
"You must believe in God," says Gelderblom. "It is God who gave Danie the wisdom."
It is evident that God and Google Earth play a major role. Another printout lead to excavation work on the Capital Park site.
A week-long archaeological-style dig led by Johan Nel of the University of Pretoria eventually yielded a bag of bone fragments, which the Unistell Medical Laboratory in Cape Town found had belonged to six males and two females.
None so far have been connected by DNA to mothers of the missing girls.
The map appeared to mirror a sketch by Marietta Theunissen, a South African clairvoyant, but Krugel refused to appear on Carte Blanche with her although Theunissen also believes the girls' remains could be at the Pretoria site.
Van Rooyen's nearby Malherbe Street house is the prison from which teenage victim Joan Booysen fled half-clothed, later thanking MacGyver for her education in escape tactics.
Her testimony led to the discovery of Van Rooyen and his accomplice, Joey Haarhoff, who are said to have committed suicide during a police chase, although there has been speculation they were mistakenly killed by police.
Sceptics such as Marian Laserson, a South African paranormal expert, say the publicity around the inventor may have something to do with a proposed $1m prize on the James Randi Educational Forum website. Anyone who can show, under proper observation, evidence of any paranormal or occult power wins.
"Brodski", another contributor to the forums about Krugel this week, said: "Finding Bin Laden would make him more money, but winning Randi's million would be a good way to get someone to give him a Bin Laden sample."
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