A former police detective in South Africa who published a book exposing members of an alleged elite pedophile ring killed himself just days later, with his family believing that the man's death was actually murder.

Mark Minnie's book, The Lost Boys of Bird Island, claims to prove that members of South Africa's last Apartheid government took children to Bird Island, just off the coast of Port Elizabeth, where they were sexually abused and in some cases killed.

"The book details the corruption within the last Apartheid government of South Africa and implicated officials all the way to the top, including defense minister Magnus Malan and the minister of environmental affairs John Wiley," reports the Free Thought Project.

Shortly before his death, Minnie revealed that he had been approached by more sources with more damning evidence and that a sequel was in the works.

The book was published on August 5, but just nine days later Minnie was dead, having apparently shot himself in the head