Shepherds and Butchers

by Chris Marnewick

  The three accused were arrested soon after the discovery of the body. Each was linked to the scene by forensic evidence and by admissions made to the police, to the Magistrate before whom they first appeared, and at the trial. Tandamisa’s palm print was found on the left rear side-window of the car at the house. Hairs matching Leve’s were found on a blue tracksuit top next to the deceased’s body. He later admitted to having left that tracksuit top at the scene. The handle that had fallen out of the tracksuit top when the body was discovered matched the blade found embedded in the deceased’s neck. A fingerprint matching that of Pikashe’s left ring finger was found on a transistor radio that had been discarded in the shrubbery next to the house.

  Leve took a senior police officer to the scene and explained what had happened:

  When we were opposite the gate a white woman on the cement block (pointed out) called us. We went to her. We entered the yard and met her halfway. She asked if we were looking for work. We said yes. She went to fetch weeding implements. We weeded here (pointed out). She went into the house. She came out again. She asked my friend to work under the tree. She took a bucket and rinsed it under the tap. My other friend who has not yet been arrested then said we should grab the woman. We all agreed to grab her. She was back from the tap and went in through the garage door. We followed her.

  Inside the garage I grabbed her by the arm. The man who has not yet been arrested stabbed her with a knife. I took the knife from my friend and stabbed her again with the knife. The knife fell and my other friend who has been arrested picked it up and stabbed her again. The knife broke. I held her again while the one who has not been arrested went to fetch a wire while I was holding her by the neck. My friends tied her up with the wire.

  We entered the house through the window. We searched the room. Each searched a different room. My friend who is not here told us he had found twenty-four rand. My other friend who is now at the police station peeped out the window and said someone was coming. We climbed through the same window and found another white woman in front of the house. She asked us where the madam was. We said she was in the back yard. She went into the house and we ran away.

  Pikashe gave more information about Leve and Tandamisa’s actions. He told the police that Leve had grabbed the deceased from behind after following her into the garage. Leve then threw her down on the garage floor and sat on top of her with his knees on her chest and throttled her with his hands while Tandamisa was hitting her in the face with his fists. Tandamisa told Pikashe to look for some wire and he found a piece in the garage and tied it around the deceased’s neck. Tandamisa then stabbed the deceased next to the heart with the knife. When Tandamisa stabbed her again, the knife broke. Pikashe’s version explained the broken ribs and the severe injury to the deceased’s left eye.

  Tandamisa also admitted involvement, but implicated Pikashe in the stabbing too. At his first appearance in court Tandamisa told the Magistrate that all three of them had stabbed the deceased with the same knife. He admitted that he was the one handling the knife when its blade broke off in the deceased’s neck.

  The Court convicted each of them on both counts – murder and armed robbery – as charged in the indictment. This meant that the death sentence was available on the robbery charge, if the Court in its discretion deemed it appropriate. On the murder charge, however, the Court would be obliged to pass the death sentence unless there were extenuating circumstances present or a particular accused had been under the age of eighteen at the time of the murder.

  The District Surgeon had earlier conceded under cross-examination that he had examined both Pikashe and Tandamisa to determine their respective ages, and that both of them could have been under the age of eighteen years at the time of the crimes concerned. The Court sentenced them to twenty years imprisonment on the murder charge and to ten years imprisonment on the robbery charge. The sentences were to run concurrently.

  According to Leve’s own evidence the plan to break in somewhere had already been hatched the night before they killed Mrs Webber. The Court held that there were no extenuating circumstances in respect of Leve and sentenced him to death on 26 May 1987. He received a further sentence of ten years imprisonment on the robbery charge.

  He was twenty-three years old when he was hanged on 8 December 1987 and had spent six months under sentence of death.

  ‘Why do you think they killed her,’ I asked Wierda, ‘when there were three of them and they could so easily have held her down and taken what they wanted?’ I had asked a similar question about Mr Marx.

  ‘I’m fucked if I know,’ he said with unexpected vehemence. Then he added, ‘And I don’t care either. We are wasting our time and energy with these cases. We should find out why our client killed those guys at the reservoir instead. We still don’t know.’

  Wierda looked at me with his head cocked to one side. ‘We know nothing at all. We are running headlong into a dark tunnel with no idea what is going to come out of his evidence, and here we are, reading and discussing cases that happened in Cape Town.’

  I ignored his outburst. ‘No, there must be a reason. It might not be a good one, but it should at least be comprehensible.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I think they were scared. They were just scared and the thing escalated as the events unfolded.’

  ‘Isn’t that what happened at the reservoir, that panic set in, and that the thing was not planned?’ I suggested.

  Wierda did not answer, but he had given me an idea about an alternative argument, one that would help us to establish extenuating circumstances if our client were convicted. But there were flaws in Wierda’s premise.

  ‘I don’t buy that,’ I said immediately. ‘They had planned to tie her up before they followed her into the garage. That means it was premeditated, doesn’t it?’

  ‘No,’ said Wierda, sticking to his guns. ‘There was a fair degree of overkill here. They held her down, strangled her and stabbed her until the knife broke off in her body. They even took turns. It is as if they were caught up in an event beyond their control.’

  ‘There has to be some rational explanation for this kind of behaviour.’

  Wierda was not to be put off so easily. ‘They are animals, not in control of their actions like you and me. They hunt in packs. They don’t give a damn about anybody’s life, their own included.

  ‘Isn’t that what happened with the others?’ he asked and then answered his own question, ‘Let’s start with Scheepers, and Wessels, and Moatche. A gang behaves differently to the way one would expect of its individual members. That much I have learnt from my previous cases. As soon as there is a gang all reason goes out the window. And what about those three in the Free State? What were their names again, Marotholi and the other two? Didn’t they behave in exactly the same way? And what about those guys in Leeuwkop?’

  I did not have an answer. Perhaps Wierda had a point and, instead of debating the motives of the killers they had hanged during those last two weeks, we should have been searching for a motive for our client’s actions. Wierda had spoken with vehemence, and I had listened in silence. Roshnee, as usual, did not participate. Even if Wierda’s theory of mob psychology were able to account for the ease with which our client had become part of the execution team at Maximum, it still did not provide a rational and cogent account for his actions at the reservoir.

  At the reservoir Labuschagne had been alone, and finding a coherent reason for his actions was not easy.

  Palace of Justice

  36

  Judge van Zyl and his Assessors returned after the short break.

  ‘There is half an hour left. Please proceed,’ said the Judge. James Murray looked bored. Niemand was ready to take notes, but the Judge and Assessors looked like they had had enough for the day. I decided to lead the evidence of the events of the tenth of December the next morning. Labuschagne also needed the rest. We would all be refreshed. I also did not want James Murray to have the whole evening to prepare their cross-exam
ination on the events at the reservoir.

  ‘Tell the Court about Mr Tsafendas,’ I suggested.

  James Murray was still halfway out of his seat when the Judge took up the cause.

  ‘What is the relevance of this?’ he demanded. He did not wait for an answer. ‘I have given the defence a lot of leeway, far more than I ever imagined I would in a case like this, but this is going too far. What could Tsafendas possibly have to do with the charges the defendant faces?’

  I had to make my point in one hit. If it became a debate, or if Murray also entered the fray, I would lose.

  ‘M’Lord,’ I argued, ‘they locked this young man up with the worst murderers and the vilest criminals for eighteen months. Every day of those eighteen months he was locked up just like them, with the doors being secured behind him wherever he went, all day long. During the day he cared for the prisoners, saw to it that they were fed, that they had a wash and a haircut. They sent him to buy them stuff at the tuck shop. He watched over them and helped them read their Bibles and he heard them pray. Then he was told to call them out and to help kill them, to pray with their families and to bury them. Why are we so surprised at the events at the reservoir? He came to Maximum Security quite well adjusted, by all accounts. Then he killed seven men. We need to explore the reasons for the changes within him. And his encounter with Mr Tsafendas played a role in that.’

  ‘Get to the point,’ said Judge van Zyl, ‘what is the relevance of the evidence you propose to lead?’

  Wierda was in sympathy with the Judge, apparently. ‘What’s this about?’ he hissed through clenched teeth, his pencil still for once.

  ‘It is relevant to the defendant’s state of mind,’ I said simply, partly to Wierda and partly to Judge van Zyl.

  Wierda did not respond, but the Judge threw his pen down. It bounced off the bench and landed on the registrar’s desk three feet below. ‘And I told you to keep names out of it, didn’t I?’ he said. Then he covered his eyes with his hand, but I knew what he really meant. I have had enough of this, is what his body language told me.

  I waited for a formal ruling, but the Judge did not speak again all afternoon.

  ‘Tell the Court, please,’ I said to Labuschagne, ‘of your encounter with Mr Tsafendas and how it affected you.’ I spoke quietly, as if the altercation with the Judge had not happened at all.

  There was not a sound except that of scribbling pens and rustling pages for the rest of the afternoon. The Judge eventually came out from behind his hand, to listen and to watch, like the rest of us, in silence and amazement.

  When Labuschagne had completed his story the entire court remained silent for a while. The evidence of his interaction with Tsafendas and the Tsafendas prophecy had turned our comfortable world upside down. Then whispers started in the spectator seats, until there was a buzz in every part, except for the bench. The Judge and his Assessors still sat in stony silence.

  Tsafendas had long been our bogeyman, but here he was, scrambling about in a shoebox, hunting for stale newspaper clippings like a hobo in a rubbish bin and speaking in riddles. Vorster had been our champion, our Prime Minister, but here he was, scheming and conniving, doing things we could not have imagined.

  Outside it was still raining. The light inside the courtroom had taken on the grey of the sky outside, with mist attaching to the inside of the windows. It lent an eerie aspect to a courtroom which, until that day, had basked in direct sunlight through the skylights overhead.

  In the well of the court where the Officers of the Court sat and I stood everyone was dressed in the same drab dark or charcoal grey, the advocates and the registrar in black robes and white shirts and bands. The Judge, on the other hand, stood out like the leading lady in a Hollywood film, his scarlet robes the only item of colour in the room.

  When we came out of the building the cameras were waiting for us on the steps. After the evening news on television the first death threats arrived at the hotel where Roshnee and I were staying. It was agreed that Roshnee would return to Durban for the time being; there was nothing left for her to do anyway. Pierre de Villiers came to pick me up and I moved to my sister’s for the night.

  ‘No self-respecting killer would give you a warning before he came over to kill you,’ he said.

  I agreed with him and planned to return the next morning.

  The work did not stand still. I had to read the next case, and I finished the summary before dinner. The case was just another of the many that made one despair of the human race and its total lack of empathy for others.

  V3770 Stanley Smit

  37

  Smit broke into Miss Catherina Hanekom’s house and indecently assaulted and killed her. He was charged with housebreaking, rape and murder.

  The deceased was an unmarried woman in her forties. She lived alone at 26 Park Street, Moorreesburg. She was feeble-minded and physically deformed with what was described as a pigeon chest. She was small, weighing about fifty kilograms and was about one point six metres tall. Although she was able to perform some of the rudimentary daily chores of her household and personal care she needed the assistance of a social worker and a neighbour, Mrs Wahl, for more demanding tasks. Miss Hanekom received a monthly disability grant from the State. She received help with her financial affairs as she was incapable of handling those responsibilities herself.

  Mrs Wahl was away for the weekend of 30 August 1986. When she returned on 3 September she went to the deceased’s house. She found the front door open and, upon entering, found Miss Hanekom’s body under some blankets in the bedroom next to the bed. She went to the neighbours and they called the police.

  The police found a trail of blood from the telephone in the passage to the body. It was plain that the deceased had been dragged from the telephone to her bedroom. There was blood on the sheets of the deceased’s bed and spattered blood on the headboard of the bed and the wall above the bed. There was a pool of blood on the linoleum floor at the feet of the body and smeared blood on the walls of the passage. Some fingerprints were found on the frame of the front door and on the inside of the door itself. The rest of the house was fairly neat and tidy, with no obvious signs of a struggle or ransacking.

  When the blanket was removed from the body it was noted that Miss Hanekom had been partly undressed. Her panties had been removed and were found on the floor near the door. Several injuries to her frail body were visible to the naked eye. These were more fully explained by the pathologist who performed the post-mortem examination.

  He described the injuries as follows:

  In the back of the chest was a two-centimetre oblique incised wound, eleven centimetres from the posterior midline and nine centimetres below the prominent spine of the seventh cervical vertebra. The track of the wound could be followed forwards and medially and slightly upwards passing through the third left inter-costal space, through the upper lobe of the left lung, through the edge of the aorta and onto the back of the sternum at the front. The total length of this wound was eighteen centimetres. On the left side of the neck just below the left ear was a three point five centimetre stab wound through the carotid and internal jugular. Miss Hanekom had also suffered a broken nose. There were abrasions of the back of the head. The left lung had collapsed and there was some bleeding on the right side of the brain. Blood was found in the airways.

  Miss Hanekom had died of the stab wounds of the chest and neck. She had been subjected to a systematic and cruel beating before she died.

  The fingerprints taken at the scene were those of the accused. Smit gave evidence at his trial. He blamed his conduct on drugs and liquor – the usual scapegoats of a desperate defence.

  The Court rejected this version for a number of reasons. It was inconsistent and self-contradictory. It didn’t match Smit’s actions in the house; they were the actions of a calculating mind. Smit also told the Court that he had spent some time with a certain Jakob Afrika, but the latter was actually in police custody at the time given by Smit. Smit kept c
hanging his evidence to match the known objective facts and it was soon apparent that his evidence on the effects of alcohol and drugs on his state of mind was also a pack of lies.

  The Court found that on all the acceptable evidence it was clear that Smit had entered the house with the intention of committing a crime. When he encountered the frail Miss Hanekom he first beat her mercilessly with some blunt object, breaking her nose and causing bleeding of the one side of the brain. Then he stabbed her in the back with a knife and dragged her, feet first, to the bedroom. There he removed her panties and indecently assaulted her. Then he stabbed her on the side of the neck. When blood from this last stab wound spurted onto his clothes, he pulled some blankets over the body and, after taking some precautions to ensure that no one would notice anything untoward at Miss Hanekom’s house for a while, he left.

  The Court convicted him of housebreaking, indecent assault and murder. The inquiry into extenuating circumstances revealed none. Smit had been nineteen and a half years old at the time he murdered Miss Hanekom. His relative youth did not in itself constitute an extenuating circumstance. The Court found that he had killed in order to avoid detection, which was an aggravating factor.

  On 5 June 1987 Smit was sentenced to three years imprisonment on the house breaking charge and a further twelve months imprisonment for the indecent assault he had committed. He was sentenced to death on the murder charge.

  Six months after being sentenced Smit was hanged, on 8 December 1987.

  He was not yet twenty-one.