Durban – He was the one who welcomed visitors to the guest house and made sure they had a comfortable and pleasant stay. But the same man who had earlier shown the Pope family – who had arrived for the Easter weekend from Johannesburg and Durban – to their rooms turned on them in a frenzied killing spree, emptying a gun magazine into Brian, 61, and Tillie, 47, as they lay sleeping in the Free State guest house.
Not content with killing the couple, he went in search of more prey in the next-door room, where Brian’s son Warren, his daughter-in-law Marlene, both in their thirties, and their two young children, aged 1 and 4, were sleeping.
By this time, he had only one bullet left, which he used to shoot Marlene, hitting her in the arm.
However, the fact that he had no more bullets did not deter him.
He picked up a table and chair and various other objects, attempting to beat Warren to death.
Warren put up a good fight, which ended outside the room.
The crazed killer did not stop. He picked up a garden pitch fork and stabbed Warren with it, piercing his neck. He collapsed and the killer left him for dead.
But the man wasn’t finished.
He returned to the room, where he beat up Marlene with a pole, and forced her and her two children into the family car.
He drove a few kilometres down the farm road to his lodgings to fetch his own wife and baby. What happened there, no one knows, but Marlene, sensing an opportunity to escape, managed to jump into the driver’s seat and, despite her shattered arm, drove away.
Police, who had been alerted by someone who heard the gunshots, arrived at the scene in minutes and met her in the driveway of the farm.
Tillie’s brother, Ockert Britz, described it as a “completely senseless and brutal murder with the sole intention to kill six innocent people”….
South Africa Today – South Africa News
