At the beginning of October
I posted an update regarding the murder of the Viana family at their smallholding in Walkerville south of Johannesburg. The story being reported at the time was gruesome enough, Mrs Viana had been raped prior to her murder while her husband and 13 year old son had been tied up and killed. The family dog had also been killed.
Brutal as the crime had been, the police and the media continued to report that the family had been shot dead. However, as more information is coming out, it is becoming clear that, as usual in these circumstances, the police and the media lied, and in fact there was a significant degree of torture in the killings.
Piecing together the various reports, the following appears to be what actually happened.
The family were chased around their home being hacked at with pangas (machetes) as they ran, leaving blood smears and splashes in every room of their house.
Mr Tony Viana was overcome, tied up and then hacked to bits. His 46 year old wife, Giraldine, was raped repeatedly, before having a broken bottle inserted into her vagina. A similar method of torture was used against
76 year old Helen Lotter in a similar killing only last year.
Their thirteen year old son, was tied with his hands behind his back, and drowned in a bath, a bath which by some accounts contained boiling hot water.
The sequence of events is not entirely clear as to whether the child died before his parents or whether he was forced to watch their fate before he too was dispatched.
The family pet was hacked to pieces.
The suspects, are all black Africans, and one of whom is the 20 year old son on a family who had worked for the Vianas for many years.
(Many commentators at this blog are critical of white South Africans who employ black domestic staff in the current climate, however, this ignores the fact that under the racist employment laws currently in force in South Africa, it is all but impossible to employ whites in any capacity)
An equally horrific murder of a family of three was
the killing of the Potgieger family back in December 40 year old Attie Potgieger had been stabbed and cut 152 times and took "many minutes to die", his wife and two year old daughter had also been cut, the tiny child finally killed, execution style with a bullet to the back of the head. (shockingly the careless newspaper reporting appears to refer to the little girl as
as a son)
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