Victims ‘burnt alive’

Lid lifts on farm massacre horror THE extent of the horror of the deaths of the eight people massacred at farm Kareeboomvloer in the Mariental district two years ago deepened on Friday as the High Court in Windhoek heard testimony on the autopsies of four of the victims.

Two of the people who were murdered on March 4 and 5 2005 were still alive when they were set on fire, Judge President Petrus Damaseb heard on Friday when a State pathologist, Dr Elizabeth Shangula, testified about the post-mortem examinations that she performed. Another of the victims, Mrs Elzabé Erasmus, may have lived for as long as three hours after she was shot in the head, Dr Shangula also told the court.Shangula was the ninth State witness to be called by Deputy Prosecutor General Antonia Verhoef to testify in the trial of the four men being prosecuted on 15 criminal charges in connection with the massacre.In the dock are Justus Christiaan (‘Shorty’) Erasmus (29), the son of Mrs Erasmus and her husband, Justus Christiaan Erasmus Snr (50), who was also killed at the farm, brothers Sylvester Beukes (22) and Gavin Beukes (25), and a friend of the Beukes brothers, Stoney Raymond Neidel (30).All four accused men pleaded not guilty to all charges when their trial started on March 1.Erasmus Jnr is accused of having recruited Sylvester Beukes to carry out an alleged plot to murder Erasmus’s parents.Dr Shangula told the court that in a post-mortem examination that she conducted on March 7 2005, she found that Mrs Erasmus had been shot in the back of her head, and that this shot killed her.The fatal bullet entered her head on the left side of the back of her head, and passed to the right through her head, before the bullet point lodged in a frontal, right-side section of her skull.Dr Shangula added that she observed “subpleural petechiae” – pinpoint-sized spots of bleeding – in Mrs Erasmus’s lungs.This, she said, was an indication that Mrs Erasmus had been having trouble breathing before she died.What this means, she said, was that Mrs Erasmus must have still been alive for some time after she was shot.It is difficult to estimate how long she had lived after she was shot, but if she had to estimate, she would say that Mrs Erasmus had lived for perhaps three hours before she finally succumbed to the gunshot wound to her head, Dr Shangula said.The trajectory of the bullet through Mrs Erasmus’s brain was such that the part of the brain controlling breathing and heartbeat was not immediately destroyed, Dr Shangula said.The effect of the injury that Mrs Erasmus suffered was that she must have remained conscious, but was slowly drifting into a state of unconsciousness, with decreasing breathing and heartbeat, until she finally passed away, Dr Shangula testified.The presence of a deposit of soot around the entrance wound was an indication that the barrel of the firearm with which Mrs Erasmus was shot must have been between 70 centimetres and a metre from her head when the shot was fired, Dr Shangula added.Mrs Erasmus was found lying face down at her husband’s feet against one of the walls of a bedroom of the farmhouse at Kareeboomvloer.In another bedroom, the body of the farm foreman, Sunnyboy Swartbooi (35), was found.He had been tied to a chair, and was also shot.Dr Shangula also performed an autopsy on Swartbooi on March 7 2005, she told the court.Like Mrs Erasmus, Swartbooi had also been shot in the back of the head.The entrance wounds in their heads were both 5 mm in diameter, Dr Shangula reported.With the bullet having passed along a more devastating path through Swartbooi’s head than it had done in the case of Mrs Erasmus, she concluded that Swartbooi died within a matter of minutes after being shot.She found no soot around the entrance wound in Swartbooi’s case.Dr Shangula also examined the charred remains of two people, which were identified to her as the remains of a six-year-old girl, Christina Engelbrecht, and the 18-year-old Deon Gertze, the court heard.She found soot in the trachea of both bodies – a sign indicating that Gertze and Engelbrecht had still been alive and breathing at the time they were burnt, Dr Shangula said.They would have experienced “a lot of excruciating pain”, she remarked.She could find any signs of gunshot wounds in the bodies of Engelbrecht and Gertze, Dr Shangula said.She however added that she could not exclude the possibility that Gertze may have been shot in the abdomen, or that Engelbrecht could also have been shot, since only Engelbrecht’s chest was sufficiently intact to rule out the possibility that she had been shot in that part of her body.The last witness to testify before Dr Shangula was Wilhelmina Melk, who is the wife of Gavin Beukes, and also the mother of Beukes’s two children.She told the court that she had contacted her husband, who was living at Rehoboth at the time, in early 2005 to ask him to fetch their two children from her in Windhoek.On January 31 2005, she related, her husband’s brother, Sylvester Beukes, came to Windhoek and fetched the children.January 31 2005 is claimed to be a key date in the events that led up to the killings.The State is alleging that it was on this date that Erasmus Jnr met with Sylvester Beukes in Windhoek, and that at this meeting he handed over a revolver, .38 calibre bullets, and a firearm licence in the name of J.C.Erasmus – thought to be that of Erasmus Snr – to Beukes.It was reported on Thursday last week that it is alleged that the firearm licence of Justus Christiaan Erasmus was included in a list of items alleged to have been stolen from the farm after the killings.In fact, a careful reading of the State’s indictment against the four accused men shows that it is not alleged that the firearm licence was necessarily part of the items stolen from the farm after the killings.It is alleged that “all or some of the items” listed in the charge sheet were stolen from the farm.At the same time it is also alleged in another charge of theft that “some or all of the items listed” – this could of course include the firearm licence – were stolen between January 31 and March 7 2005 at or near Mariental, or Rehoboth, or Windhoek, or at another unknown place in Namibia.The trial continues today.Another of the victims, Mrs Elzabé Erasmus, may have lived for as long as three hours after she was shot in the head, Dr Shangula also told the court.Shangula was the ninth State witness to be called by Deputy Prosecutor General Antonia Verhoef to testify in the trial of the four men being prosecuted on 15 criminal charges in connection with the massacre.In the dock are Justus Christiaan (‘Shorty’) Erasmus (29), the son of Mrs Erasmus and her husband, Justus Christiaan Erasmus Snr (50), who was also killed at the farm, brothers Sylvester Beukes (22) and Gavin Beukes (25), and a friend of the Beukes brothers, Stoney Raymond Neidel (30).All four accused men pleaded not guilty to all charges when their trial started on March 1.Erasmus Jnr is accused of having recruited Sylvester Beukes to carry out an alleged plot to murder Erasmus’s parents. Dr Shangula told the court that in a post-mortem examination that she conducted on March 7 2005, she found that Mrs Erasmus had been shot in the back of her head, and that this shot killed her.The fatal bullet entered her head on the left side of the back of her head, and passed to the right through her head, before the bullet point lodged in a frontal, right-side section of her skull.Dr Shangula added that she observed “subpleural petechiae” – pinpoint-sized spots of bleeding – in Mrs Erasmus’s lungs.This, she said, was an indication that Mrs Erasmus had been having trouble breathing before she died.What this means, she said, was that Mrs Erasmus must have still been alive for some time after she was shot.It is difficult to estimate how long she had lived after she was shot, but if she had to estimate, she would say that Mrs Erasmus had lived for perhaps three hours before she finally succumbed to the gunshot wound to her head, Dr Shangula said.The trajectory of the bullet through Mrs Erasmus’s brain was such that the part of the brain controlling breathing and heartbeat was not immediately destroyed, Dr Shangula said.The effect of the injury that Mrs Erasmus suffered was that she must have remained conscious, but was slowly drifting into a state of unconsciousness, with decreasing breathing and heartbeat, until she finally passed away, Dr Shangula testified.The presence of a deposit of soot around the entrance wound was an indication that the barrel of the firearm with which Mrs Erasmus was shot must have been between 70 centimetres and a metre from her head when the shot was fired, Dr Shangula added.Mrs Erasmus was found lying face down at her husband’s feet against one of the walls of a bedroom of the farmhouse at Kareeboomvloer.In another bedroom, the body of the farm foreman, Sunnyboy Swartbooi (35), was found.He had been tied to a chair, and was also shot.Dr Shangula also performed an autopsy on Swartbooi on March 7 2005, she told the court.Like Mrs Erasmus, Swartbooi had also been shot in the back of the head.The entrance wounds in their heads were both 5 mm in diameter, Dr Shangula reported.With the bullet having passed along a more devastating path through Swartbooi’s head than it had done in the case of Mrs Erasmus, she concluded that Swartbooi died within a matter of minutes after being shot.She found no soot around the entrance wound in Swartbooi’s case.Dr Shangula also examined the charred remains of two people, which were identified to her as the remains of a six-year-old girl, Christina Engelbrecht, and the 18-year-old Deon Gertze, the court heard.She found soot in the trachea of both bodies – a sign indicating that Gertze and Engelbrecht had still been alive and breathing at the time they were burnt, Dr Shangula said.They would have experienced “a lot of excruciating pain”, she remarked.She could find any signs of gunshot wounds in the bodies of Engelbrecht and Gertze, Dr Shangula said.She however added that she could not exclude the possibility that Gertze may have been shot in the abdomen, or that Engelbrecht could also have been shot, since only Engelbrecht’s chest was sufficiently intact to rule out the possibility that she had been shot in that part of her body.The last witness to testify before Dr Shangula was Wilhelmina Melk, who is the wife of Gavin Beukes, and also the mother of Beukes’s two children.She told the court that she had contacted her husband, who was living at Rehoboth at the time, in early 2005 to ask him to fetch their two children from her in Windhoek.On January 31 2005, she related, her husband’s brother, Sylvester Beukes, came to Windhoek and fetched the children.January 31 2005 is claimed to be a key date in the events that led up to the killings.The State is alleging that it was on this date that Erasmus Jnr met with Sylvester Beukes in Windhoek, and that at this meeting he handed over a revolver, .38 calibre bullets, and a firearm licence in the name of J.C.Erasmus – thought to be that of Erasmus Snr – to Beukes.It was reported on Thursday last week that it is alleged that the firearm licence of Justus Christiaan Erasmus was included in a list of items alleged to have been stolen from the farm after the killings.In fact, a careful reading of the State’s indictment against the four accused men shows that it is not alleged that the firearm licence was necessarily part of the items stolen from the farm after the killings.It is alleged that “all or some of the items” listed in the charge sheet were stolen from the farm.At the same time it is also alleged in another charge of theft that “some or all of the items listed” – this could of course include the firearm licence – were stolen between January 31 and March 7 2005 at or near Mariental, or Rehoboth, or Windhoek, or at another unknown place in Namibia.The trial continues today.