Werner Menges
14 April 2008
Windhoek — The two women who were murdered in the Kareeboomvloer farm massacre three years ago both pleaded in vain for their lives before they were executed, one of the men now on trial for the eight slayings at the farm told the Police shortly after his arrest, according to evidence introduced in his High Court trial this week.
The most detailed record so far of what Gavin Beukes (26) told a senior Police officer during a visit to the crime scene at farm Kareeboomvloer between Rehoboth and Kalkrand on March 10 2005 became part of the evidence in the trial of Beukes and three co-accused on Wednesday.
Beukes, his brother, Sylvester Beukes (23), Rehoboth area resident Stoney Neidel (31), and Justus Christiaan ('Shorty') Erasmus (30), the son of the murdered owners of farm Kareeboomvloer, all pleaded not guilty to 15 charges, including eight counts of murder, when their trial started before Judge President Petrus Damaseb on March 1 last year.
Sylvester Beukes has since then admitted through his defence lawyer that he killed all eight people who were slain at the farm on March 4 to 5 2005.
In a plea explanation submitted to the Judge President at the start of the trial, Gavin Beukes has admitted that he was at the farm when the killings were carried out.
He however claimed that he had been held at gunpoint by his brother and had been tied to a security gate at the farm while the killings were being committed.
During March last year, a written record of a visit that Gavin Beukes paid to the farm with a Police officer, Chief Inspector Sydney Philander, on March 10 2005, four days after the two brothers' arrest, already became part of the evidence in the trial.
A video recording was also made of that visit.
Deputy Prosecutor General Antonia Verhoef last week submitted a transcript of what Beukes told Philander in that recording to the court as additional evidence in the trial.
The transcript has given the court the most detailed first-hand account so far of the events that took place at the farm.
Early on in the conversations that were recorded between Beukes and Philander, Beukes stated, when Philander asked him how he knew about the things he was about to point out to the officer: "It's all in my head, and when I lie down I only think of those things.
I was tied up at the farmer's house.
And it's only that that's playing off in myself.
I can't remember anything else."
He confirmed to Philander that he had been at the farm.
Beukes told Philander that he and his brother were given a place to sleep by someone they met after their arrival at the farm.
He and his brother soon had an argument about what Sylvester Beukes was planning to do at the farm, it seems, with Gavin Beukes having told Philander: "When I slammed the door shut, I said to my brother, 'man, how can you do such things? We are all Damaras.
These people are also Damara people.
If you have a problem with the farmer then you solve the problem with the farmer.
Why must you now involve us?'" Beukes said he went to kneel before his brother and begged with him.
When someone approached outside, his brother ran out, told the approaching man to "drop" - a term akin to "hands up" - and walked off with the man, Beukes said.
After perhaps two hours, "the woman and two children came, then he dropped the woman, and the woman stood there," Beukes continued.
"She sat there next to the wheelbarrow and pleaded and said, 'just leave me and then you solve the problems with the farmer'."
The woman's pleas did not soften his brother's resolve, Beukes indicated.
He told Philander that his brother took the woman away from where she had been pleading with him, returned to where he was, and then went off again.
Beukes then heard the sound of a gunshot, he said.
Hilma Engelbrecht (32), the pregnant wife of the farm foreman at Kareeboomvloer, Sonnybooi Swartbooi (35), was one of the people killed at the farm.
The couple's two children, Christina Engelbrecht (6) and Regina Gertze (4), were also murdered, as was Swartbooi himself.
Beukes continued to tell Philander that when the farm foreman came to where they were, his brother instructed the foreman to phone the farm owners to inform them that someone had fallen and hurt his tongue at the farm.
After a couple of calls to the owners - 'Shorty' Erasmus's late parents, Justus and Elzabé Erasmus - the owners indicated that they were on their way to the farm, Beukes told Philander.
He said his brother then also tied up the man - thought to be Swartbooi.
When the Erasmus couple arrived at the farm, they got out of their vehicle and were immediately held at gunpoint, Beukes indicated.
Mrs Erasmus also pleaded with Sylvester Beukes, it seems. "Thereafter, the woman said, 'after all, you are still a good child of ours'," Gavin Beukes told Philander.
"'Sylvester, why must you do such things? So just solve the problem instead of taking the lives of other people.' Then he just shot the people dead in cold blood."
Beukes continued: "Then he dragged the people in there, then he untied us on one side and he said, chap, you don't talk.
Then he pointed the gun at me. Then he said, go load, go load, he just showed this and that and that."
After the loading had been finished his brother went with the farm foreman into the farmhouse. He then heard another sound like a gunshot, Beukes told Philander. The court has so far heard evidence that Sylvester Beukes had been heard making threats against Justus Erasmus after he was arrested during September 2004 on a stock theft charge that Erasmus had laid against him.
The court has also heard evidence that Sylvester Beukes told the Police some eight days after his arrest that 'Shorty' Erasmus had asked him to kill the latter's parents - something which Erasmus denies. The trial continues on Thursday this week.
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