Update: Josef, the father of triple-murderer Zamokuhle Maduna, who helped slaughter three members of the Schutte-family, apologised in court to the two surviving sons, Mathias and Stefan Schutte (picture by Jonathan Burton, The Witness):
2014-07-31
http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Dad-of-farm-killer-apologises-to-victims-family-20140731
Picture: Mathias Schutte shakes hands with Joseph Maduna while his brother Stefan looks on. (Jonathan Burton, The Witness)
Reported by Mlondi Radebe, The Witness
Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.- In a brief and unexpected moment, Joseph Maduna, the father of convicted triple-killer Zamokuhle Maduna, 19, grabbed the hand of one of victims' surviving sons - and apologised in court.
Handed three life-sentences for the triple-murder were Zamokuhle Maduna, 19, Siphesihle Ngubane, 20, and Lindokuhle Khoza, 18, were each handed three life sentences in the KwaZulu-Natal High Court on Wednesday.
Acting Judge Louis Barnard described the triple-murders of Ekard Schutte, 76, his wife Elizabeth, 66, and their son Lutz, 33, as calculated and brutal.
After sentence was handed down, Ekard’s only surviving sons Stefan and Mathias Schutte, and Zamokuhle’s father Joseph Maduna shook hands and Maduna apologised for his son’s terrible deeds as their families looked on.
Joseph Maduna told reporters afterwards that he had told the family he was sorry, but did not want to speak further on the incident or with regards to the sentence his son received.
After accepting the apology, Stefan Schutte said that while they had lost their family, Joseph Maduna 'had lost his son".
Reacting to the sentence, Schutte said: “It won’t bring back my family but we accept it. It’s hard to speak about closure at this time.”
Maduna admitted to brutally murdering the Schutte family on 1 March 2014 at Richmond. Lutz had arrived at the family farm from Germany to celebrate his father’s birthday.
Maduna and his two co-accused were sentenced to life for each murder plus 15 years for robbery with aggravating circumstances, as well as five years for possession of firearms and ammunition.
'Barbaric and savage act'
Acting Judge Barnard said in handing down sentence: “This leaves one with doubts to whether the three accused are capable of rehabilitation. You committed a barbaric and savage act against humanity... even setting their bodies alight.”
He said that when Ekard was lying dying in the shed on the farm the men could have fled.
-- Instead, “they hid and waited for Elizabeth to return. One would have hoped that while Ekard was attacked and left for dead, the three would have had enough time to reflect on their actions and leave.
-- “Instead they also attacked Lutz mercilessly and stabbed him to death. They then tied Elizabeth and forced her to open the safe. They then slit her throat then doused them with petrol and set them alight,” said Barnard.
He said this was a truly shocking incident and the killers had shown no mercy to their victims.
Defence counsel Zina Anastasiou, arguing in mitigation of sentence on Tuesday, had said the guilty plea showed that the men had shown remorse. But Barnard disagreed, saying the remorse probably arose only after they had been arrested.
Barnard said the heinous crime against the family had impacted on Schutte’s grandchildren as they were receiving psychological counselling.
Maduna, Ngubane and Khoza all applied for leave to appeal against sentence but Barnard granted only Khoza such leave to appeal.
- The Witness http://www.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/Dad-of-farm-killer-apologises-to-victims-family-20140731
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Triple-murder of Schutte couple and son: March 5 2014 -- Four black males,19 & 20, arrested for triple-murder of Ekard Schutte, 77, Elizabeth Schutte 66, and their son Lutz Schutte, 33 on Saturday, March 1 2014 -
RICHMOND. KZN – One of the four young black male suspects in the cruel triple-murder of three members of the Schutte family actually used to work on their farm in KZN. One of the surviving sons, Stefan Schutte - a businessman in Pietermaritzburg -- said he realized with a shock after he discovered the mutilated bodies of his dad Ekard Schutte 77, his mom Elizxabeth 66, and his 33-year-old brother Lutz, that one of the four arrested men had actually 'still been working in his garden' that morning.
Stefan discovered the mutilated bodies of his brother and parents when he arrived as planned on Sunday-morning for his father's 77th birthday celebration.
On Monday-morning March 3 2014 the SAPS arrested four black males, aged 19 and 20, during a joint search operation by the Richmond police, their crime-intelligence unit, the K9-unit, the Falcons and the
Magma Security and Investigations company. The SAPS confiscated items belonging to the Schutte couple including their firearms, (a 9mm pistol and two rifles with ammo), loud-speakers and boom-boxes with the men. The vehicle in which the four men had fled, was found abandoned and torched.
Shortly before dad Ekard Schutte was murdered, three men who had previously worked for him, approached the German farmer under the pretence that they wanted to buy wood.
When the four men arrived at the farm they stabbed Ekard to death. Then the men went inside the homestead, made themselves a meal, and took the items they wanted to, packing the loot into boxes.
At that stage, mother Elizabeth and son Lutz were enroute from the airport to the Richmond smallholding. Lutz had arrived from Germany earlier in the week and had first visited with friends and family in Cape Town.
Stefan said that his mother and Lutz had walked in on the killers, who were sitting in the kitchen eating a leasurely meal.
"We have strong suspicions,' said 'a well-informed source', 'that the mother and son fought back fiercely before they died of their injuries.'
The killers tried to clean the crime scene by torching it; they poured petrol inside the homestead and across the murdered mother and son and set them alight.'
Then they fled in Elizabeth's vehicle. Spokeswoman Karen Lowe told the news media that the family 'is badly traumatized'.
The four suspects are expected to appear in the Richmond magistrate's court later this week.
A memorial service is scheduled for Saturday March 8 2014 from 11h00 in the Lutheran Church in Pietermaritzburg.
PICTURE:
The Schutte family before the triple-massacre by three blacks on their farm in Richmond on March 1 2014:
ltr: Gelind Fouché, Angela Geldenhuys, dad Ekard Schutte (murdered), mother Elizabeth (murdered), son Matthias, son Lutz (murdered) en Stefan Schutte.
http://witnessnews.mobi/news/read/1897/suspected-killer-returned-for-work/category:23338
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Three-member Schutte family murdered: father Eckard, mother Elizabeth and son Lutz_ Richmond, KZN smallholding, March 2 2014:
German-SA farm couple and their son were set on fire in horrific triple-murder in Richmond:
March 3 2014 - SAPS captain Thulani Zwane initially told the SA news media that the murdered Schutte couple and their son were 'beaten to death' on their Richmond KZN farm.
However now he has had to admit that the horrific triple-murder of the German-SouthAfrican farm-couple and their son was accompanied by gruesome violence which included them being torched.
Triple-farm murders in Richmond KZN are shocking: victims were cruelly mutilated and torched:
The Freedom Front Plus opposition party's parliamentarian Pieter Groenewald has slammed the cruelty with which the Schutte family was slaughtered.
He said in a statement: “The cruelty of the murder of the Schutte family (Eckard, Elizabeth and Lutz) in KwaZulu-Natal is shocking and does not speak of ordinary criminality. The majority of farm murders are accompanied by cruelty and it creates the impression that it is racially and politically driven. It is long since time that an investigation is done into the cruelty of specifically farm murders,” Dr. Pieter Groenewald (MP), the chief spokesperson on Police for the Freedom Front Plus, says.
The couple, Eckard (76) and Elizabeth Schutte and their son Lutz (33) were so badly mutilated that the police could not by yesterday afternoon say with any certainty how they had been murdered.
According to Groenewald, a police spokesman had told the FF Plus that all three white victims had 'various stab wounds on their bodies'.
"Mr. Schutte’s neck and chest was carved open, Mrs. Schutte’s head was crushed with a heavy object and all three had been set alight.
"The suspects had stolen three firearms and a vehicle. By two o ‘clock today they were still not captured. The police said that they had no information as to any possible suspects.
"A neighbour of the deceased said today that the son Lutz had arrived in South Africa from Germany on Saturday to surprise his father for his 77th birthday yesterday (Sunday).
"His mother had fetched him at the airport on Saturday and the murderers had been awaiting them upon their arrival.
"Mr. Schutte was presumably already dead by that time. Their corpses were discovered shortly after twelve yesterday when another son, Stefan, had arrived at the farm for the birthday party.
“Although the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation has already done an investigation into the reasons for the cruelty which accompanies violent crime in general in 2010, it was a disappointment which revealed nothing new.
He report did not address the causes for the cruelty of violent crime and addressed the general socio-economic and socio-political problems of violent crime.
http://www.vfplus.org.za/media-releases/cruelty-of-farm-attack-in-kzn-is-shocking
FIFTY WHITES MURDERED IN SA THUS FAR IN 2014:
-- This triple-murder of the Schutte family brings the total of white South Africans murdered by blac-racist attackers to fifty thus far in the year 2014 alone.
In another horribly gruesome triple-murder of a white family in South Africa, elderly -SouthAfrican residents Eckard and Elizabeth Schutte and their son Lutz who was visiting from Germany, were murdered by as a large black male gang on March 2 2014 in Richmond, KZN on a smallholding. The elderly father, Eckard's throat was cut through, his wife was hacked and horribly mutilated with 'large knives' and then she was set alight and torched; and their son Lutz was bludgeoned to death. The triple-killers in the frenzied attack against the three unarmed German family members were a large group of black males who fled in the couple's Mahindra van. Afrikaner activist/singer Sunette Bridges reported that the killer-gang fled in the couple's Mahindra van, registration NK 5235. No-one was arrested, she writes. https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=625786784156926...
Richmond KZN resident Delia De Klerk Jeffs writes on their community facebook page: "Our prayers go out to Matthias and Stefan Schutte on this very said day. This brutal murder was so unnecessary on your family and words could never express our sadness for you. I lit these three candles for your Mother, Father and Brother in there memory rest in piece.
https://www.facebook.com/dee.jeffs
Richmond Community Page:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/richmond.news/?fref=ts
Richmond resident R.Jugree writes: "Sadly another tragic incident in our town where 3 well known members of our community were brutally murdered today - firearms and a vehicle was stolen- we all need to be extra alert it is the second incident where a Mahindra van was taken so those who drive them need to be alert-lets all be extra vigilant and report any suspicious vehicles or behavior-Richmond weeps once again
https://www.facebook.com/rjugree
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Duitse toeriste in Richmond vermoor - berig op BKA.
Christo het rapporteer - https://www.facebook.com/christo.gerlach3
jjbeket@iafrica.com Phone: 0332121297 Message: Please be advised that Mr and Mrs Schutte were long time residents of Richmond. There son Lutz was here on holiday from Germany. The vehicle stolen was their private car and NOT rented.
For the family's sake please get the fact straight
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