Italian-born Vivien Ponté (57) tied up on bed, possibly also gang-raped, torched on her bed, Oranjeville, FS South Africa.
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Also see: Colleague of Ms Ponté arrested by Sasolburg police, appears in Heilbron court, charged with removing harddrive from Ms Ponté's laptop computer: http://www.censorbugbear.org/farmitracker/reports/view/1441
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RESEARCH NOTE: Ms Ponté is described as a 'pharmacist' by the SA news media. However a search of the legally required central SA registry for pharmacists (pageview attached) shows that there is no registration for a person called Vivien Ponté as a 'pharmacist'. There is one other person surnamed Ponte, a student, but no-one by the name of Vivien Ponté.
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"Oranjeville pharmacist and good samaritan Ms Vivien Ponté. 57, emigrated to South Africa with her parents as a six-year-old.
The single woman was much-loved in the tiny Free State community where she grew up. She lived alone in her three-bedroom home. She was known for her 'kind heart', and often helped poor residents in a nearby squatter camp next to the Vaaldam, handing out food parcels once a month, giving art-lessons and helping the mostly elderly and single-women who lived there financially, too.On Monday, her torched body was discovered on her burnt-out bed, where, police say, she clearly died a 'gruesome death'. From the forensic scene they could tell that she had been tied to her bed, raped, and then set alight. She may have died of smoke inhalation: the forensic examination will have to determine her exact cause of death. Ms Ponté 's gruesome murder was discovered when one of her gardeners sought help from the police after realising 'something was wrong' inside the house early on Monday-morning August 11 2013.She didn't as usual arrive at the house early as she usually did - and there were burn marks outside the house above the bedroom windows.
The police found her body at around 10h00am. One of the neighbours said Oranjeville 's smallholdings 'is a safe, peaceful village. That something like this can happen in a rural village is horrific'.
Only the one main street is tarred - the smallholdings are connected with dirt roads. On Mrs Ponté 's smallholding there were ostriches and chickens scratching around.
Neighbours suspect she must have been attacked late Sunday-night. The community is close-knit, everyone knows one another.
As soon as a stranger arrives, neighbours phone each other and some will go and talk to the stranger to find out who the person is.
The neighbours questioned by the police said there were no strangers in the area on Sunday night.
The dogs - the animals know the sound of everyone's car -- did not raise any alarms. "If there are 'strange' cars in Oranjeville, they go wild,' said a neighbour woman who went inside with the police inside Mrs Ponté's house and made the discovery.
She arrived at the house at the same time the policeman did. "I walked in behind him. He opened the bedroom door, then turned back to me, saying 'perhaps it's better if I didn't go inside but rather wait outside', she said.
The house was ransacked, with many office files strewn all over the house. But only the main bedroom had been torched.
The bed and the curtains had burned, and blood-spatters could be seen amongst the soot.
The SAPS spokesman constable Peter Kareli said 'this was a gruesome murder." Possibly they had raped her, tied her hands and feet and possibly even strangled her, they don't know yet, before the bedroom was torched. While the house was strewn with office files and ransacked, from the photograph of the torched bedroom it was clear that easy-to-remove small items such as a clock, were not 'stolen'.
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http://www.beeld.com/nuus/2013-08-13-verkrag-verbrand
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http://www.saps.gov.za
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Profiles of other people who live in Oranjeville: http://www.facebook.com/search/104008016303434/residents/present
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