A tycoon's son was today locked up for life in a south african jail for brutally hacking his parents and older brother to death with an axe.
Henri
Van Breda appeared impassive as a judge sentenced him to three life
sentences for the grisly killings of his parents Martin, 54, and Teresa,
55, and brother Rudi, 22, in Stellenbosch, a scenic town in a
wine-growing area near Cape Town, in 2015.
Van
Breda, 23, also received a 15-year sentence in the Western Cape High
Court for the attempted murder of his sister Marli, then 16, at the time
of the attacks.
She suffered severe
head injuries in a bloody onslaught that Judge Siraj Desai described as
'cold-blooded' murder. Marli now inherits the family's £12million
fortune.
Van Breda also received a
one-year sentence for obstructing justice after the court concluded that
he inflicted injuries on himself to try to mislead police.
The
judge said there had been no explanation for the slayings. Rumours
appeared in local papers that Van Breda had a drug addiction and had run
up debts and that his parents had cut off his allowance and were trying
to make him go into a clinic to deal with his problems. But no such
evidence ever came before the court or was brought by Van Breda in
mitigation.
It means that he will lose his £6million
inheritance from the family estate as he is not allowed under South
African law to benefit financially from his crime.
Therefore,
the family's £12m fortune will all go instead to his surviving sister
who told investigators her older brother had always treated her as a
'princess' but she has no recollection of the attack.
Their
father Martin was the managing director of an international real estate
company as well as MD of 25 other companies and made his fortune from
property and investments.
Despite being the only survivor Marli
suffered such horrific injuries she did not give evidence due to total
memory loss during the 66-day trial which has made headlines since the
opening day.
Van Breda has maintained
his innocence throughout the trial and had put the blame on two mystery
black men wearing balaclavas for the killings which shocked the high
society circles he moved in.
During his
sentencing, Van Breda smartly dressed in a grey suit, collar and tie,
showed no emotion and stared straight ahead before he was cuffed and led
away to the cells below.
His girlfriend Danielle Janse van Rensburg was pictured embracing a family member after the sentencing.
She
began dating Van Breda a year after the brutal triple murder took place
and has insisted that he is not capable of such a horrific crime.
'Anyone
who spends a day with him will realise he couldn't do such a thing. I
believe in his innocence 100 per cent,' she said in 2016.
His fate was sealed when Judge Siraj Desai found him guilty of all five charges last month.
The
horrific crime took place in the early hours of the morning at the
families' luxury villa on the De Zalze Winelands Golf Estate at
Stellenbosch in January 2015 as the van Breda family slept.
The
first floor bedrooms were turned into a bloodbath with van Breda
inflicting at least 17 brutal axe wounds with the 10lb wood cutting axe
on the skulls and necks of his family.
Company director dad Martin died after sustaining at least six axe blows to his head and neck.
His wife Teresa was struck at least three times and older brother Rudi, 22, hit four times.
Younger sister Marli, now 19, suffered at least four vicious head wounds from the axe, but survived.
Van
Breda, who was found to have superficial wounds and injuries that the
prosecution claimed were self-inflicted, claimed that he desperately
managed to fight off the axeman.
He
described the man as laughing hysterically as he hacked his family to
death and attacked his sister and said he fought a 'life or death'
struggle with him until he fled the family mansion.
He
said he disarmed the axeman and that both intruders then fled the
property on the exclusive estate 25 miles away from Cape Town although
no evidence of any break-in was ever found.
The
super secure estate has perimeter electric fencing all round and
security gates and 24-hour dog patrols and CCTV but nothing was stolen
and no evidence found of anyone ever breaking in.
