Vicki’s grieving family deserve justice

About 17 months after Vicki Terblanche’s brutal murder, the state has finally secured a conviction against one of the men who played a role in taking a mother away from her young son. Dylan Cullis, at the age of 22, has shown remorse for his actions, cleaned up his act, and hopefully, when he is finally released back into society, will have undergone rehabilitation programmes, as promised in the Gqeberha high court this week.

But the prosecution still has a long way to go in proving its theory that Vicki’s estranged husband, businessman Arnold Terblanche, and her boyfriend Reinhardt Leach, were instrumental in her murder.

If they were, as is alleged by the state, then her murder was the ultimate betrayal by two men she once loved and trusted, one of them being the father of her teenage son.

Cullis, a father himself, will also miss out on watching his little girl grow up after he was sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment.

From the get-go, the former barman co-operated with the police, leading them to Vicki’s body in a shallow grave in Greenbushes.

He said he had tried to rescue her but admitted he acted too late.

It is something he will have to live with for the rest of his life — and unfortunately so will Terblanche and Vicki’s young son.

Terblanche, after several failed attempts, was finally released on bail of R1m, while Leach abandoned his bid for freedom and Mario de Ridder Jnr lies low in his lead up to testifying for the state as a Section 204 witness.

Vicki’s murder is just one of many chilling incidents to rock Nelson Mandela Bay — once proud to be called the “Friendly City ”— in recent years

We can only hope she gets the justice she deserves and though it will never bring her back, it may bring some peace to her grieving family.

Vicki, according to both the defence and the state, was no saint, but to be drugged and suffocated and then stuffed into a boot of a car while her alleged assailants drank, gambled and went go-karting, shows a complete disregard for human life.

At the end of the day she was a mother, a daughter, a friend.

And for that — along with all the other victims of genderbased violence — she should be remembered and honoured.