The blonde, the beach, the hiding out
Henri van Breda goes on trial for triple murder of his family
ON MONDAY, the trial will begin in the Western Cape High Court, before Judge Siraj Desai, more than two years after most of Henri van Breda’s family was slain in 2015, in their home at the De Zalze golf estate in Stellenbosch.
Unlike many other high profile trials, the one consistent thread in the Van Breda case is that although people close to him have gone public, no one has snitched or given insight into this incomprehensible crime: not his family, not the cops and not his 20-year-old girlfriend.
Like Van Breda’s clan, Mpumalanga receptionist and child carer Daniellé Janse van Rensburg believes the love of her life, whom she met at Capsicum chef school in Salt River last year, wouldn’t harm a fly.
In a magazine interview in the wake of Van Breda being charged in June, she declared, “My Henri’s not a killer” and vowed to stand by her man.
And she did that in September when they were arrested for drug possession, telling the court the dagga was hers.
By then the couple was living together. So it was odd she gave her address in her bail application as Visarend Street in Table View, while Van Breda provided the address of his uncle Andre Du Toit’s Plattekloof home.
There is no Visarend Street in Table View, and the Du Toit family vacated the Plattekloof house in 2015 for a more plush spread in Somerset West.
Seemingly on the move, the couple holed up in a self-catering suite in a Big Bay guest house when they ran foul of the police in Table View. After two weeks, they moved to a Kommetjie guest house for a fortnight. Then the trail went cold, and no one outside the family knows where they are living.
So why were Van Breda and his lover secretly on the move? Were they trying to evade media scrutiny? Or were they testing the system’s ability to track their whereabouts?
At both guest houses the couple played their cards close to their chests. Janse van Rensburg did all the talking when they checked in, while Van Breda hung back. And both landlords reported that the bearded 22 year old would avoid them.
In Big Bay, the owner, aware of who his guests were, slept with his 9mm pistol under his pillow. In Kommetjie, the landlords didn’t have a clue.
Their behaviour puzzled both landlords, particularly the surfer in Kommetjie. “I don’t know what they were doing. The room is not that exciting and there’s no TV. But they were in there 90% of the time, even when it was beautiful weather. It looked like they were hiding from the world.”
As much as Van Breda tries to give nothing away, like any poker player he’s got his tics and tells. One is Janse van Rensburg. She’s exposed his loving nature to the public, now familiar with the vacant stare he provides for the cameras covering his court appearences.
Their relationship is intriguing. Janse van Rensburg’s CV reveals her as sporty and outgoing. Yet that all changed after meeting Van Breda.
“They were possibly our most filthy, disgusting guests we’ve ever had,” said the Kommetjie landlord. “I don’t think they washed a thing in the room. It looked like they were eating off dirty plates.
“Normally we’d send the housekeeper in to clean up but I couldn’t subject her to that mess. I thought it possible they had been evicted from their previous place. We had to give the place a really good spring clean after they left.
The Big Bay landlord was as unequivocal. “I’m so glad they were out of here. They were filthy. Rubbish was all over the floor and there was leftover food all over the place.”
Such is Janse van Rensburg’s unconditional devotion that she dropped out of chef school with Van Breda, and doesn’t care what anyone thinks. As the fridge sticker on her Facebook page declares: “My life. My choices. My mistakes. My lessons. Not your business. Mind your own problems before you talk about mine. My life is not your story to tell.”
In the weeks ahead it may become apparent in the High Court if Henri wears a mask – like the superheroes which adorn the T-shirts and hoodies he’s been seen wearing in public – and if it perhaps speaks to a shadowy aspect of self and an unconventional relationship with his parents.
In the first photographs taken a few months after he lost his family, he sat on Blaauwberg Nature Reserve’s Derdesteen beach watching the sun set with his uncle, a female relative and his puppy which, in between chasing a ball, sat under his arm. He seemed as if he didn’t have a care in the world. But that changed as he left the beach, looking like a dead man walking, rings under his eyes so dark they looked like make-up.
The last time Van Breda was seen walking his puppy was five months later, again on Derdesteen. Except this time he was with his uncle, aunt and a teenager with short, curly dark locks…
By now his sister, Marli, was on the road to recovery in the care of her uncle and aunt and a curator appointed by the court to handle her legal affairs and to assist her and her family, teachers and therapists with major life decisions.
Although still suffering from retrograde amnesia, curator advocate Louise Buikman SC, confirmed Marli’s return to school for the last term of 2015, contact with her peers and her brother. Word was that Marli was alternating between living in Somerset West with her boyfriend’s family to be close to her school and with her uncle, aunt and older brother in Plattekloof.
But it was chilling to witness the sibling interaction in the flesh. Still unofficially charged at that stage, but the prime suspect in the eyes of the cops, here he was, seven months after the gruesome slaying of his family and the miraculous survival of his sister, walking alongside her with not a hint of tension in their body language. Set against the pounding surf on a blindingly white beach it was surreal.
There was a hint of poignancy too in this family outing. Gone was Marli’s mask, a long blonde wig that had become her trademark when out in Somerset West. Here she was at her most vulnerable, her short newly growing locks bearing stark testimony to her horrific wounds which, the State says, were inflicted by her brother.
This familial closeness contrasts starkly with the rumours of bad sibling blood since he was charged and Marli became a State witness – events which effectively exiled him from the family’s Somerset West villa, apparently rented with monies from their multi-million trust funds here and in Australia.
The rumour, reported as fact, is that Marli will take the stand against her brother. But those in the know say this will not happen, if only because she still suffers from retrograde amnesia and, perhaps thankfully, still has no memory of the nightmare on Goske Street.
Another State witness who won’t be able to tell us much, if her mother is to be believed, is an aquaintance of Marli’s, referenced twice in the indictment as Van Breda’s girlfriend.
Except she wasn’t his girlfriend, says her mother, claiming her daughter had only been on a couple of dates with Van Breda, and barely knew him.
Certainly not enough, she adds, to shed any light on the personality behind Van Breda’s numb stare which has become his trademark at his court appearances.
So picture this: by Van Breda’s account, a person or persons unknown, gains entry without any sign of a break-in, and goes postal with an axe, slaying his elder brother, his mother, father and wounding his sister. Inexplicably, the neighbours hear no screaming.
Miraculously, Van Breda escapes with only superficial wounds and a blow that mercifully only renders him unconscious. He wakes to a slaughter house scene.
But instead of running screaming from this hell in the middle of a fortified luxury suburbia patrolled night and day by security guards, he calls a high school girl – who is not really his girlfriend – at 4.24am. And then, when she doesn’t answer, says her mother, he googles phone numbers for emergency services.
And then, the State indictment continues, when Van Breda finally calls emergency services three hours later, he displays superhuman calm and tolerance as the bumbling ambulance control room operator spends three minutes struggling to locate his address and write it down correctly.
“Do you get any Allemann Street? Because if you send someone there I can meet them in the road…” Henri offers kindly, as if he’s expecting a pizza delivery.
It almost seems incidental to the conversation when the operator finally enquires: “What kind of injuries is there?”
“Um, my family and me we were attacked by a guy with an axe.” “Unconscious hey?” “Yes, and bleeding from the head,” adds Van Breda, with a chuckle.
And then, almost half an hour later, Van Breda calls his “girlfriend” again.
Possibly the only person who can make sense of this madness is Janse van Rensburg. She has spent more time alone with him than any therapist, cop or lawyer.
When they are together, it’s obvious he trusts her.
So by now Van Breda has shared how he woke to a nightmare and managed to stay so calm. Why he took hours to call an ambulance when Marli was slowly slipping away. What the axe attacker wanted that necessitated mass murder…
Because these are the answers a girl needs, right?