Murder weapon that inflicted 15 skull-splitting wounds
THIS is the axe that killed Henri van Breda’s mother, father, brother and almost took the life of his sister. This is the first time the murder weapon has been photographed.
Coming out of the SAPS evidence bag, Exhibit Number 1, in the triple murder trial being heard in the Western Cape High Court, looks like a garden axe from a hardware store.
Or as Judge Siraj Desai remarked when it was handed up to the bench in week one of the trial: “It looks like an axe you’d chop wood with.”
It’s been cleaned since it was recovered by police from the stairs where it landed after Van Breda, 21, allegedly hurled it at the fleeing killer after fighting and disarming him.
The one in the crime scene photo album is bloodied after a killing spree that shocked investigators and paramedics.
According to sickening crime scene photographs, the 0.9kg Lasher hickory handle axe inflicted at least 15 skull-splitting wounds between 6cm to 8cm long, killing Martin, 54, Theresa, 55, and Rudi, 22. Marli, 16 at the time, was struck the most, including once near her jugular.
The mindless violence of the album distracts from other evidence in its pages which provide a hint of what’s still to come in this trial.
This includes the photos of what the captions call “presumable blood” on the basin, shower door handle and towel in one of the bathrooms of the Goske Street murder house.
The photos show cloths and a mop head on the washing line which were later bagged as evidence. Presumably these images refer to count five of the indictment, which accuses Van Breda of tampering with the crime scene.
Hardly noticeable are the photos of blue black shoe prints that were enhanced with amido black, an acid staining dye that can be used to detect bloody footprints that have been cleaned off a tile floor.
Perhaps the most left field photo is one of a toilet bowl with faeces floating in the water. Seemingly, this is where Van Breda claims in his plea statement, “I had to move my bowls (sic)”.
This was until the typo was corrected by Judge Desai when he dryly noted in a moment of dramatic relief during a tension-filled reading of Van Breda’s first account of the attack: “That’s bowels with an ‘e’…”