SHE LOVED ANIMALS & ALWAYS SAW THE BEST IN PEOPLE
Three weeks after hiding her body he finally directed police to a corner in his parents’ garden
Devastated family remember their beautiful Nikki
Compiled by JOANIE BERGH
BY LATE evening on 6 January she felt distinctly on edge. She could sense something was wrong. “Why are you so quiet? I’m worried!” Marlaine Pienaar-Vice wrote in a cellphone message to her daughter. Nicola Pienaar never saw her mom’s text. By this stage her phone had already been switched off and she’d vanished without a trace.
Three days later after countless unanswered messages and phone calls Marlaine reported Nikki (28) missing to Paarl police.
Following a search spanning two provinces her boyfriend, Jaco Oosthuizen, was arrested in Port Elizabeth where he was caught driving Nikki’s Peugeot packed with books, bedding and clothes.
He claimed he and Nikki had got into an argument and he’d left her in Oudtshoorn. But something didn’t add up.
Just before midnight on 29 January, 24 days after Nikki’s disappearance, Marlaine, a practising psychologist, got the news she’d been dreading. Her daughter’s body had been found – in a grave in the backyard of the home where Jaco (32) lived with his parents in Paarl.
It’s a case that has sent shockwaves throughout South Africa. How could something like this happen, people are wondering. And how on earth does a mother come to terms with losing a daughter in such a traumatic way?
TWO days after the discovery of Nikki’s body we chat to one of her relatives, Nadine Fourie*. It’s the day of the cremation so it’s an extremely emotional time for the family who’ve already gone through so much.
“When they found her body it was already so badly decomposed that police wouldn’t allow her parents to see it. They had to identify their daughter by looking at a photo of the two tattoos [of a fairy and a dragon] she had on her back,” Nadine says.
Her body was in such bad shape that a burial was out of the question.
“It was so terrible for her mother not to even be able to bury her daughter.”
Nikki was the only child of Marlaine and Francois Pienaar, a chartered accountant who lives in Wellington. The couple divorced when she was a baby and both later went on to marry again.
She was an introverted, quiet child, Nadine says. She struggled at school and it’s possible she may have suffered from Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). She left school at the end of Grade 10 and ended up doing admin at Marlaine’s practice in Paarl, living in a small flat behind the office.
“Nikki was mad about animals. There was always a cat that she’d found in some drainpipe or that someone had abandoned and she wanted to save. She was always buying food for homeless people in the area.”
When she crossed paths with Jaco she liked him instantly. A mutual friend introduced them, says Nadine, who later also got the chance to meet him. “At first glance he was a friendly guy, adventurous and very charming,” she adds.
It didn’t take long for Nikki to fall for this spontaneous, good-looking man.
“Her biggest dream was to one day have a family of her own. To marry a good man and have children with him,” Nadine says. “She always saw the best in other people, no matter where they came from.”
She introduced Jaco to her family in December but it wasn’t clear if they were in a relationship, Nadine recalls. They seemed to like each other but it was early days.
Jaco, who lived with his parents at a house near Paarl train station, didn’t own a phone or a car so he’d sometimes drive Nikki’s Peugeot. One day the couple arrived at Marlaine and second husband Richard’s home in Durbanville near Cape Town, bringing a stray cat Nikki was hoping her mom would agree to take care of. “That was the first time they saw Jaco. Marlaine said he was neatly dressed and seemed decent,” Nadine says.
They didn’t know much about Jaco, except that he’d worked at a cheetah sanctuary in Port Elizabeth and at two pizzerias in Paarl.
Marlaine saw Jaco on another occasion at Nikki’s flat.
The next time Marlaine would see Jaco would be in the dock at Paarl magistrate’s court, being charged with the murder of her beloved daughter.
“Marlaine and Nikki’s lives were intertwined. They were very protective of each other. Every night Marlaine had to let her daughter know she was home safely after her drive home to Durbanville from Paarl. They communicated on WhatsApp all the time.”
On 5 January Nikki drove back to Paarl in the afternoon after visiting her mom. There was a possibility she’d drive back to sleep over in Durbanville that night, but she later sent a message saying she’d decided to stay in Paarl instead.
Between 8.20 pm and just after 10.08 pm mother and daughter messaged each other a few times. Marlaine was worried about her daughter. “Will you be okay?” she asked her. “I believe so,” Nikki responded. “Thanks for everything.”
That was the last message Marlaine ever received from her daughter. That night she sent another text to Nikki but got no response.
“When she heard nothing her concern intensified,” Nadine says. “The next day Marlaine drove to Paarl. When she saw her daughter wasn’t at home she immediately knew something was wrong.”
Nadine says that two days previously Nikki had told Marlaine that she liked Jaco but that he’d been behaving strangely. Concerned about her daughter’s absence, she contacted his parents but they said they didn’t know where he was.
Later Marlaine found that the petrol card she’d given her daughter had been used in several towns. CCTV camera footage from several filling stations showed Jaco driving on his own in Nikki’s car. The first sighting of him was from 6 January just after 1 am at a petrol station outside Paarl.
That was barely three hours after Nikki’s phone was switched off. The family realised they had to be prepared for the worst when the police apprehended Jaco in Port Elizabeth 17 days later.
“My heart sank when I heard Jaco had been found with Nikki’s car but there was no sign of her,” Nadine says.
A week later Jaco finally told police he knew where Nikki was. He took them to his parents’ house, showed them the backyard and pointed to a few trees in a corner.
“If only he’d spoken up sooner her family could have still had something left to bury,” Nadine says, wiping away tears with the back of her hand.
SINCE Nikki’s body was found there have been several reports about her and Jaco’s relationship. Jaco’s thought to have been on his way to a former girlfriend in Port Elizabeth and needed Nikki’s car to get there.
The post-mortem has confirmed among other things that Nikki was strangled. It has also emerged she was pregnant. By the time YOU went to print the length of her pregnancy hadn’t been confirmed.
“That was news to us,” Nadine says. “We heard in court that she was pregnant. It doesn’t matter to us if she was pregnant with Jaco’s child or not. Regardless, we’ve lost Nikki to a very needless death.”
Marlaine is trying to be strong, Nadine says. But as a trained psychologist she’s well aware that a tidal wave of grief will hit her sooner or later.
“She lies on Nikki’s bed and weeps – for the daughter who has been taken away so cruelly from her.” *Not her real name