Hardus Lotter speaks from jail
In an exclusive prison interview Hardus Lotter tells us about the tough lessons he’s learnt in the nine years since killing his parents
WITH his eyes downcast, he comes shuffling into the office of Sevontein Prison in Pietermaritzburg, painfully thin in his baggy orange overalls. He reaches forward to greet us with icy hands.
“Thank you for coming,” Hardus Lotter says in his deep voice.
The 29-year-old Durbanite sits at the table and folds his pale, bony hands, almost as if in prayer. His skin is in bad condition and his lower lip is split on the inside.
In a crime that rocked the country in 2008, Hardus (then 20) and his older sister, Nicolette (then 26), killed their parents, Johnnie and Riekie Lotter, at their home in Westville, Durban.
The mastermind of the murder was found to be Nicolette’s fiancé, Mathew Naidoo, the self-proclaimed “third son of God” who had enthralled the brother and sister. Naidoo was sentenced to an effective 25 years behind bars, Nicolette to 12 years and Hardus to 10 years.
In six months’ time Hardus will be eligible for parole, having served six years of his sentence.
He wishes he knew then what he knows today. It was Mathew (then 21) who’d systematically persuaded Hardus – over the course of more than a year – that his and Nicolette’s parents were obstructing the work of God, he says.
Under his influence the siblings couldn’t think rationally anymore, they said, even as their parents were desperately pleading for their lives.
“If I could turn back the clock, I’d go back to where it all started, to the day I met Mathew. I’d never have befriended him. I’d have made sure my sister stopped seeing him.”
But his regrets came much too late, Hardus tells us today in the first exclusive interview he’s given since the murders nine years ago.
HE AND Nicolette didn’t think things would get so out of control that night, Hardus says. But they did. He doesn’t want to talk about the night of the murders, the shocking details of which emerged in the courtroom – how he’d used a stun gun to subdue his mom Riekie, who was a teacher, in the kitchen.
How Nicolette had beaten her mom with her fists as she lay on the floor, eventually ending her mom’s life by stabbing her nine times with a kitchen knife.
How Hardus had strangled his engineer dad with an electrical cord, dragging him from his bed and wrestling with him around the house. It took an hour for Johnnie to die.
Remorse set in the moment he realised he and Nicolette had been misled by
‘My whole life came crashing down at that stage’
Mathew, Hardus says. Police told them Mathew claimed the siblings had committed the murders because their parents had sexually abused them. Brother and sister were arrested on the night of the killings and confessed to the police within days.
“My whole life came crashing down at that stage,” Hardus says. “I was convinced that what I’d done was right, until Mathew turned against us.”
Mathew denied all complicity in court, despite overwhelming evidence against him – including telephone calls between him and Nicolette that night – proving otherwise. Hardus says he’s already “100% forgiven” Mathew. “Because if I didn’t he’d still have some kind of hold over me. It would hurt me even more to hate him and be bitter.
He says it was his search for spiritual fulfilment that caused him to be entrapped. “Because I didn’t find it, it made me fertile ground for occult activity.” Instead of being the so-called son of God, Mathew dabbled in the dark side.
Hardus says he used to be shy and a loner. “I was quite fearful of people at times, because people always tried to take advantage of my good nature.
“I didn’t fit in anywhere, I didn’t like the things other young people were doing at the time – drinking, smoking and sleeping around.
“I’m an intellectual person so perhaps people labelled me a nerd. I was and still am a computer geek.”
NICOLETTE met Mathew at a church in Phoenix, Durban. When she introduced her new friend to her brother, Hardus found Mathew to be brash and arrogant at first. “But as I got to know him I enjoyed his stories, watching cartoons with him and wrestling together,” Hardus recalls. “He filled that void almost like a brother.”
But Riekie and Johnnie didn’t share their children’s fondness for the charismatic Mathew. When they discovered he’d been secretly living in Nicolette’s room for about a year, Riekie was livid and banned him from the house.
“My mother tried the best she could. She was always concerned about us. She was actually the one who stood up to Mathew – face to face. She wasn’t scared to speak her mind.
“Sometimes I don’t think she knew what to do about me and my sister, especially about Nicolette. I won’t say growing up we were particularly close – she was the black sheep of the family.”
His mother was the strict one, Hardus recalls, while his dad was more reserved.
“He was always the one with the soft heart, the one who’d want to make peace. My mother wouldn’t take nonsense.” Hardus becomes tearful when asked what he’d like to tell his dad. “I’d tell him I’m sorry. I never intended for things to work out the way they did.” He’d also ask his mom for forgiveness. “There’s that thing between a son and his mother, you know? You’ll always love your mom, that special bond.” He says he still can’t believe how Mathew abused their trust, taking advantage of what Hardus calls their “spiritual waywardness”. “I have no grudge toward my sister. She actually had the worst of it as she had to suffer the most abuse at the hands of Mathew.”
TODAY he’s less reserved and has become his own person, Hardus says. He believes he’s been rehabilitated in prison, where he shares a communal cell with more than 25 other prisoners.
“I’d say you get to a stage where you realise you were wrong and have remorse for what you’ve done,” he says.
These days he conducts his own church services, works in the prison library and is studying for a degree in business management.
He misses Nicolette – who’s serving her sentence at Westville Prison, where she’s studying theology – and their older sister, Christelle (31).
After the murder, Christelle broke all contact with her siblings. She was a physiotherapy student at Stellenbosch University when it happened and Hardus hasn’t tried to reach out to her.
“If she’s ready, she’ll reach out. If I could, I’d tell her I’m sorry. She has no parents because of what we did. She needs to know we all had our struggles. We just fell into a big trap. I’d like to be there for her as a brother, to restore the relationship on her own terms.”
He knows he’ll never be able to atone fully for his deeds but, he says, “I do believe that I can give back some of what I’ve taken.”
One way in which he hopes to do this is by speaking at schools about the occult. He believes that, like he was, some kids are more vulnerable than others.
He’s no longer scared of the future and is looking ahead. “I’ve seen the darkest side of life. Nothing else can scare me anymore.”