How sly vet killer was caught by PIS

WHEN she entered the control room, gun in hand, she was careful to keep her face from the camera.

The brunette with the side parting frisked the two security guards, stood up and slipped her gun into the back of her jeans.

But as she casually walked around the control room, hands in the pockets of a long coat, she made a mistake.

She lifted her head just high enough for the CCTV camera to capture a high quality image of her face.

PI Werner Koekemoer knew he had his woman.

The woman with her hair held in a tight bun was Linda Venter and she had been on a year-long crime spree across Gauteng.

This time on the night of July 8, 2019, her MO had changed, this was a big multimillion-rand robbery. As she and an accomplice were holding up the security guards in the control room, outside the rest of the gang were forcing employees at gunpoint to load up boxes of luxury Ferrero Rocher chocolates into two trucks.

The robbery at the Ferrero Rocher factory in Jet Park on the East Rand, was to become known as the chocolate raid.

As with her previous robberies, Venter’s job was to play on her supposed innocence and womanly charms and con her way through the front gate.

It was a ploy that kept working. She and a small gang of robbers had specialised in hitting veterinary practices.

Venter would come to the door and say she had a sick dog, or needed to ask someone outside if it was the right dog food she was about to buy.

Her two accomplices would then walk in, they would take guns from her hand bag and hold up staff and customers.

She would then go and sit in the car and act as the getaway driver.

A gang fitting the description robbed the St Francis Veterinary Hospital, in Edenvale, in October 2018. Staff described Venter as having dark hair and wearing a baseball cap.

On January 31, 2019, Venter added murder to her growing list of crimes.

The gang had entered the Jacaranda Animal Clinic in Pretoria Moot.

But this time an argument ensued and the owner of the practice, Dr Freddie Malan, made a grab for the gun and was shot in the chest.

He died at the scene.

Malan had been a client of the PI firm Specialised Security Services. They were asked to investigate the murder, and Koekemoer, Mike Bolhuis and Tony Naidoo worked the case.

“We interviewed the employees and tried to get a description of the suspects. On the one male suspect we got a good description, but it was a bit difficult on the female,” recalls Koekemoer. Soon they discovered that the unusual MO of using a white woman to gain access to premises had been used in a number of recent robberies around Gauteng.

Where there was CCTV footage, they found that she always wore a long sleeve jacket or T-shirt. The team suspected that she might have been hiding a tattoo.

But the break came when they released a photograph of her to the public.

“Numerous people phoned in and sent emails. And one of these emails we received was on this woman. We had completed the puzzle.”

The Ferrero Rocher robbery just confirmed it was her.

What they were able to find was that Venter came from the West Rand. She was the apparent girlfriend of one of the robbers.

“We did find out that she had been running around with these people who were a bad influence, partying, doing drugs, that kind of thing. But that was about all we could find,” explains Koekemoer.

The private investigators and the police began searching for Venter at known addresses. According to reports, police detectives were led to Venter’s home near Kagiso but she had moved.

They eventually did find her and she was arrested in Krugersdorp on August 26, 2019.

Venter lawyered up pretty quickly.

“So we couldn’t get much out of her,” says Koekemoer.

What Koekemoer believes is that Venter was involved in two types of robberies.

One was robbing small businesses with one or two accomplices, the other were big warehouse robberies, utilising big teams of criminals. The small businesses robberies were probably to generate quick cash, he suspects.

“We also identified a big group who were operating in the Alberton, Brackenhurst area.”

On September 20, Venter was sentenced to an effective 40 years in prison, for the murder of Malan and three other business robberies.

But this might just be the tip of a whole lot more. Koekemoer has a hunch that she was involved in a heist in Sandton, where there was a CCTV image of a woman who looked remarkably like Venter.

This robbery happened on a Sunday afternoon at Nelson Mandela Square when a woman walked into the House of Ameera, and asked to look at expensive jewellery and watches. She was joined by two men who pulled out guns and robbed the store of R8 million rands’ worth of cash, jewellery and watches.

She might have gotten away with that one, but Venter faces decades in prison.

But so far they say she remains silent and loyal.

She hasn’t ratted out her boyfriend or the rest of the gang and they are still at large.