Countdown to Constantia murder
They seemed the perfect couple – now she’s dead, he’s in the dock and neighbours are talking of strife and sex addiction
THE scene behind the high walls topped with rows of electric wire tells of a once comfortable family existence: a lawn – battling in the drought but still green in places – a sparkling swimming pool, a deep veranda, a cluster of garden furniture for summer entertaining. Yet all semblance of serenity at this home on Riesling Street in Constantia, Cape Town, has now been shattered.
The mom is dead, her husband of 30 years has been arrested and their two daughters are traumatised. Allegations of sex addiction have been levelled against him and friends have told of problems in the marriage.
It’s hard for some people who knew them to fathom. “No, I don’t believe it at all,” one friend says.
Just two days before Gill Packham (55) went missing on Thursday 22 February, she and her husband, Rob (57), were seen strolling hand in hand down the leafy street. “They looked so happy,” a neighbour says.
The first sign that something was wrong was when the couple’s younger daughter, Nicola (25), who lives in Johannesburg, posted on Facebook that her mother was missing.
She’d been trying to reach her mom all day and asked if anyone had seen her.
By 6pm Nicole reported Gill missing to the police. She told them her mom had last been seen at about 7am leaving the family home on her way to Springfield Convent School in Wynberg, where she was the administrative officer. But Gill never arrived at work. Rob ran a neighbourhood WhatsApp group so the community could keep in touch about safety matters and other issues.
“On the day of Gill’s disappearance we didn’t hear anything from Rob,” another resident says.
“There was no message that said, ‘My wife’s missing, has someone in the street seen her?’ ”
Then news came that a body had been found in the boot of her green BMW – and when it was positively identified as Gill’s, neighbours and friends flocked to Rob’s home with food and flowers, rallying to support the grieving father and his two daughters.
A few days later No 22 Riesling Street had been cordoned off with yellow police tape and two cop cars were parked outside.
“It was chaos in the street,” another resident says. “Everybody who lives here was huddled on the other side of the tape. I didn’t see it but I hear Rob was arrested that evening.”
The police’s forensic unit found blood in Gill and Rob’s bathroom, in the garage and inside Rob’s white Audi.
On the morning of Gill’s disappearance Rob, general manager at cooldrink company Twizza, didn’t show up for work. Police records show his cellphone signal
had been picked up by towers in Constantia and the nearby suburb of Diep River that day.
At Rob’s first appearance in the Wynberg magistrate’s court state prosecutors alleged he’d called a colleague that morning and instructed the coworker to say they’d been in a meeting at the time of the incident.
ANNA Jacobs’* dogs barked incessantly that Thursday afternoon. She remembers it well, she says. She’d had to ask her son, Peter*, to quieten them down a few times. Anna, her husband and Peter have been living next to the Diep River railway station for 15 years.
All that separates their home from the train track is a gravel road and a few trees. The only street light in the area blew a few months ago, Anna says, and ever since then it’s been pitch black at night.
Earlier that day Peter had noticed a dark green BMW parked under the trees.
“When Peter went outside to tell the dogs to keep quiet he heard someone running away. That’s when we first saw the BMW parked there,” she recalls.
Anna and Peter didn’t think anything of it. They assumed someone was visiting in the area and had parked the car there.
But later the dogs started barking again. “They were standing by the wall and going crazy. When we walked out we saw the BMW’s bonnet was on fire and smoke was coming from underneath the car,” she says.
Anna immediately called the police and Peter ran towards the burning BMW.
“Peter saw a man watching the burning car from another car a little distance away. He called out to the man and wanted to ask him if he’d called the police. When the man saw Peter he turned his car around and sped away down the street.”
Moments later the BMW was engulfed in flames. At the time they didn’t know the boot contained the body of a woman.
“Afterwards we heard the police say the BMW’s keys were still in the ignition.”
IN ITS case against Rob the state alleges the couple had marital issues and that Rob’s sex addiction had been a big issue. Two of Gill’s friends have reportedly made statements suggesting Rob was hooked on bondage and dominance and was “fond of whips and chains”.
Gill and Rob had been to couples’ counselling. According to her friends, Gill had said her husband refused to let go of his nonsense and she’d described his alleged addiction as a betrayal.
“Gill was an incredibly warm and friendly person who loved her garden,” a neighbour tells us. “When she and Rob moved in here two years ago she dropped an invitation into every postbox in the street to a welcoming party at their home. She always said hello to you when she saw you.
“But Rob was always quiet and withdrawn. Whenever you visited them he’d greet you in passing before disappearing into a room.”
In his statement Rob said his arrest was a double blow for his daughters, Nicola and Kerry (27), who stood by their dad at his bail hearing at Wynberg magistrate’s court.
He was granted bail of R50 000 and ordered to be put under house arrest. Judge Goolam Bawa also ruled that no pictures of Rob’s face may be published pending the outcome of an upcoming police line-up.
Rob, who’d spent several days in Pollsmoor Prison, told the court he was grieving the “sudden and unexpected” death of his wife.
“My incarceration is now tearing me away from my children, which I’ve found to be incredibly painful for us all. Without my wife I feel I need my children as much as they need me and I’m finding my prolonged separation from them excruciating and deeply traumatic.”
Rob faces charges of murder and obstructing the ends of justice. His case has been postponed until 8 May. *Not their real names.