Agony of Stella schoolgirl’s dad
In his first interview the father of one of the murdered Stella schoolgirls speaks of his anger and agony
THE phone call that changed his life forever came just after 6am that fateful Saturday. It was from Ronnie Hough, the father of his daughter’s best friend. Come immediately, he said. Our daughters are dead. It looks like suicide.
Stefaans Engelbrecht gazes thoughtfully into the fire he’s lit under the stars near his farmhouse, then prods the coals with a poker and sighs deeply.
“It’s tough,” he says, speaking publicly for the first time since the tragic events of 26 May – the day of the Stella murders.
But the girls didn’t take their own lives – they were strangled. One was left on the bathroom floor while the other was strung up in their high school hostel in Stella, North West, allegedly by a 19-yearold boy who was infatuated with one of them.
The scene that greeted Stefaans when he arrived at the hostel that terrible day will haunt him forever – his precious 16-year-old daughter, Marna, was lying cold and lifeless on the bathroom floor.
He couldn’t get near her though – the crime scene had been cordoned off and the place was swarming with cops. But he recognised his child, lying on the ground like a felled character in some tragic stage play.
“When I looked at my daughter I knew straight away it wasn’t suicide,” Stefaans (45) says.
In his shocked state he turned around and stormed out, past the banister where the body of Marna’s best friend, Sharnelle Hough (17), had been hanging before it was cut down.
“It felt so unreal. I was p***ed off. I’m still p***ed off. This isn’t supposed to happen to your child. Parents aren’t supposed to lose children. She was safe when she was with me but I guess this was just out of my hands.”
Stefaans is also battling to come to terms with Sharnelle’s death. “Those two girls had been friends since they were in nappies,” he says.
When he left the hostel that day he called a lawyer and a private investigator from his bakkie. Then he drove to the farm where Xander Bylsma (19), Sharnelle’s ex-boyfriend, lived with his father, Monte. And then? Stefaans, who has a holstered revolver on his hip as he sits by the fire, doesn’t want to get into what happened next. All he’ll say is, “This gun is always with me.”
There’s a rustling in the bushes beyond the firelight. Don’t worry, he says, it’s just Marna’s horse, Vonk.
“She used to spoil him by feeding him sugar. So now whenever he hears people, he comes looking for a treat.”
Marna got the chestnut stallion with the white blaze barely a week before her death.
“Sharnelle went with Marna to pick out the horse on the neighbouring farm,” Stefaans says. “I’d given the two of them the bakkie to fetch the horse but the next thing I knew, Marna was riding the animal back home.”
‘When I looked at my daughter I knew straight away it wasn’t suicide’
He’ll always treasure Vonk, he says, and talks to the horse about his daughter.
“He still gets his sugar. How do I tell him his owner was murdered?”
STEFAANS – who trains young farmers in the area and is a water diviner – spends a lot of time by the fire in the backyard of the home he shares with his wife, Rianette, and their elder daughter, Riané (18).
“Nature is my medicine. People just disappoint you,” he says bitterly.
After a while he gets up and takes us to Marna’s bedroom. It’s exactly the way she left it that final weekend she spent at home before going back to the hostel.
There are pictures of Marna and Sharnelle everywhere. A handwritten note from Sharnelle is stuck to the wall: “Don’t worry, you’ll find the right guy . . . Love, Lallie.” Lallie was Sharnelle’s nickname. A calendar hangs on the dining room wall of the family home. A single word is written in the square for 6 August: “court”. It’s the date on which Xander Bylsma, who’s charged with murdering Marna and Sharnelle, will next appear in the dock.
Marna was murdered little more than a month before she would’ve turned 17, her dad says. “Her birthday was an awful day for us. We scattered her ashes on my dad’s farm.”
On that day, 3 July, Stefaans posted a picture of himself and Marna on his Facebook page along with the message, “My Marna-mouse, you would’ve turned 17 today! The longing is devouring me piece by piece. Dad won’t rest before justice has been served for the two of you.”
His heart breaks every time he thinks of all the birthdays and other milestones he’ll never get to celebrate with her, the dreams that will never be fulfilled.
“Marna-mouse adored animals. She wanted to be a vet.”
He battles to control his emotions. “This is a hard road for any parent to travel.”
THE three women in the Engelbrecht household ruled the roost, Stefaans says. “Marna-mouse, her elder sister and their mother were close. Marna and I understood each other well but you couldn’t argue with those three and win.”
Marna’s sister and mother are also struggling to come to terms with the loss, he adds. The tragedy has ripped their family to shreds.
The Engelbrechts recently celebrated Riané’s 18th birthday with a braai. “But it wasn’t the same without Marna-mouse and Lallie.”
Marna and Xander, second cousins, were “never more than acquaintances”. “There were no serious family ties between them.”
Stefaans is struggling to process the fact he knows the accused. “Maybe I’d have found closure more easily if it had been a stranger.”
He now avoids the Bylsmas. “But I can’t resent Xander’s dad, Monte,” he says.
“There are things that bother me but because of the trial I can’t talk about them now. “I’ll be in court every single day. “Nothing can ever bring Marna back. She had her whole life ahead of her and it was stolen away,” Stefaans says.
He thinks of her every day. “I miss her. I miss her terribly. I miss all the hugs she used to give me.”
He looks up at the sky. “All I hope is that my Marna-mouse gets the justice she deserves.”