The Assassination of Beverly van Schoor

PS – This is Part Two of a series called “The Murderous Van Schoors.” If you haven’t read our article on The Apartheid Killer yet, I’d suggest that you do since there is a lot of overlap between the two stories.

In the ten years following the end of Apartheid, the number of violent crimes that were being reported on in South Africa increased exponentially. In the most newsworthy cases, the victims were always white, and the perpetrators were always black. So, when a prominent businesswoman named Beverly van Schoor was found murdered in her bed following a home invasion, her shocked neighbors thought that she was just another victim of the crime-ridden New South Africa.

However, as the police began their investigation, they quickly realized that the motive behind Beverly’s death wasn’t as clear-cut as they had initially believed. In the weeks that followed, the people of Queenstown became increasingly aware of the Van Schoor family’s dark history, and it soon led them to speculate about exactly what role it might have played in Beverly’s murder.

Welcome to the New South Africa

Anyone who has a basic knowledge of South Africa’s modern history knows that Apartheid officially ended in 1994 – more specifically, on the 27th of April 1994, the day on which we had our first democratic elections. For those keeping count, that’s almost exactly 31 years ago.

But Rome wasn’t built in a day, the Berlin Wall didn’t just come down on its own, and it took almost 9 years for the old National Party and the new ANC government to negotiate their terms and dismantle a racially discriminatory system that had effectively been in place for over 300 years.

For the first 10 years after Apartheid ended, South Africans of every race had to learn to adjust to Nelson Mandela’s New South Africa, and some did better than others. Some of us embraced it, others took every opportunity they could to profit from it, and others firmly rejected it, choosing instead to keep on living with the hate that had been instilled in their hearts from birth.

When I was growing up, the older generations started using the phrase ‘this is the new South Africa’ whenever they talked about how the ANC had completely failed at delivering on the ‘promise’ of a South Africa in which we’d all be equal. Corruption was rife, people like my dad lost their jobs or weren’t promoted into leadership positions due to the government’s new Black Economic Empowerment policies, unemployment rates were getting worse, and our crime rates were steadily increasing every year.

But South Africa’s Millennials were the first generation to experience what Mandela meant when he said that he envisioned a future in which –

“…the black shall to the white be sister and brother, a fellow South African, an equal human being, both citizens of the world.”

We were the first ones to attend schools that weren’t segregated by race. We grew up fostering relationships with children from other races, we were the ones who’d end up working alongside each other on an equal footing, we were the ones who made a concerted effort to learn more about each other’s traditions and cultures, and at least some of us learned to empathise with the struggles the others faced on a daily basis.

I can’t say that our parents’ generation put in the same effort, and many of them still hold on to many of the prejudices they’d had during the Apartheid years, which brings me to the subject of today’s article – Beverly van Schoor.

Lady B

We don’t know much about Beverly’s life before her murder. Her full name was Beverly-Anne and she was born in the old Cape Province on the 22nd of January 1953. We know that her father was a ‘lay-preacher’, and that Beverly was one of three children. Her mother reportedly had several extra-marital affairs, and when Beverly’s father discovered that his wife was cheating on him, he threw her out of the house. She would eventually become an alcoholic, but still kept in contact with her daughters.

He married his second wife not long after the divorce was finalised, and according to Maggie Riggien, one of Beverly’s oldest friends, Beverly’s stepmother seemed to be ‘jealous’ of her three pretty stepdaughters, used to cut their hair ‘brutally short’, and emotionally abused them, which resulted in Beverly developing a low self-esteem when she was a teenager.

At the time, South Africa was waging a war against Namibia’s People’s Liberation Army, who were fighting for independence from the Apartheid state. According to my mom, white schoolgirls were actively encouraged to study nursing so they could do their part to help with the war effort, and when Beverly left high school, she became one of the thousands of young South African women who would end up wearing the trademark blue dress and white nursing cap.

Beverly was a beauty and was always surrounded by men, and she got married to her first husband shortly after she finished high school. She would have three boys with him – Allister, Lester, and Shane – and she met Louis van Schoor, a soldier/police officer at church not long after Shane was born. Louis was tall, dark-haired and handsome, and the two of them carried on an affair for some time before Beverly finally divorced her first husband. According to her younger sister Valerie –

“[Beverly’s] life was maybe not as exciting as she would have liked it to be. And when she met Louis, he offered her the world, and he was going to take her overseas and he was going to buy this and that and everything. And I think that [drew her in].”

Beverly and Louis were married in 1978, and the small family moved to a small plot of land outside of East London shortly after. Louis reportedly doted on Beverly’s boys, who all have fond memories of him – especially Shane, who was his favourite. Louis officially adopted them shortly after he married their mom, and they all took on his surname – Van Schoor. A year later, Louis and Beverly’s daughter was born, and they named her Sabrina.

But Beverly and Louis’ marriage wasn’t a happy one. Louis came from a proud Afrikaner family, and the children would remember him as being ‘firm and strict’. Beverly, on the other hand, was a descendant of the 1820 British settlers, but she was just as hard-headed and stubborn as Louis was, and the two often fought. According to Allister van Schoor –

“We had many fun times, playing rugby and cricket with Louis. He was like any other father figure. But what sticks in my mind about Louis was his abuse of my mom. He never abused us but we saw him hit her.”

“We were very young at that stage, but I can recall incidents. I can recall them running around cars, my mom in front, him chasing after her.”

You see, not long after Sabrina was born, Beverly became convinced that Louis was cheating on her, and Louis would later describe Beverly as being –

“domineering and possessive”

And considering how they ended up together, perhaps Beverly had a reason to suspect that he wasn’t above sneaking around behind her back. Louis was still working as a police officer at the time, and he spent a lot of time away from home, which prompted Beverly to demand that he quit his job so that she could keep a closer eye on him. Louis eventually gave in, and Beverly found him a job as a carpet salesman.

But Louis wasn’t happy, and when his old boss asked Louis if he would be interested in helping him run his new private security firm, Louis jumped at the opportunity. Before long, he’d make a name for himself as a “bloody efficient security guard”, and some people would start remarking on how they’d always see him on patrol around town, day and night.

But now Beverly and the kids barely saw Louis, and the fights between the two of them grew increasingly violent – so much so that Beverly started appearing in public with her eyes swollen shut, her injuries stitched up, and her body covered in bruises.

The final straw came in 1983 when a 4-year-old Sabrina came home from nursery school one day and told her mother that she’d seen her dad kissing her teacher – which prompted yet another bad fight between Beverly and Louis.

Beverly then divorced Louis, and would later tell everyone who’d listen that Louis had threatened to kill her, prompting her to take the kids and leave town. A family friend offered her a position as the manager of the Queenstown branch of Red Alert Security, a private security firm which offered security services for businesses and cash-in-transit vehicles, so Beverly took her children and moved to Queenstown, which is two and a half hours north of East London.

Red Alert Security was based in a converted house in the centre of town, and according to Sabrina, Beverly and her kids initially all lived on the premises because they couldn’t afford to live anywhere else. Beverly spent her days coordinating her security guards, and she spent her nights driving around town checking up on them, which meant that she didn’t have time to care for her children.

Initially, the boys were sent off to boarding school, and Sabrina was sent to live with her maternal grandmother in East London. Once things settled down, Beverly hired a black housekeeper to help her care for her children, and eventually, Beverly bought a farm on the outskirts of town and moved her family into the big farmhouse.

According to Allister –

“She used to work so hard. Some nights, you might not even see her, and that was just to make a living for us.”

In 1986, Beverly bought the Queenstown branch of Red Alert Security, and in 1994, Allister and Lester started working alongside her. They started selling electronic alarm systems, and by 1998, Beverly and her sons were able to take over Queenstown Security Systems, which was the biggest private security firm in Queenstown at the time. They now had the monopoly over private security services in Queenstown, renamed their business Red Guard Security, and Beverly handed the company over to her sons. Beverly then bought a farm and several other businesses and started focusing on building them up as well, and by March 2002, Beverly was 49 years old and a wealthy woman in her own right.

Then she was murdered in her bed, and a week later, her daughter Sabrina was arrested on suspicion of being the mastermind behind her mother’s murder.

Sabrina

According to Sabrina, her life took a turn for the worse after they moved to Queenstown.

After her parents were divorced, Sabrina would only see Louis on special occasions. Beverly claimed that Louis had stopped paying child support when his new wife gave birth to their two daughters, so Beverly started to keep the kids from him, and his trips to see Sabrina became less and less frequent until they stopped altogether.

“When I was a little girl, I used to dream of getting my father back, because my father had obviously gone away. And I never knew why. I used to dream of us moving into a house, a little castle, and mom would be there, and dad would be there.”

Beverly didn’t exactly have the time to run after her kids once she took over the management of Red Alert Security, so she hired a black woman named Gladys Ntombi to help her keep her house and look after her four children.

Gladys left her own family and three young children behind and moved into the “maid’s living quarters” in the backyard of Red Alert Security’s premises. They were a standard feature in most white-owned South African homes at the time and usually consisted of just one room. The room was usually big enough to hold a single bed, maybe a dresser or standalone wardrobe, and a table where the black housemaid could put a kettle, her cups, and the containers that held her sugar, coffee, tea, and some groceries.

The bathroom would usually be located in a separate room, and if she was lucky, the housemaid would have been provided with a bath and a toilet. If not, she would be expected to wash up out of a steel or plastic tub she’d place on the floor of her room, though Gladys had at least been provided with a shower.

Either way, Gladys’ living conditions weren’t ideal, and her job could be demanding. Gladys had to get up at 5 am every morning to make breakfast for the family, after which Beverly would drop her boys off at school. Gladys would then clean the house and do the laundry, and when the boys returned home from school, Gladys had to have their lunch ready. Then she’d walk them back to school for whichever extracurricular activities they participated in, before starting dinner and fetching them again later in the afternoons.

Then she’d finish up dinner, put a plate of food aside for Beverly, and wash the dishes. Once this was done, Gladys would either go back to her room or wait until Beverly returned home from work. According to Gladys –

“[Beverly] was constantly not there. The mother of Sabrina did not come home, she worked. This business that your child is constantly without you, it can be okay, but sometimes you have to be there. Whenever there is a special occasion for the child, you, as a mother, should be there.”

Both Sabrina and Gladys told journalist Heidi Holland, the author of the book Colour of Murder, that Gladys basically took charge of raising Sabrina when she was 5 or 6 years old. According to Gladys –

“[Sabrina] used to call me mama wam (Xhosa for mother of mine). She never failed to say I was her mother. She knew that I was her mother. She would tease me as a joke. And I would forgive her, saying ‘go away, little child. You have a lot to learn’, and she would laugh.”

Gladys taught the little girl how to speak Xhosa, and while Gladys cleaned the house, Sabrina helped out. Like any other child, she left more messes behind than she helped to clear up, then got bored and wandered off, and when the house got too quiet, Gladys would go looking for her. She’d almost always discover that little Sabrina had been playing dress up just like any other little girl, and would still be dressed in the overlarge dresses and shoes she’d put on. But Sabrina never played in her mom’s room.

According to Gladys –

“When I went to look for her, there she was asleep in my bed. Sometimes all my belongings would be on the floor, where she was playing with them. Then I would just stare at her if she was awake – fold my arms and stare [disapprovingly].”

When they had a spare moment, Gladys would sit on the couch next to Sabrina while they watched television, and Sabrina would cuddle up next to Gladys. When they went shopping, Gladys would use her own money to buy Sabrina little treats, and she always ensured that she had a snack ready for when Sabrina inevitably came begging for food. And whenever Beverly left treats for her children, Sabrina always made sure that Gladys got some of it as well. According to Gladys –

“Sabrina did not want anything that was wrong. If her mother scolded me, she would cry. And if her mother scolded her, I would cry.”

“Even if you were annoyed, Sabrina had joy. She laughed all the time. And if she saw that you did not want to talk to her, she would cry.”

“[Once a month] I would leave the family on the Saturday and go home. Sabrina’s mother would then be with the children over the weekend. But I worried about Sabrina. I missed her. Even if she is a white man’s child, I also have children and she is also a child just like those of mine. She is just like my own child.”

Gladys told Heidi Holland that Sabrina and Beverly never had a loving relationship. When Beverly was home, Sabrina was quiet and stayed out of her mom’s way. And when Beverly did talk to her daughter, it was to scold her or insult her or to tell her to go off and keep herself busy.

“Sabrina had no [friends]. Over weekends she would simply sit in her room. There was no [friends] to visit her. She watched TV, but you cannot talk to the TV.”

Sabrina would later explain that she felt rejected by her family from a young age. Beverly’s best friend Maggie Riggien would later explain that Beverly had always lamented the fact that the tall and slightly overweight Sabrina wasn’t a petite little princess. According to Maggie, Sabrina was ‘a large, clumsy child,’ and –

“She didn’t fit [Beverly’s] image of beauty and success and she was often sworn at.”

Maggie told journalist Heidi Holland how she and Beverly used to go out together at night, and that they’d often get ready at Beverly’s house. While the two women did their hair and make-up, Sabrina would slink into the room to see what they were doing. And that’s when Maggie got to see the true nature of the relationship between Beverly and her daughter.

“Bev would be there, full of fun, sitting on the bed doing her make-up, and Sabrina would be hanging around, looking for attention. It hurt me that Bev always waved her away, saying ‘Just go, just go.’ She would call [Gladys] to take Sabrina for a walk or something. Bev had no time for Sabrina. She was never accepted. She was a problem for Bev. If she had been cuter, it would have been perfect.”

Maggie speculated that Beverly resented Sabrina for not only being Louis’ daughter, but also for being the one to confirm that Louis had been cheating on Beverly. And Sabrina’s eldest half-brother, Allister, would later confirm that the brothers had been jealous of the attention Louis gave her when they were little, and that they often took it out on her.

“I did feel that Louis favoured Sabrina. He had a very soft spot for her, but that was only natural, I suppose, because she was his own child.”

Things didn’t exactly improve by the time Sabrina started attending school. She had no problem befriending her black classmates – something which was still a social taboo towards the end of Apartheid – which meant that some of her white classmates rebuffed her attempts at befriending them as well.

Then, when Sabrina was 10, rumours started doing the rounds that her father, Louis van Schoor, was suspected of having murdered up to 39 black men. Her black classmates then started to make rude comments whenever she was near, and when a crying Sabrina complained to Beverly about it, her mother went to see the Headmistress, and the comments stopped.

But then Louis was arrested, and a white policeman came to see both Beverly and Sabrina in Queenstown to tell them the news and to reassure Sabrina that her father was a hero. But Beverly had a completely different view on the matter –

“Even in front of Sabrina, she said it was right that he goes and sits in jail, not only for the people he shot but for the way he treated everybody, especially her.”

From then on, Beverly refused to allow Sabrina to visit her father in prison, and claimed that she didn’t want him to have any kind of influence on Sabrina. Then Louis was found guilty of seven murders, and Sabrina went to the local library and asked for all the articles they had on Louis van Schoor to find out exactly why he’d gone to prison. According to Maggie –

“Sabrina was [heartbroken] because she idolized her father. After Louis went to prison, I think she used it as a bit of an excuse, telling herself ‘This is why I am no good’.”

Sabrina was now 12, tall for her age and overweight, and she was already struggling to make friends at school. Then Beverly informed Sabrina that she would no longer be allowed to take part in extracurricular activities after school. According to Cherie van Heerden, one of Sabrina’s childhood friends, she and Sabrina were planning on trying out for the under-13 hockey team, but when Cherie and her mother went to pick Sabrina up for practice –

“Aunty Bev came to the door and told us Sabrina wasn’t coming. She didn’t explain why; that was just the way it was. Sabrina was not allowed to have a social life, and so she became an outcast [among her white classmates]. The blacks and coloureds were then her only option.”

Now, before we continue, I have to clarify something. I am fully aware that the term ‘coloured’ is considered to be a racial slur in some parts of the world, and I’ve already seen multiple people cursing us in the comments of previous videos for our use of the term. However, here in South Africa, coloureds are recognised as an entirely separate race with their own cultural identity and traditions.

Initially, they were the mixed-race descendants of the Khoisan, Malay slaves and the first European settlers in the Cape colony, and after more than 300 years of inter-racial sexual relations, their DNA now includes traces of European, east and south Asian, Khoisan, and African ancestry – to name but a few. Some of them have a stronger connection to their Malay heritage and refer to themselves as Cape Malay, but the majority still refer to themselves as coloureds, so here in South Africa it’s perfectly acceptable to refer to them as such. And since this case occurred in South Africa, that’s the term we’ll be using going forward.

Anyway, by the time Sabrina went to high school, she preferred to hang out with her coloured and black friends after school, and this led to increased tensions between her and Beverly, who would often use racial slurs when referring to Sabrina’s friends. Because she knew that her mom disapproved, Sabrina would often sneak off to meet up with her friends whenever she could, and when she was caught out, she’d make up elaborate stories to explain where she’d been. According to Valerie –

“Sabrina lied a lot…She would look you in your face and she would tell you a story. And you’d believe her, and you’d think ‘wow’, and it was the biggest bull under the sun.”

According to Beverly’s youngest sister, Jenny –

“Bev hated Sabrina’s coloured friends. As far as I was concerned, Sabrina was at a multiracial school so what did her mother expect?”

“Sabrina had to be chaperoned everywhere, often by me. Her mother would hardly even allow her to go shopping by herself.”

When Sabrina was 17, she started dating an Indian man named Navin. He would later tell Heidi Holland that his family had owned a restaurant in town, and every afternoon, he’d go and deliver his younger sister’s lunch at school, which is how he met Sabrina. After the two of them started dating, Sabrina would make up excuses to hang out at the Red Guard Security offices over the weekends, and then she would sneak off and meet up with him. They would spend the afternoon together, and then Sabrina would go back to Red Guard Security and lie to her brothers about where she’d been.

Then the two lovebirds started sleeping together, and Navin learned exactly how badly Sabrina’s family treated her. Beverly was dating a police officer named Danie at the time, and Sabrina told Navin that Danie and Beverly would beat her as punishment whenever they found out that she’d sneaked off again.

“I know it was true because by the time we were intimate, I used to see the marks and bruises on her body. Once, while I was talking to Sabrina on the phone, I heard her mother start to shout at her and then, when the phone fell out of her hands, I could hear the sound of hitting, the foul language from Beverly and Sabrina crying for help.”

Then her brothers found out that Sabrina was dating an Indian guy, and Sabrina received another beating. It was bad enough that Sabrina ran away from home and walked back to East London to live with her stepmom, Sandra. According to Navin –

“Her mother went to fetch her in East London. You should have seen her feet when she came back, cracked and bleeding. She walked and walked to get away from her family. I said to her, ‘Why didn’t you call me to help you?’ and she replied that she didn’t want anything to happen to me because of my relationship with her. She said her brothers had told her that they would hire someone to kill me if we continued to see each other.”

But when Sabrina was 18, she went a step too far – she started seeing an older coloured man and fell pregnant, and Beverly decided that she was drawing the line at having a mixed-race grandchild. Beverly forced Sabrina to tell her who the father was, and then she threatened to have him charged with sexual assault if Sabrina didn’t agree to terminate the pregnancy. Sabrina eventually gave in, and Beverly then took her to a hospital in a tiny town called Tarkastad to ensure that no one in Queenstown would know what they’d done.

Afterwards, Beverly put her daughter on a tight leash. She gave Sabrina a job at her real estate business since it ensured that she could keep an eye on Sabrina during the day. She gave Sabrina a car to use and access to some money for petrol, but didn’t pay her a salary, and Sabrina wasn’t allowed to go anywhere without Beverly’s prior approval. According to Maggie, when she went to visit them –

“[Sabrina] was always in her bedroom. She even ate her meals in her bedroom. Now and then, Bev would mention ‘Sabrina ate with me last night’, but I know it didn’t happen often because I was there at the house a lot of the time and I saw and heard how it was between them.”

“I remember on one occasion, Sabrina phoned while I was with Bev to tell her mom that she had had a car crash. The first question Bev asked was, ‘Why are you there, in that street, when you are supposed to be at [the grocery store]? Are you with the coloureds again?’ Only after those questions, in a loud, angry voice, did Bev ask, ‘Are you injured?’ To be around those two was very, very hurtful.”

But despite Beverly’s best efforts, Sabrina still managed to sneak away at night, and a year after she’d had her first abortion, Sabrina found out that she was pregnant again. But this time she didn’t tell Beverly about the pregnancy. Instead, Sabrina called her stepmom, Sandra, and told her what had happened. Sandra was Louis van Schoor’s fourth wife, and when she heard that Sabrina was pregnant and that the father was a coloured man named Shawn Ortell, she took Sabrina to see her father in prison.

According to Sabrina, Louis didn’t criticise her for having a relationship with a coloured man and told her that he was happy for her. But Louis told his daughter that she had to get away from Beverly and that she’d never be able to find happiness if she allowed her mother to continue to dominate her the way she did. Sabrina agreed, and she moved in with Shawn in an attempt to get away from her mother.

Beverly, meanwhile, was going out of her mind with worry about Sabrina. When she’d asked Gladys if she knew where Sabrina had gone, the old black woman claimed ignorance. And when Beverly interrogated Sabrina’s friends, they also claimed that they had no idea where Sabrina had gone off to. But somehow Beverly heard that Sabrina was pregnant again, and she tracked down Shawn’s family and had a little sit down with his mother. According to Sabrina –

“My mother found [Shawn] by threatening his family. She told his mother I was a whore and, because his mother was a Christian, she made her son bring me back.”

Sabrina was now 5 months pregnant, and once again, Beverly insisted that Sabrina should have an abortion. But this time, Sabrina refused. Then Beverly called her sons to help her convince Sabrina to get rid of the baby.

“[My brothers] called me to a meeting and told me it was my last chance to have an abortion. They said if I went ahead and had the baby, my child would never play with theirs.”

But Sabrina had called in her own reinforcements, and Louis called Beverly from prison and insisted on having a meeting so that they could discuss Sabrina’s pregnancy. According to Louis –

“In front of my social worker, [Beverly] threatened that she was going to have that pregnancy terminated. And I said to her she won’t do it. She was involved in the first one, and they were not going to do it again.”

“[Beverly’s] main gripe was Sabrina and her ‘across-the-line’ friend. And because I wouldn’t take a stand against it, I said to her ‘Accept it. The more you stop her, the more she’s going to do it. So rather let her do it in front of you than behind your back.’”

But there was only so much support that Louis could offer Sabrina from prison, and in the end, Sabrina was forced to move in with Beverly once again. Beverly made no secret of the fact that she wanted nothing to do with Sabrina’s mixed-race child, but when Sabrina went into labour just three days after her 21st birthday, Beverly took her to the hospital and was at Sabrina’s side when she gave birth to her daughter, whom she named Tatum.

According to Maggie –

“That baby was black – really black – when she came out. And Bev just wept. I said something crazy, stupid, that we could make its skin lighter by putting it under a light; anything to console her.”

Here in South Africa, new mothers are usually afforded 4 months’ worth of maternity leave, but Sabrina was barely recovered from Tatum’s birth before Beverly kicked her out and told her to go back to work. When Sabrina asked her mother what she was supposed to do with Tatum during the day, Beverly informed her daughter that Gladys could look after her. But Sabrina refused to leave Tatum behind, and told Beverly that she would be taking both Tatum and Gladys into the office with her. It meant that while Sabrina worked, Gladys could dote on Tatum all she wanted, and if Tatum needed feeding, Sabrina could take a quick 20-minute break and tend to her daughter.

However, this meant that Beverly’s mixed-race granddaughter was now out there for everyone to see, and according to Gladys, she did not like that. So, she ordered Gladys to keep Tatum as far away from the public as possible. But Gladys, who loved that baby just as much as she loved Sabrina, told Beverly that –

“If she didn’t want the child, she must give it to me.”

But as the days went by, Beverly started falling in love with her granddaughter. In their photos together, she lovingly cuddled her and kissed her on the cheek, and proudly started showing her off around town. She ensured that Tatum had everything she needed, bought her all the bananas and yogurt that she wanted, bought her dresses and tied her hair up in bows, and Sabrina would later explain that it had started to feel like Tatum was Beverly’s baby instead of her own.

The Final Straw

We’ve got a golden rule here, namely ‘Don’t Fuck up Your Kids’. Usually, it’s in reference to the fact that most people who commit terrible crimes all had horrible childhoods, but in my opinion, you can do just as much damage to your kids by being an absent parent and not giving them the love and attention they need.

We already know that, according to her son Allister, Beverly had worked her hands to the bone to ensure that her children were well cared for and had everything they needed. But more than one person would explain that Beverly was domineering and extremely critical, and not exactly the kind of person you went to when you desperately needed a hug. According to Sabrina –

“My mom worked just about 24 hours a day. I was never looked after by my mother. Everybody will tell you I’m lying because my mom gave me a car and she put diamond rings away for me. She bought my loyalty by giving me things, but I wanted someone to show me love rather than buy it.”

And in my opinion, Beverly didn’t just fail to be a good parent to Sabrina, but she’d failed her three sons as well. Which is probably why her life started going to shit shortly after Tatum was born.

You see, Beverly was a raging racist, and her sons allegedly had many of the same prejudices she did. So when Sabrina – the black sheep of the family – gave birth to a mixed-race baby, the eldest Van Schoor brothers initially refused to have anything to do with their niece. The problem was that Sabrina and her baby still lived with their mom, and Beverly wouldn’t go anywhere without Tatum, so it took some time before the Van Schoor brothers felt comfortable having their mother over for dinner or inviting her along on family vacations, since even they couldn’t resist Tatum’s cuteness for very long.

But then the brothers cut their mother off financially. According to Maggie, Beverly had signed Red Guard Security over to her two eldest sons in 1998 on the condition that they would pay her life insurance and pension premiums, and give her a monthly allowance that would enable her to continue living the lavish lifestyle that she’d gotten used to.

“This arrangement worked for a couple of years while her sons built up the business. But then they both got married [in 2001] and decided they needed all the income from Red Guard. So they stopped paying her insurance premiums and her allowance.”

They probably figured that since their mother owned the real estate business, auction house and the floral shop, she had more than enough money coming in to cover her and Sabrina’s expenses, but they were wrong. Her businesses were barely making a profit, and Beverly had realised that she was going to need another income stream to keep herself afloat for at least the next 10 years until she could officially retire. So, Beverly decided to sell the farm and move back to town instead, and she took Sabrina and Tatum with her.

Initially, Beverly tried to sell insurance policies as a side income, but then the 22-year-old Sabrina told her that the local mini cricket arena was up for sale. The business was called Action Quicket or The Quicket, and it was located in a warehouse in Queenstown’s industrial area. It included the mini-cricket arena as well as a bar and was a popular hangout spot. The business would need a lot of hands-on management, but it had the potential to become a reliable source of income for Beverly, and after some consideration, Beverly decided to buy it.

Since the business was usually open until the early hours of the morning, Sabrina asked her mother if she could manage the business for her, and Beverly agreed. But this came with a condition –

“Bev said that she told Sabrina if she wants to go, she can go. But Tatum is going to stay behind, and she’s going to look after Tatum [at night].”

This seemed to suit Sabrina perfectly since it meant that she could finally get out from under her mom’s thumb. It also meant that she got to socialize openly with her black and coloured friends since they all regularly hung out at the mini-cricket arena. Sabrina would arrive early to open the place up, sort out her staff, eat some chocolate to help ‘line her stomach’, helped to work the bar when it got busy, sit around and get drunk with her friends, and then ate three snack packets of biltong to ‘sober up’ before she locked up at around 1 am.

She then either went home or spent the next few hours hanging out with whatever guy she was seeing at the time. But her newfound sense of independence didn’t last long.

“I thought I would have some sort of night life and [my mother] tried to mislead me to think I would have freedom. But no such luck. The Quicket was the only way I could get out of the house but I was always guarded by someone reporting to my mother that I was doing this with the coloureds or doing that with the blacks.”

But according to Maggie, Beverly had a reason for checking up on her daughter. Within a few months, it was obvious that the business wasn’t making any money despite having been wildly successful before, and when Beverly tried to find out why, she discovered that –

“[Sabrina] would buy pizzas all round, costing R300 or more each time. [Her friends] used the phone whenever they felt like it – Bev told me the bill was over R12 000 one month. Sabrina let them do that, and she gave them free drinks.”

Beverly also suspected that Sabrina was regularly helping herself to the cash in the till, and that the amount of money she handed over to her mother every morning was only a portion of what they’d realistically make in a night. However, when Beverly tried to take over the management of the arena herself, their black and coloured clients boycotted the place, and Beverly couldn’t afford to lose their business. So she tried to rein Sabrina in as much as she could, and continued looking after Tatum at night while Sabrina partied.

And just like her mother before her, Sabrina now barely spent any time with her daughter. During the day, Sabrina worked in the office of her mother’s real estate business while Gladys looked after Tatum. She’d see her for maybe two or three hours in the early evening on the days that The Quicket was open, and then again, the next morning. But even when she had the opportunity to spend all day with Tatum, Sabrina expected either Gladys or Beverly to take care of her daughter’s basic needs. According to Gladys –

“Sabrina didn’t want that baby. Her mother wanted that baby.”

“Sabrina didn’t worry about that child. If [Beverly] wasn’t at home, Sabrina wouldn’t change [Tatum’s] nappy for a whole day. She would leave her like that. Her mother would say, ‘No, Sabrina, you can’t do that. That’s why her bottom’s raw’.”

But at the same time, Sabrina was pressuring her mother to allow her and Tatum to move out of the house. But Beverly wasn’t planning on letting Tatum go that easily. According to Maggie –

“There were none of the usual bonds between her and Sabrina because Bev never knew Sabrina. She left her with the maid all her life and when the problems started, Bev and Sabrina didn’t know how to talk to each other. So there was no companionship with Sabrina – that wasn’t what Bev was hanging on to. She was hanging on to the baby for company, for a purpose in life, even though Tatum was the reason Bev was no longer invited as often to her sons’ homes.”

Now what Maggie is describing is known as ‘parental enmeshment’, which is –

“a family dynamic where boundaries between parents and children become blurred, leading to excessive emotional closeness and dependence, potentially hindering a child’s development of independence and a distinct sense of self.”

Basically, Bev had built her entire self-worth around the idea that her children needed her. She’d worked herself to the bone for them and handed her boys a successful business to ensure that they would be set financially, but now they’d thrown her aside. For years, she’d managed to ensure that Sabrina had to rely on her for everything, but now Sabrina was also fighting for her own independence, and Beverly was losing control over her. According to Maggie, Beverly was also acutely aware of the fact that she was no longer young and beautiful and able to trap a man into marrying her, and she believed that if she lost Tatum as well, she’d have nothing and no one left to care for, and she’d essentially die miserable and alone.

Now, usually, these kinds of parents will try to manipulate their children into staying as close as possible, but Beverly was never one for manipulation – her first move was always to be a Karen and legally strongarm someone into doing what she wanted them to do. So when Sabrina became increasingly insistent that she and Tatum wanted to leave –

“Mom said she’d go to [child services] and dispute my fitness as a mother. She said she would keep my baby. My brothers did what they liked but Mom wanted me to stay with her until Lord knows when.”

Meanwhile, the relationship between Sabrina and Beverly only kept on deteriorating. Beverly had noticed that money was going missing from the real estate business’s bank account, and she blamed Sabrina for the loss. She was also growing increasingly frustrated with Sabrina’s new habit of staying out late at night, and would regularly accuse her daughter of ‘whoring’ around town.

However, the situation between mother and daughter finally reached a breaking point in February 2002. Tatum was now 18 months old, and from the sounds of it, had reached that wonderful developmental phase known as The Terrible Twos. Now, if you’re a parent, you may know exactly just how frustrating it can be to manage a toddler who is having a meltdown. If not, let me explain the reasons why my 2-year-old had a meltdown on the day I first worked on this part of the script –

She woke up and I wasn’t in the bed with her.

It was raining and the power went out.

She wanted a lollipop and we didn’t have any.

I had offered her 5 jelly babies instead of 10.

I sat on the wrong chair.

I got up out of the chair.

She didn’t want to watch a video about fish eagles.

She didn’t want to listen to The Wiggles.

She wanted to take a shower instead of taking a bath.

The shower water was too warm.

Her hair got wet.

She’d dropped her towel and then wanted it back.

She didn’t want to put on her long-sleeved pyjamas because she wanted to wear a dress to bed.

(Ps, she was having a bad day, and all but the first one happened within the span of 2 hours. I also had to hold and hug her through most of it, only for her to have another meltdown a minute or two after I’d put her down.)

Anyway, since Beverly still believed in applying corporal punishment whenever a child misbehaved, she gave Tatum a hiding whenever she had a meltdown, which often only made Tatum’s cries worse. This resulted in further arguments between Beverly and Sabrina, but since Sabrina was rarely at home, she wasn’t there to keep Beverly from hitting Tatum as punishment whenever she had a meltdown.

Then Beverly called Sabrina at work one night to tell her that Tatum had been screaming non-stop. She insisted that Sabrina had to come home and help her calm Tatum down, and Sabrina finally reached her breaking point.

“She said if my child didn’t learn some manners, she was going to kill her one night.”

But instead of leaving and making sure that Tatum was, in fact, okay, Sabrina continued drinking with her friends, which included Shawn, Tatum’s dad. And when Shawn noticed that Sabrina looked upset, he took her aside to ask her what was wrong, and she told him that she was growing sick and tired of the way Beverly treated her and Tatum.

“I really took her seriously when she said she would murder my daughter one night if Tatum carried on crying. I thought I would find my baby beaten black and blue by the time I got home.”

“[Shawn] was upset, too, and he said he knew someone who could help ‘once and for all’. He said he would get that person to come and see me.”

The next night, Shawn introduced her to Gino, an alleged car thief and drug dealer. They hung out with Shawn and some of Sabrina’s other friends at The Quicket that night, and around 9:45, Gino told Sabrina to meet him outside.

“He said to me, ‘Sabrina, what is wrong?’ I explained the situation between me and my mother, how she was always shouting at me, how she tried to control me all the time, and especially how she loved my baby one minute and threatened to harm her the next.”

“Then he said he could take care of [my mom]. I knew he meant murder, even though we didn’t use the word, because Gino is quite a dangerous guy.”

Gino told Sabrina that he knew a guy who could do it for R250 000, but Sabrina reportedly balked at the cost and told him that she didn’t have that kind of money. She then spent the next month stalling and finally told Gino that she wouldn’t be able to get her hands on R250 000. He then offered to do it himself for R150 000, or to find a cheaper assassin. Sabrina then told Gino that she’d pay him with the money she’d receive when Beverly’s life insurance policies paid out, and the two of them started plotting the murder.

While they were sipping drinks at The Quicket, Sabrina told Gino which routes her mother usually drove and what her routines were so that they could arrange for her to be hijacked. They eventually decided that it would be too risky, so Gino suggested a home invasion instead. Gino would jump over the back wall of their property, make his way into the house, and then murder Beverly in her bedroom after Tatum had gone to bed. All Sabrina had to do was to make sure that the sliding doors in the sitting room were unlocked, and Gino would take care of the rest.

On the afternoon of the 14th of March 2002, Sabrina came back from work, bathed and fed Tatum, and prepared a pasta dinner for Beverly, who was watching television in the living room.

“[Mom] got cross with me because she said there was too much salt in the pasta. ‘Are you trying to poison me?’ she asked, but not in a joking way.”

When Beverly left the living room, Sabrina unlocked the sliding doors and then left for The Quicket. She called Beverly around 10 pm that night to ask her if Tatum had gone to bed yet, and when Beverly confirmed that she had, Sabrina gave Gino the go-ahead and reminded him that Tatum would be asleep in Sabrina’s bedroom, and that Beverly’s room was the one furthest down the hallway.

Now, when I first read about how they planned on killing Beverly, I realised that Sabrina never mentioned whether someone would be taking care of Tatum during all of this. I’ve since scoured my sources, and I wasn’t able to confirm whether or not she’d taken into account that if Gino was successful, her 18-month-old daughter was going to be left alone in the house with not only the brutalised body of her grandmother, but also with a murderer. WHAT THE FUCK, SABRINA?

Anyway, Sabrina then spent the next 30 minutes chain-smoking in the women’s bathroom to ease her anxiety. But then Sabrina’s phone rang. It was Gino, and he told her that he hadn’t managed to finish the job. A few minutes later, Gino arrived at the club along with his getaway driver, and told Sabrina that when he’d jumped over the garden wall, her three French poodles had started barking.

They then woke up the neighbours’ dogs, and Gino realised that there was no way in which he’d be able to get into the house without being seen. They’d just have to try again another day.

A few days later, Gino called Sabrina to let her know that he’d been able to hire a local hitman named Feza to do the job, and on the evening of the 20th of March 2022, Gino, his getaway driver, and Feza made another attempt to murder Beverly.

“But again, my dogs and the neighbours’ dogs went mad and the three of them came back to the club.”

They planned on making a third attempt on the evening of the 21st of March, but this time, Beverly called Sabrina to let her know that something was wrong. She’d noticed that the sliding doors in the living room were open, and then called her daughter in a panic to let her know that she’d heard someone walking around in the garden and she was convinced that they were coming to murder her.

“I said, ‘Mom, it’s your imagination. It’s just because you noticed the sliding door was open that you’re scared.”

But the anxiety was also riding Sabrina hard, and she just wanted it all over and done with. She reportedly told Shawn that she didn’t want to go through with their murder plot anymore, but when Gino called her later that night, Sabrina told him that she just wanted to go home to her mother and Tatum, and that he should call her back later. When Sabrina got home that night –

“Tatum was asleep on Mom’s bed. I picked her up, trying not to wake her as I carried her to my bed. Mom was screaming at me. Gino phoned three times while we were quarrelling. I didn’t answer because I knew it was him. Mom thought it was a lover or something and she was shouting, ‘You’re late home again because you have been whoring. I’m going to put a stop to this, Sabrina. I’ll close the Quicket, send you overseas, keep your baby and tell your brothers.’”

“Then she calmed down and told me to double-check the sliding doors. I walked into the lounge to the doors and made sure one of them was open. I walked down the passage, went into my room and closed the door. Quietly, I dialled Gino’s number and whispered to him: ‘Listen, Gino, let’s not do it now because my nerves are shot. I don’t want to be in the house when the killer comes. Let’s do it tomorrow.’”

The Murder

The next morning, Sabrina left the house at 6 am. They had a large order of flowers that had to be prepared, and the ladies who worked at Lady B, their flower boutique, were already waiting for Sabrina to open up the shop.

Earlier that morning, Gino had told Sabrina that Feza would break in as soon as she left the house, but once again, their plan had been foiled by Sabrina’s three French poodles. Beverly called Sabrina just after 6 am and angrily asked her what was taking so long. Sabrina told her mother that she was on her way, and shortly after she hung up the phone, she got another call from Gino.

Gino told her that he and Feza were waiting for her at the cemetery, and that she should take Feza with her when she returned home. Sabrina met the two men at around 6:30 am, and Feza then got into the back of Sabrina’s car. When they reached the house, Sabrina led Feza inside through the back door and into the kitchen, and then made her way down the hallway to her mother’s bedroom. Beverly was sitting on the bed, doing her makeup and watching the morning news, and Tatum was asleep on the bed next to her.

According to Sabrina –

“I thought to myself, okay, I know what’s going to happen. I can’t stop what’s going to happen. So, at least let me try and say something nice to my mom.”

But Beverly had already noticed that Sabrina had someone with her – a tall, black guy who was waiting in the hallway. At first, Beverly wanted to know who he was and what he was doing there at 7 in the morning, but then she came to the conclusion that Feza was just another one of Sabrina’s lovers.

“So as I was about to say I’m sorry to my mom and everything, my mom shot off at me. She said to me that I’d been whoring around the night before and I’d been whoring around this morning. Why can’t I just stop sleeping with people? Why can’t I just stop being a slut in Queenstown?”

“I said to her, ‘Listen, I don’t have time for your rubbish. I’m taking my child and I’m leaving’. Then I took Tatum off the bed and I went to my bedroom.”

Feza, meanwhile, had covered his hands with two pieces of Tatum’s clothes and had pulled one of her pink t-shirts over his head, then stormed into Beverly’s bedroom. He tackled her onto the bed and tried to strangle her, but Beverly fought back and started screaming at Sabrina to run, to get away, and to save herself. Then Feza pulled out a breadknife that he’d grabbed when they’d passed through the kitchen, and he slit Beverly’s throat. All the while, Sabrina is standing in her bedroom, the volume on her television set to the highest possible setting as she waits for Beverly’s screams to die down.

“It was exactly 7.00 when I heard Feza walk back down the passage and stop outside my bedroom, where the floorboards creaked. I opened the door. He said she was dead. Then he said he wanted to tie me up to make it look like a break-in. I said, ‘No, it’s not part of the plan. You must leave immediately.’”

Sabrina put Tatum down onto the bed, then led Feza outside, handed him her car keys, and then told him to leave her car somewhere outside of town. Once he’d left, Sabrina went back inside and slowly made her way to Beverly’s bedroom. When she saw her mother lying on the floor, Sabrina started screaming and ran outside.

“[Our gardener], Tony, was coming towards me down the driveway, arriving for work. I said to him, ‘Go and help Mommy. Somebody broke in and hurt Mom.’”

Sabrina called Red Guard Security and begged the switchboard operator to call the police and an ambulance. She called her brother Allister, her best friend Shanine, her aunt Valerie, and her mother’s boyfriend Danie, and told them all to come over immediately because something had happened to her mother. She then went to fetch Tatum and took her outside, where the two of them sat on the front steps and waited for the police to show up.

Tony, meanwhile, was alerting the neighbours to what had happened. A man named PJ hurriedly made his way over and ran into the house to see if there was anything he could do for Beverly, and not long after, Allister arrived at his mother’s house.

“I ran straight in and saw my mom lying there…I didn’t know how long she had been dead. I felt for her pulse but her skin was very cold.”

Inspector Stephen Rheeders was working in the police’s Murder and Robbery Unit at the time, had grown up alongside the Van Schoor brothers, and worked with Beverly’s then boyfriend, Danie, who was a Superintendent in the Police, so he knew the family well. When he arrived on the scene, Allister, Danie, some of the neighbours, and a hysterical Sabrina were all gathered on the front lawn.

The officers on the scene told him their first impression was that it had been an attempted robbery gone wrong, and that Sabrina had interrupted the culprit before he could take anything. According to Inspector Rheeders –

“I spoke to some of the policemen already there and they took me inside. We found the body lying on the floor between the bed and the dressing table in Bev’s bedroom.”

They found Tatum’s blood-smeared pink t-shirt lying on the ground next to Beverly’s body, and Beverly’s makeup had been strewn all over the floor. Her handbag was on the bed, and inside of it were three wallets that contained R2 500 in cash. The television was still on, and Beverly’s jewellery hadn’t been touched. A quick survey of the house confirmed that the television in the living room was still there, and the hi-fi in the corner hadn’t been touched either.

The only things that were missing were Beverly’s silver-faced Nokia and Sabrina’s red Volkswagen Citi Golf.

The police inspected every entry point in the house and found that the glass sliding door in the living room was unlocked. The only other open door was the kitchen door. They also established that a knife block with a set of 4 knives usually stood on the kitchen counter, but the bread knife was missing.

Sabrina was still crying hysterically, so the police questioned Danie and Beverly’s sons instead. Danie explained that he’d been at the house the previous evening because Beverly had told him that she suspected that people were attempting to break into her house. He’d checked all the doors and windows himself, and he confirmed that when he’d left that evening, the sliding doors in the living room had been locked. Inspector Rheeders made a note of this, but he already knew that the killer had entered through the kitchen door because –

“It was the only door that was open. If you break into somebody’s house and you leave in a rush, you don’t wait to close the door.”

Beverly was declared dead on the scene, and the police cordoned off the area. Lester and Shane had been in East London when they’d gotten the call that their mother was dead, and by the time the police had finished processing the scene, the three brothers had already offered to help track down the man who’d murdered their mother.

“We wanted to get him. Fortunately, we have a lot of friends in town and we organised two guys with their own planes to go up in the air and look for [Sabrina’s] golf. The entire police force in Queenstown was deployed on the case.”

Later that day, they found Sabrina’s car abandoned outside of town, and according to Inspector Scheepers –

“The vehicle was locked. There was nothing wrong with it. Even the radio was still in it, which was very strange for a robbery.”

Allister told Sabrina to pack her and Tatum’s bags, and then took the two of them to his house. The family all gathered there as well, and their friends started arriving that afternoon to offer their support. According to Allister, some people would later tell him that Sabrina’s behaviour had been off that day, but he had been grief-stricken and hadn’t noticed anything –

“Sabrina seemed like she was in shock – not crying though. The terrible thing for me was that the people arriving actually wanted to know exactly what happened. That was the worst part of it, having to describe [the scene].”

The day after the murder, Inspector Scheepers arrived at Allister’s house to interview Sabrina. She told him that she’d left the house at around 6 that morning so that she could open their shop, Lady B, for their employees. Then she returned home, and when she came to a stop in the driveway, a tall black man appeared next to the driver’s side door. He pulled her out of the car, threw her onto the ground, and then held a knife to her throat and threatened to kill her if she screamed.

Sabrina claimed that she’d then handed him her car keys, and he’d left. She ran inside to see whether Tatum and her mother were okay, and that’s when she came across her mother’s body. Sabrina then provided Inspector Scheepers with a detailed description of the man who’d murdered her mother.

“She was crying profusely. She described the killer to me in great detail – the marks on his face, his height, everything. That was strange because she saw him for a very short time when he pulled her out of the vehicle and threw her on the ground.”

Meanwhile, the police had issued a R20 000 reward for any information relating to the murder of Beverly van Schoor, and it wasn’t long before the rumour started doing the rounds that Sabrina had murdered Beverly. After all, everyone in Queenstown knew that Sabrina wasn’t exactly a sweet little angel, that she willingly hung out with known thieves, gangsters, and drug dealers, and that Beverly didn’t approve of Sabrina’s friends.

Inspector Scheepers also heard that Beverly had suspected that Sabrina was stealing from her. Beverly’s boyfriend, Danie, told the police that Sabrina had stolen a large amount of cash and some of Beverly’s jewellery when she’d run away to East London, and that an amount of R150 000 had gone missing from Beverly’s business accounts in the months leading up to her death. Beverly was busy investigating the loss and had planned on discussing the missing funds with her sons at 9 am on the morning she’d been murdered.

Then the police got a random call from a man called Feza Mdutshane. Feza told the police that he’d heard there was a robbery at the Buffalo Spur restaurant in town at 7:30 am on the morning Beverly was murdered, and that he was a suspect.

“You see, this is an attempt by Feza to get some information out of us. It is like a child who does something wrong and goes to his father, saying: ‘Hey listen, what’s the story? I’m hearing that you think this …’ Trying to get information because nothing seems to be happening about the crime or misdeed he has committed. But we didn’t give Feza any information – nothing.”

The police told him that no, he wasn’t a suspect, and mostly forgot about the call, but then one of their informants called to let them know that a local thief called Feza Mdutshane was walking around town with two cell phones – his own cheap one, and a more expensive one that looked a lot like the silver-faced Nokia that Beverly used to own.

Feza was already out on bail for being involved in a cash-in-transit robbery, so the police had all his information and his photo on file. According to Inspector Scheepers –

“I studied [the photo] when I got back to my office, noting that the scars Sabrina described exactly matched those on his face. He has lots of old fight scars; not like your ordinary thief.”

Inspector Scheepers then asked Feza to come and see him so that he could ask him a few questions about the robbery that took place at the Buffalo Spur. Feza agreed, and as soon as it was clear that Feza didn’t have any knowledge of what had taken place, Inspector Scheepers informed him that he was a suspect in Beverly van Schoor’s murder, and arrested him, despite the fact that they didn’t have any evidence that linked him to the murder. According to Inspector Scheepers –

“Feza was arrested for questioning. We can keep him for 48 hours and release him after that. I must warn him that he is a suspect in the Beverley van Schoor murder case. I must have some concrete suspicions to arrest somebody, but I have to ‘cuff him. To have a dangerous criminal in your office without handcuffs … and he grabs a gun … you are going to have troubles. That’s why I arrested him at that stage.”

Inspector Scheepers asked Feza about the cell phone, the car, and how he’d come to be at Beverly’s house that morning. It gave Feza the impression that they knew more than they did, and it wasn’t long before he agreed to tell the police everything. According to Inspector Scheepers –

“Feza admitted being involved in the killing of Bev. He immediately mentioned Sabrina by name, which was very suspicious because how would somebody who goes and robs a place where the daughter is not even present know her name? Then he told us Sabrina took him to the house to kill her mother, promising to give him R200 000 from a life insurance payout.”

While Inspector Scheepers was interviewing Feza, Lester van Schoor called him and told Inspector Scheepers that he’d heard they’d arrested a suspect. Inspector Scheepers realised that Danie might be leaking information to the family, and since they didn’t want Sabrina to flee town before they could arrest her, Inspector Scheepers told Lester that they had arrested somebody, but that he wasn’t the killer. This then provided them with the opportunity to set a trap for Sabrina.

While this was all going down, Beverly’s friends and family were attending her funeral on the other side of town. Sabrina sat in the church pew next to her brothers and their families, and reportedly cried just as much as the rest of her family members did. Each one of the Van Schoor children had written a message for their mother to be read out during the service, and Sabrina’s read as follows –

“[Mom and I] did everything together. Now I’m alone with my baby, and I realise how much I took for granted. I love you dearly and will always miss you with all my heart and soul.”

That evening, Lester told them that the police were on their way to arrest a suspect in Beverly’s murder, but Sabrina didn’t seem to realise that it meant the noose was tightening – and fast. Inspector Scheepers and his team had managed to track Gino and his getaway driver down at a club in the coloured township, and Feza pointed them out to the police. The two of them were arrested, and they both agreed to provide full confessions in exchange for turning state witness against Feza and Sabrina.

“At about two in the morning we finished taking their statements in my office. Both of them confirmed independently that Sabrina had orchestrated the whole thing. Gino told us that, two days before the murder, Sabrina was really pressuring them to get a killer for her and that was when he decided on Feza, a known robber.”

At around 4 am that morning, Feza called Sabrina on her cell phone. Feza told her that he needed help, that the police were after him because of her, and that he needed money to get out of town. Sabrina agreed to give him R3 000, and then told him to call her again the next morning so that they could arrange a meeting.

The next morning, Sabrina withdrew the money she’d promised Feza, then met him at a local fuel station. And the moment she handed the envelope of cash over to him, the police had her.

“I got out of the vehicle and went towards her and you could see she was very, very nervous…She asked, ‘What’s wrong, Stephen? Are you looking for me? What did I do wrong?’”

“I then told her, Sabrina, we’re arresting you for the murder of your mother. And she said, ‘No, Stephen!’”

“She was totally mind-blown…I ‘cuffed her and one of the policemen drove her car while she came with me. She was crying, asking who told us, trying to get information. Then she saw Feza and the undercover policeman he had driven away with, standing outside my office. That’s when she cracked. She was crying profusely, saying she was sorry, so sorry.”

Sabrina was taken to the police station to be processed and was then put in a cell next to Feza. This was also a trap, since the police had put wires on Feza before they took him to meet with Sabrina, and they had encouraged him to get Sabrina to confess.

On the tape, Feza tells Sabrina that the only reason why the police had managed to catch him was because she’d provided them with his description. Sabrina, meanwhile, was calling for Inspector Scheepers to come and see her so that she could convince him that he’d made a mistake, but when he didn’t respond to her, Sabrina turned to Feza and said –

“Do you know how bad I feel, Feza? I killed my mother.”

Sabrina had been supposed to meet with Allister that morning so that he could teach her how to use their accounting system, but when she failed to show, he called her phone, and Inspector Scheepers answered it.

“He said, ‘I’m sorry, you can’t speak to Sabrina because I have arrested her for the murder of your mother’. That’s how I found out.”

“There’s no way anything can ever, ever prepare you for something like that. In some ways, the shock of discovering that Sabrina had killed my mom was greater than the shock of finding her dead in the first place. I felt so betrayed. I was the one who opened up my home and my life to Sabrina.

I sat her down and told her not to worry, we’re going to buy a nice townhouse for you and Tatum. And we’ll help you bring up Tatum. All that, and you get a huge slap in the face. I was incredibly upset and I decided there and then that I wanted nothing more to do with her.”

According to Gladys, she’d been tasked with caring for Tatum while Sabrina was at work, and when news reached them that Sabrina had been arrested, Tatum didn’t stop crying, and Gladys sat up with her all night.

“She cried a lot that day. I didn’t sleep. She knew about her mother. She knew about her grandmother.”

But Gladys also had to process her own grief about Beverly’s death. Even though they hadn’t been friends, Gladys had been a part of the family for more than a decade, and, in her own way, Beverly had been good to her. Gladys also hoped that she’d be allowed to adopt Tatum once Sabrina was sent to jail, but shortly after Sabrina’s arrest, Tatum was placed into foster care, and Allister told Gladys that they no longer needed her services.

“They gave me nothing. They just gave me that month’s wages. They didn’t worry [about me].”

The loss of a position she’d held for more than a decade hurt, but what broke Gladys’ heart was the fact that she wasn’t allowed to care for Tatum anymore.

“Why didn’t [Sabrina] give me the child so that she could live here with me? Or they could’ve found me a place to live with Sabrina’s child.”

Gladys was able to find a job, but it didn’t pay as well, and she couldn’t help but feel betrayed by not only the Van Schoor family as a whole, but Sabrina in particular, who’d managed to betray both her mothers in one fell swoop.

“She made me suffer. I am struggling while she, on the other hand, is in jail, eating. I am [left] eating smoke.”

The Trial

In the documentary “Sabrina: Daddy’s Girl – A Tale of Murder and Family Betrayal”, an attorney called Siphiwo Burwana explained that Feza was the one who’d initially told him about Beverly’s murder.

“Feza bought a [copy of the newspaper] Daily Dispatch… I think it was the first time that I saw him being interested in the newspaper. He’s the one who showed me this article where this Van Schoor was killed. But I didn’t know this Van Schoor and I didn’t even bother myself to look at the newspaper.”

A week later, Feza had been arrested for murdering Beverly van Schoor, and he called Mr. Burwana and asked him if he would be willing to represent Feza’s co-accused – Beverly’s daughter, Sabrina.

“[Sabrina] was crying. She asked me to help her. She told me she was very much ill-treated by her mother. She stated categorically that her mother was a racist.

I believed her then and especially after I investigated her claims around Queenstown. The black and coloured people I interviewed said they loved Sabrina very much. They confirmed she was not a racist. Stephen Rheeders will tell you they loved her only because she bought them drinks.

You cannot ask the white people of this town about racism, because they are all suffering from the same sickness. They are all racists.”

Sabrina and Feza’s bail hearing took place on the 29th of April 2002, and it was heard by Judge Pondo Makaula. The State Prosecutor, Advocate Malherbe Marais, told the court that both Sabrina and Feza had been charged with the murder of Beverly van Schoor, and that the State was also planning on charging Sabrina with fraud.

Feza’s lawyer, Attorney Livingstone Ceyane, told the court that Feza had only agreed to murder Beverly because he’d been poor and desperate, and that it made him a ‘victim of circumstance’. He explained that Feza made a living by repairing cell phones, but that it wasn’t exactly a lucrative business, and Feza was struggling financially. Feza was also responsible for caring for both his grandmother and his younger sister despite earning a meagre income, so when he was offered the opportunity to make an easy R200 000, he jumped at the opportunity.

Mr. Burwana, on the other hand, had come up with a much more unorthodox defense for Sabrina. He basically implied that Sabrina was guilty of murder and told the court that Beverly’s death had been justified because -

“[Sabrina] was rejected [by her family] as she wanted to mix with other races – she needed to liberate herself from this monster or live in bondage for the rest of her life.”

He then went on to explain that Sabrina should be lauded as a hero for murdering her mother, and that she deserved to be presented with an award for ridding the world of a racist monster like Beverly.

Of course, Advocate Marais objected to this, and explained that describing Beverly’s death as justified because she’d been a ‘racist monster’ was ‘irresponsible’ considering South Africa’s history, and that it was –

“…not the kind of a statement which should be advocated by a professional in court.”

But Mr. Burwana spent the rest of the bail hearing playing the racism card at every opportunity. He accused Inspector Rheeders of ‘stealing’ the case from the black police officers who’d arrived on the scene before he did, claimed that the only reason why the State wanted to deny Sabrina and Feza bail was because they considered them to be a danger to Queenstown’s white citizens and their white citizens only, compared Sabrina’s ‘fight for liberation’ to the violent attacks the ANC’s military wing had launched against whites during Apartheid, and called Advocate Marais a ‘white male racist’ for reminding the judge that in a court of law there was a proper way to do things and then suggesting that Mr. Burwana seemed to be unaware of that fact.

And maybe Advocate Marais had a point, since both Mr. Burwana and Mr. Ceyane had already all but told the court that their clients were guilty of murdering Beverly, so Sabrina and Feza were both denied bail. Judge Makaula then told the court that the focus of the court trial was “no longer about the merits of the murder…but about sentence”, and that it was now up to the National Prosecuting Authority to decide what to do with the two of them.

Their murder trial took place at the Queenstown Regional Court in June 2002. It was heard by Judge Eric Leach, and according to the news reports, the courtroom was packed. Many of Beverly’s friends and family had shown up to support the Van Schoor brothers, but the gallery was filled with black and coloured people who were all there to support Sabrina, the racist killer. One of them, a woman called Maria Phillips, told a journalist that she didn’t know Sabrina personally, but they were supporting her because –

“She was just doing exactly what Mr (Nelson) Mandela said – making friends with people of different colours. But her mother tried to stop it.”

Just like most criminal trials in South Africa, the prosecution started the proceedings by explaining that Sabrina was being charged with both murder and fraud. Mr Burwana then told the court that Sabrina was going to plead guilty to the count of murder, and read her plea statement to the court, in which she explained how she’d hired Feza to murder her mother in exchange for an amount of R200 000, which she’d give him once her mother’s life insurance policy paid out.

When it was her turn to take to the stand, Sabrina told the court that her parents had gotten divorced when she was little, and that losing her father had a big impact on her life. She explained how she’d felt rejected by her family since she was little, and how Gladys had basically raised her. She claimed to have been sexually assaulted as a child, and told the court that when she told Beverly about the abuse, Beverly didn’t believe her. Sabrina told the court how Beverly and her brothers would break her down emotionally, calling her fat and ugly, and that the only people she ended up feeling accepted by were the black and coloured kids she went to school with.

Then her father went to prison, and Beverly actively started keeping Sabrina away from him. She told the court that Beverly was a racist and didn’t approve of her friends because they weren’t white, and that Beverly had tried to keep Sabrina from hanging out with them. She told the court how one of her coloured friends, Shanine, ended up working for Beverly’s real estate business, but that Beverly had refused to pay Shanine the same wages she’d paid the white girl who’d held the position before her. And when Sabrina told her mother that it wasn’t fair towards Shanine, she was told that Shanine wasn’t white, she was coloured, and that she should be grateful that she had a job at all.

Sabrina told the court about her first abortion, and how Beverly had wanted her to have a second one when she was pregnant with Tatum. And then she told them that even though Beverly seemed to love Tatum, she had never gotten over the fact that Tatum’s father was coloured, and that she would regularly abuse Tatum, then claim that she’d only been disciplining her.

“Mom always said blacks and coloureds have no manners. So if Tatum was getting on Mom’s nerves, it was the baby who had to learn some manners, not Mom who had to learn some patience.”

Sabrina went on to explain how her mother had controlled everything she did, and that she did everything for her mother. She told the court that every time she asked her mother to help her find an apartment, her mother would threaten to have Sabrina declared to be an unfit mother and take Tatum away from her. Sabrina didn’t earn an income and she didn’t have any way to support herself, and so she was forced to stay with Beverly despite the fact that they were constantly fighting.

Maggie Riggien, who’d introduced herself to the court as Beverly’s best friend, told the court that everything Sabrina had said was true. Beverly had emotionally abused Sabrina her whole life. She’d constantly tell Sabrina that she was fat and ugly. She didn’t like it when Sabrina hung out with her black or coloured friends.

Beverly had treated Sabrina like a servant and kept her dependent on her by refusing to pay her a monthly salary. And when Tatum was born, Beverly had cried when she saw how dark Tatum’s skin was because there was no way she would be able to pass her off as “a white baby”.

Of course, the Van Schoor brothers didn’t agree with Sabrina and Maggie’s claims. They claimed that their mother had loved both Sabrina and Tatum, and that she’d always put their needs ahead of her own. They claimed that Sabrina had always been a troublemaker and that she had always been more than capable of defending herself against them. They told the court how they’d always done their best to help and support Sabrina, but that she’d still steal money from their mother and sneak out of the house at every opportunity, and that the people she befriended were often known thieves and criminals.

As for Beverly’s threats to take Tatum away from Sabrina? Well, Beverly felt that the 22-year-old Sabrina was too immature to take care of Tatum, seeing as how she preferred to spend her nights drinking and dancing at The Quicket instead of staying home and looking after her daughter, and Beverly felt that Tatum might be better off being raised by her.

They also didn’t agree with the assumption that Sabrina had their mother murdered because she was a racist. They told the court that Beverly had suspected that Sabrina was helping herself to the till at The Quicket, and that an amount of R150 000 had gone missing from the real estate business account. In their opinion, Sabrina had realised that their mother was onto her, so she had her killed to keep the rest of them from finding out what she’d done.

A psychologist named Professor Mark Welman told the court that he had interviewed Sabrina prior to her trial, and had discussed her upbringing with her and several others. She’d told him how she’d been left in Gladys’ care from a young age, and that her mother never seemed to have time for her. She’d also resented her mother’s boyfriend, Danie, since she felt that her mother loved him more than she loved Sabrina. In Professor Welman’s opinion, Beverly hadn’t shown Sabrina the love and attention she’d needed as a child, and that the lack of maternal love might –

“…have been the breeding ground for later conflict, as it is possible that to some extent [her] choice of friends and sexual partners was motivated by the realisation that one way to gain the attention of her mother was to provoke clashes with her in this way. For a needy child, negative attention is a better option than no attention.”

He told the court that in his opinion, Sabrina didn’t show any psychotic symptoms that would suggest that she suffered from any mental disorders. She did, however, suffer from low self-esteem and had a habit of telling exaggerated stories for attention. In Professor Welman’s opinion, it’s entirely possible that Sabrina eventually came to believe her own exaggerations, and that maybe, Beverly wasn’t quite as horrible as Sabrina initially made her out to be. He also suggested that this new tendency to believe exaggerations might explain why Sabrina had taken Beverly seriously when she’d told Sabrina that she was going to murder Tatum someday.

Professor Welman also explained that based on their discussions, it was obvious that Sabrina knew that what she’d done was wrong and that she felt remorse for her actions, but that “The remorse she exhibited was related to the consequences of her crime rather than the crime itself.” He then went on to explain that in his opinion, if Sabrina were to be put in the same position again, she’d still arrange to have her mother murdered, and that she’d need ‘considerable counselling’ to change her mindset.

But at the end of the trial, no one had been able to establish exactly what Sabrina’s motive for murdering Beverly had been. The State had argued that Sabrina had decided to have Beverly murdered to hide the fact that she’d stolen money from the business accounts. However, there wasn’t enough evidence to suggest that Sabrina had definitely been stealing money from the account, and as such, the fraud charges were dropped.

Sabrina had told the court that her mother had threatened to murder Tatum, but also claimed that she’d threatened to take Tatum away from her if Sabrina tried to leave, which was another possible motive. Then Sabrina’s lawyer once again claimed that Sabrina had simply been trying to ‘liberate’ herself from her racist monster of a mother, and that became the third possible motive.

But Judge Leach didn’t need a motive to sentence Sabrina. In his judgment, he summarised the case and explained that it was clear that Beverly van Schoor had been a single mother who’d worked her fingers to the bone to provide for her children. She’d often put Sabrina’s needs and wishes above her own, and –

“It was clear that she loved you dearly.”

Judge Leach then went on to explain that Sabrina’s ‘promiscuity’ had driven a wedge between her and her mother, and led to them having frequent fights. He told the court that Beverly had tried to control Sabrina’s actions as best she could, which Sabrina saw as an ‘unnecessary intrusion into her life’.

In Judge Leach’s opinion, Sabrina had most likely had her mother murdered because she didn’t want Beverly to find out that she’d stolen money out of the business accounts. Then, with Gino’s help, she’d then arranged for Feza to help her murder her mother, and as a result, Beverly van Schoor died a horrible, painful death.

“You took the life of the person who bore you and gave you life. She shared her home with you and cherished your little daughter. But you decided you were better off in life without the restrictions she imposed on you.”

“Till your dying day the blood of your mother will be on your hands.”

Daddy’s Girl

From what I could find out, Feza was sentenced to life in prison. If he hadn’t been released on parole and hadn’t managed to rack up a few more offences, he should be released from prison within the next two years.

Sabrina was sentenced to 25 years in prison with the option of parole, and was then sent to the Fort Glamorgan prison in East London – the very same prison where her father, Louis van Schoor, was serving his own life sentence. Until his release in October 2004, Sabrina and Louis got to see each other once a week, and Louis was allowed to console and support her after she made several attempts to end her life. According to Sabrina –

“My whole life I’ve been kept so far away from my dad. All of a sudden, something so bad has actually brought me so much closer to him.”

Sabrina was released on parole in 2012 and ended up marrying Shawn Ortell – Tatum’s dad. The two of them had two more children together, and in the BBC documentary ‘The Apartheid Killer’, you can see that life has been hard on them. According to Sabrina –

“I often think of how differently life would have turned out – not for me, but for my family, my brothers, their children, my children. I also know that I’d robbed my children of a grandmother. They often ask me ‘Where’s Granny Bev?’, and I can’t explain [it] to them. If I could take it back, I would.”

In the BBC documentary, Shawn explains that he doesn’t want his children to be associated with the Van Schoors and their dark history, and he doesn’t want his children to be hated in their community because their grandfather was Louis van Schoor. And Sabrina doesn’t want her daughters to ever feel like nobody loves them.

“I want my children to know that they’re loved. I want them to know that their father loves them more than anything. I want them to know that I love them more than anything.”

But what about Tatum?

Well, for some time after her mother’s arrest, Tatum’s future seemed uncertain. At first, she lived with her uncle Lester and his wife, but they didn’t have children of their own, and had no idea how to care for an 18-month-old who cried herself to sleep at night. Then she was placed in foster care, and I agree with Heidi Holland, who explains that Tatum just happened to end up with the one family that was the exact opposite of the Van Schoors – and that it was probably the best thing that could have happened to her.

According to Tatum’s foster mother –

“I just took one look at her when she was first put in my arms and decided to make her my own. I don’t think much about her history and all that stuff. I think of her exactly the same way as I did [my own daughters]. If I treat her like my own, she will respond like my own.”

Growing up, Tatum still had contact with the Van Schoors and regularly visited her mother in prison. When Sabrina was released in 2012, the 11-year-old Tatum opted to stay with her foster family, but it seems like they still kept in touch for a while. From what I could see, Tatum had a happy and loving childhood, grew to be just as tall as Sabrina, excelled in sports, and loves to bake. She changed her last name when she turned 18, and based on her social media posts, Tatum is thriving.

The world she lives in is vastly different than the one Louis van Schoor was born into. South African society today also won’t blink twice when they hear that she has a white mother and a coloured father. And while I was writing this article, I realised just how far South Africans have come as a society these last 31 years. Sure, we still have our bad eggs.

Some of the older white folks still cling to their old prejudices, and we still have those few radicals who blame Apartheid for everything that’s gone wrong in their lives.

But the rest of us manage to co-exist just fine. We work together, we party together, and we’ve learned to respect each other’s cultures and traditions. We cheer when our nation succeeds at something, we make jokes when things are bad, and rage against our politicians’ idiocy on an almost daily basis.

Life in South Africa is by no means perfect, but Tatum’s generation – they’re the ones who are going to change our country for the better.

Key Takeaways

• Beverly van Schoor, a wealthy white South African businesswoman, was murdered in her bed in March 2002 during a staged home invasion.
• Her daughter Sabrina orchestrated the murder, hiring hitman Feza Mdutshane through intermediary Gino to kill Beverly for promised insurance money.
• Sabrina’s motive stemmed from years of emotional abuse, racial conflict, and Beverly’s threats to take away Sabrina’s mixed-race daughter Tatum.
• Sabrina was sentenced to 25 years in prison, served time alongside her father Louis van Schoor (the ‘Apartheid Killer’), and was paroled in 2012.
• Tatum was placed in foster care after Sabrina’s arrest, had a loving upbringing, and later changed her last name to distance herself from the family’s dark history.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was Beverly van Schoor murdered?

Beverly van Schoor was murdered on the morning of March 22, 2002.

Who was arrested for Beverly van Schoor’s murder?

Sabrina van Schoor, Beverly’s daughter, was arrested along with Feza Mdutshane, the hitman she hired. Gino, who arranged the murder, and his getaway driver were also arrested and turned state witnesses.

What was Louis van Schoor’s relationship to Beverly and Sabrina?

Louis van Schoor was Beverly’s second husband and Sabrina’s father. He was a former police officer and security guard who was later convicted of murdering seven black men. He and Beverly divorced in 1983, and he was in prison during Sabrina’s trial.

Why did Sabrina claim she had her mother murdered?

Sabrina claimed multiple motives: that her mother was a racist who emotionally abused her, that her mother threatened to kill her daughter Tatum, that her mother threatened to take Tatum away from her, and that she wanted to liberate herself from her mother’s control. However, the judge believed the most likely motive was to hide that she had stolen money from business accounts.

What was the role of Gladys Ntombi in Sabrina’s life?

Gladys Ntombi was the black housekeeper hired by Beverly who essentially raised Sabrina from age 5 or 6. Sabrina called her ‘mama wam’ (Xhosa for ‘mother of mine’), and Gladys taught her Xhosa and provided the maternal love that Beverly did not.

What was the name of the business Beverly bought that Sabrina managed?

The business was called Action Quicket or The Quicket, a mini-cricket arena with a bar located in a warehouse in Queenstown’s industrial area.

How did the police catch Sabrina?

After arresting Feza, who confessed and implicated Sabrina, the police set a trap where Feza called Sabrina claiming he needed money to flee. When Sabrina withdrew R3,000 and met Feza at a fuel station to hand it over, Inspector Stephen Rheeders arrested her.

What was Sabrina’s sentence for her mother’s murder?

Sabrina was sentenced to 25 years in prison with the option of parole. She was released on parole in 2012.

What happened to Tatum after Sabrina’s arrest?

Tatum was initially cared for by Gladys, then briefly lived with her uncle Lester and his wife, then was placed in foster care. She chose to stay with her foster family when Sabrina was released in 2012, and later changed her last name when she turned 18.

What was unusual about Sabrina’s lawyer’s defense strategy?

Sabrina’s lawyer, Siphiwo Burwana, essentially admitted she was guilty but argued her mother’s murder was justified because Beverly was a ‘racist monster.’ He claimed Sabrina should be lauded as a hero and deserved an award for ridding the world of a racist, comparing her actions to the ANC’s liberation struggle.

Key Takeaways

• Beverly van Schoor, a wealthy white South African businesswoman, was murdered in her bed in March 2002 during a staged home invasion.
• Her daughter Sabrina orchestrated the murder, hiring hitman Feza Mdutshane through intermediary Gino to kill Beverly for promised insurance money.
• Sabrina’s motive stemmed from years of emotional abuse, racial conflict, and Beverly’s threats to take away Sabrina’s mixed-race daughter Tatum.
• Sabrina was sentenced to 25 years in prison, served time alongside her father Louis van Schoor (the ‘Apartheid Killer’), and was paroled in 2012.
• Tatum was placed in foster care after Sabrina’s arrest, had a loving upbringing, and later changed her last name to distance herself from the family’s dark history.

Frequently Asked Questions

When was Beverly van Schoor murdered?

Beverly van Schoor was murdered on the morning of March 22, 2002.

Who was arrested for Beverly van Schoor’s murder?

Sabrina van Schoor, Beverly’s daughter, was arrested along with Feza Mdutshane, the hitman she hired. Gino, who arranged the murder, and his getaway driver were also arrested and turned state witnesses.

What was Louis van Schoor’s relationship to Beverly and Sabrina?

Louis van Schoor was Beverly’s second husband and Sabrina’s father. He was a former police officer and security guard who was later convicted of murdering seven black men. He and Beverly divorced in 1983, and he was in prison during Sabrina’s trial.

Why did Sabrina claim she had her mother murdered?

Sabrina claimed multiple motives: that her mother was a racist who emotionally abused her, that her mother threatened to kill her daughter Tatum, that her mother threatened to take Tatum away from her, and that she wanted to liberate herself from her mother’s control. However, the judge believed the most likely motive was to hide that she had stolen money from business accounts.

What was the role of Gladys Ntombi in Sabrina’s life?

Gladys Ntombi was the black housekeeper hired by Beverly who essentially raised Sabrina from age 5 or 6. Sabrina called her ‘mama wam’ (Xhosa for ‘mother of mine’), and Gladys taught her Xhosa and provided the maternal love that Beverly did not.

What was the name of the business Beverly bought that Sabrina managed?

The business was called Action Quicket or The Quicket, a mini-cricket arena with a bar located in a warehouse in Queenstown’s industrial area.

How did the police catch Sabrina?

After arresting Feza, who confessed and implicated Sabrina, the police set a trap where Feza called Sabrina claiming he needed money to flee. When Sabrina withdrew R3,000 and met Feza at a fuel station to hand it over, Inspector Stephen Rheeders arrested her.

What was Sabrina’s sentence for her mother’s murder?

Sabrina was sentenced to 25 years in prison with the option of parole. She was released on parole in 2012.

What happened to Tatum after Sabrina’s arrest?

Tatum was initially cared for by Gladys, then briefly lived with her uncle Lester and his wife, then was placed in foster care. She chose to stay with her foster family when Sabrina was released in 2012, and later changed her last name when she turned 18.

What was unusual about Sabrina’s lawyer’s defense strategy?

Sabrina’s lawyer, Siphiwo Burwana, essentially admitted she was guilty but argued her mother’s murder was justified because Beverly was a ‘racist monster.’ He claimed Sabrina should be lauded as a hero and deserved an award for ridding the world of a racist, comparing her actions to the ANC’s liberation struggle.

Sources

• Original Casual Criminalist video: The Assassination of Beverly van Schoor
• Hero image source by Adbh266 / openverse, by-sa.

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