Later the police visited the scene and took over.
Elsa Malan was the first one to reach her brother’s body in the bedroom and she declared:
I, Mrs Elizabeth Johanna Malan, a white female, aged 31, residing and working at Plot 25, c/o Cloverdene Road and Third Road, Cloverdene, tel. [omitted], declare under oath:
On Friday 1991–21–06 at about 15:30 my brother, Mr Charles Theron of Plot 56, Seventh Road, Cloverdene, phoned my other brother, Danie, who was staying with us at the time, and asked Danie to come and visit him [Charles]. A short while later Danie left to go to Charles Theron at Plot 56, 7th Road, Cloverdene.
Soon afterwards Charles and Danie returned to our plot. Danie showed Charles his new pickup and they took a drive.
When they returned, Charles had a small bottle of Underberg with him. He said he had a terrible headache and that he would drink the Underberg as it would take away the headache. He didn’t drink much more liquor apart from that.
A short while afterwards I took a bath and heard someone talk in here [in the kitchen]. I took no notice of it and after I had finished my bath, I was told that Charles’s wife had been here. It was Mrs G. Theron and her daughter Miss C. Theron.
I asked Charles why Charlize, his daughter, had not come inside. He told me that she had indeed come inside, but that she had greeted no one, only used the toilet and walked out again.
There had previously been arguments between Danie and Mrs Theron.
Then Charles decided to phone his daughter. He phoned her and at first he spoke to her nicely and asked why she had been so rude to her relatives.
I heard Charlize screaming at Charles. I also heard Mrs Theron screaming in the background.
Then Charles became very angry and said: “Tell that fucking bitch to shut up, and fuck you too.” He slammed down the phone. He was noticeably upset.
Some time later Charles and Danie drove to Mrs Theron and Charles’s house. At first Danie did not want to go along because he and Mrs Theron did not see eye to eye at all. But Charles insisted that he should go along.
Soon afterwards we received the news that there had been a shooting and we left for Charles’s plot immediately.
When we arrived there, we found the deceased, Charles, in the [main] bedroom. Danie was not there at the time.
In my presence the body sustained no further wounds or injuries.
In her statement about the conversation she had had with Gerda and Charlize on Sunday, when she had gone to their house to see where her son had died, Bettie Moolman said:
I, Mrs Elizabeth Johanna Moolman, a white female residing at [omitted], Kuruman, tel. [omitted], declare under oath:
On Sunday 1991–06–23 I was at Plot 25, Cloverdene, with my daughter, Mrs Malan. The deceased in the case, Mr C. Theron, was my son.
On [Sunday] 1991–06–23 Mrs [Gerda] Theron phoned me and asked me to come to her house. She is the wife of the deceased, my daughter-in-law.
When I arrived at Plot 56, Cloverdene, Mrs Theron invited me in and we began to talk. I asked Mrs Theron to tell me what had really happened there on the [Friday] evening of 1991–06–21.
Mrs Theron said that the deceased had been furious because they had locked him out of his own house and because his daughter had allegedly not greeted him when he had been with family earlier that evening.
She also said that the deceased and Danie Theron had been drunk.
Then I asked her to show me how everything had happened. First she showed me the kitchen door where the deceased had wanted to come in. She said that she had not wanted to open the door for him and that he had then fired a shot.
After that she showed me the door of the bar and said that the deceased had forced open the [sliding] door.
We walked on and in an alcove in the passage [I] saw that someone had been cleaning. I asked Mrs Theron whether that was the place where she had shot Danie. She answered affirmatively.
Then we went to the main bedroom where the shooting had taken place. I noticed that there were several blood stains that were covered with sheets.
Mrs Theron said: “Ma, he was the strongest man. He wouldn’t fall.”
She [unclear] her hands in the air and said: “Dear God, help me to give him one more shot so that he will fall.”
Then we went back to her office. There I asked the deceased’s daughter, Charlize, why she had not greeted the deceased at the family’s house before the incident. Then the incident might not have happened.
Charlize looked at her mother and asked: “Am I getting all the blame now?” Then she jumped up and ran outside. She was crying.
After a while Charlize came back.
I asked Mrs Theron why she had not rather divorced the deceased if she had hated him so much. She pointed at Charlize and said: “You know very well, Ma, it was for the child’s sake.”
I then told them about another incident when Mrs Theron had locked the deceased out of the house. He drove to me in Kuruman. The day before he returned home, I found him crying in his room. He told me that he was afraid to go back. He did not want to hear all the recriminations and bad things. Then he left.
There were still unanswered questions, however, like why she had not summoned help after she had shot him, or why [she had] not run away after he had begun to stagger.
Furthermore I also want to say: For the past 20 years my son the deceased has always been Mrs Theron’s inferior. She is a very bad-tempered person and she never took anyone’s feelings into account.
We attach a lot of importance to family ties, which she considers ridiculous. She is an outspoken person, with little regard for family, even her own.
He, my son, was never violent towards her, as far as I know. She, on the other hand, was often violent towards him.
(The statements of the worker Joseph Gawele and Lance Sergeant Anton Koen, the first policeman on the scene, can be found in the Notes.)
Later Jaivanti Bhana, a forensic analyst, tested the blood sample taken from Charles and found that his blood alcohol level had been 0,21 g per 100 ml. It proved that he had indeed drunk considerably more than the two small glasses of vodka that Danie had mentioned in his statement.
Mystery
Charles was buried in the Benoni East cemetery on 26 June 1991, five days after the shooting. At the graveside, Charlize cried bitterly. A simple gravestone was erected with his name and the dates of his birth and death inscribed on the granite headstone as well as the words “Husband, father and son”, and a Bible verse without text reference: “Truly I say to you, if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, Be moved from this place to that; and it will be moved.”
These words are certainly applicable
