All Jan Bijkersma and his sister Hiltje wanted to do was hug and kiss their parents when they returned from holiday.
An excited Hiltje rushed to the front door, and a broken window was the first sign that something was horribly wrong.
"The curtain was slightly opened. I went towards the curtain and pulled it. I saw my father's legs lying on the ground and I then took two steps backwards."
This was how Jan and Hiltje discovered their murdered parents when they returned to their Florida North home on May 2 last year after holidaying at Sabie in Mpumalanga.
'My parents allowed him to stay until he got a new job' On Monday, the siblings testified in the Johannesburg High Court against their former gardener and chauffeur, Stephanus Modise, who has pleaded not guilty to murdering Douwe and Johanna Bijkersma, both 57, and Gelske Afke Wounda, 40, and attempting to murder Johanna Baecidina Durieux, 80.
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"I then went back to pull the curtain again and I then saw my father lying on the floor with his head covered in blood. Jan was behind me. I told him not to go inside the house, but he insisted on doing so," Hiltje testified.
Jan testified that he "saw my mother's caregiver (Wounda) sitting dead on the sofa with her eyes and mouth wide open - I immediately knew the same thing had happened to my wheelchair-bound mother", Jan said.
"I saw my mother in her electric chair. I did not want to look at her. It was a horrific scene," he said.
The sibling's grandmother, Durieux, was stabbed in the neck but survived. Durieux died in July at a frail-care centre.
While Jan was in the living room, his grandmother called out to him.
"In Dutch, she said 'We've been attacked by a man carrying a long knife', before laying her face down on the floor," Jan testified. He then called the emergency services.
When asked about their family's relationship with Modise, both siblings testified it was good when he started working for them in October 2004.
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