Doomsday couple’s final stand

As the sun sets over the Karoo, staff of the Northen Cape forensic pathology services carry out the bodies of fugitive French couple Philippe Menieres and Agnes Jardel from the farmhouse where they were killed in a police shootout. Photo: Michael Walker

As the sun sets over the Karoo, staff of the Northen Cape forensic pathology services carry out the bodies of fugitive French couple Philippe Menieres and Agnes Jardel from the farmhouse where they were killed in a police shootout. Photo: Michael Walker

Published Jan 21, 2011

Share

Sutherland: In the Karoo dusk on Thursday night, forensic pathologists carried out the bodies of a fugitive French couple, wanted for murder, who died in a police shootout at a vacant farmhouse only 400m from where they had lived.

Philippe Meniere, 60, and his partner Agnes Jardel, 55, died in a dramatic shootout about midday on Thursday.

But police left their bodies for several hours in the positions in which they had died until the bomb squad had ensured there were no explosives attached to them. They feared the couple might have booby-trapped themselves with explosives.

The mysterious French couple, who had dropped out of society and lived on a farm in Sutherland for about 12 years, were both wanted for the murder of student police officer Jacob Boleme, 27.

Earlier Northern Cape Police spokesman Colonel Hendrick Swartz had said: “The man is sitting in a certain position, like this (raising his arms as if he were holding a gun). It is possible, we don’t know, that the bodies may be booby-trapped, so they will not be moved yet, not until the explosive experts have been to the scene.”

Swartz would not be drawn on whether the couple had been killed by police in the shootout, or whether they had shot themselves.

With the couple police found several guns and a supply of ammunition.

Although they were eventually found in a vacant Karoo farmhouse outside Sutherland, only about 400m from the farmhouse where they had lived for nearly 12 years, police say it appears they had not holed up there for long.

“We found a resting place in the veld on Tuesday where we could see they had been, so they were not in that house then, they were in the veld,” Swartz said.

The “resting place” was on the 3000ha farm called Hardie, owned by Gerhardus du Plessis, where the couple had lived rent-free for 12 years, with permission from Du Plessis.

Police said trackers following footprints had led them to the resting place in the open veld. Because of the hard nature of the soil, and because of the windy days between their fleeing on Friday and police finding the resting place, they could not follow their tracks further.

Meniere and Jardel had been on the run since last Friday, after they had shot dead student police officer Boleme during an altercation outside their home concerning the possession of illegal firearms.

Swartz would not say late on Thursday that the bodies were definitely those of Meniere and Jardel, as they had not formally been identified.

“You must understand, we can’t now take Mr Du Plessis to the scene and say: ‘Identify these people’. It would be too traumatic for him.

“When they are at a mortuary, then most probably he will be asked to identify them there,” Swartz said.

The search for the French couple was one of the biggest the Northern Cape has seen with more than 70 police officers searching for them on foot and from the air for six days, combing the several thousand hectares on the farm where they had lived outside the Karoo town.

The couple were found on the farm on Thursday while all the assembled police top brass police were updating press at a briefing in the little town. A local police officer crept in during proceedings and whispered something to Colonel Tip Brink, provincial commander of operational services in the Northern Cape. He leapt up and ran out of the press conference.

There was roar of police vehicles as they tore down Sutherland main road in the direction of Du Plessis’s farm, followed by the press pack.

When the Cape Times neared the house, close to the road, several officers in ballistic vests with guns raised, were crouched near the house, others behind outhouses and sheds and others running.

Then gunshots shattered the quiet of the Karoo veld, with the loud “bhah, bhah, bhah” of rapid gunfire. Officers were yelling all at once. Their words were not clear, but it was the aggressive shouting from a bunch of police officers at once that one hears in movies.

There were more shots, and what sounded like a scream.

Then it was quiet.

A police helicopter thudded in the air and came in to land near the house, sending dust flying. Reporters stood on the dirt road craning to see what had happened, while armed police blocked the farm gate.

After a while unmarked police vehicles started moving out. Inside some of the officers wore a khaki net over their heads, and turned their faces from the cameras.

About an hour after the shootout Northern Cape police spokesman Colonel Hendrick Swartz, arrived. He stood at the farm gate and said: “There are two bodies in the house. A lot of shots were fired, there are a lot of bullet holes in the house.”

Asked if the French couple had been shot by police, had shot themselves or had been found dead, Swartz said he was not able to comment yet.

Asked how the police had eventually tracked the couple to the vacant farmhouse, so close to their own home and main farmhouse where police had set up operational headquarters, Swartz said: “They acted on information from the community, and they did observations by helicopter last night, doing observations using special equipment fitted to the helicopter.” - Cape Times

Related Topics: