Discovering the bodies of his parents was so devastating that he was surprised to see the sun was still shining, the son of a Dutch immigrant couple said on Monday.
“I found them. It's so unreal. You are so paralysed you're even surprised that the sun is shining,” Wim van Den Bosch told the High Court in Pretoria.
He discovered the bodies of his father Johannes, 63, and mother Jacobi, 60, on their dairy farm at Mooiplaats, east of Pretoria, in April 2009.
Van den Bosch asked the court to punish his parents' killer Akona Innocent Gini as severely as possible.
“Law-abiding citizens want to be safe in this country,” he said.
He said his parents' death had a devastating effect on him, his 11 sisters and brothers and their 31 children.
“You go through stages. You have no appetite for life any more. You don't care what happens and you become reckless. I don't think there is anyone in the world who is born to go through something like this,” Van den Bosch said.
“My parents had a dairy farm that served their immediate community. The dairy closed the very same day after their death.”
Last month, Gini was convicted of murdering his former employers and robbing them of their cellphones and a bunch of keys.
The father was bludgeoned to death with an iron bar while tending to calves in the dairy. His wife died inside their home after being stabbed several times.
Gini had previously worked for the couple, but was fired six months before the incident after a burglary at the farm.
The couple's cellphone records led police to an address in Witbank, where they found the father's cellphone in possession of Gini's wife Violet.
Information supplied by Gini's wife led police to a squatter camp near Witbank, where Gini was arrested with the mother's cellphone still in his pocket.
The court heard that Gini had four previous convictions for housebreaking and theft, and had served a short prison sentence.
A social worker said in a report that Gini, who has three young children, still denied any complicity in the murders.
She said Gini obtained a matric certificate despite being raised in poverty by his grandmother, but his deprived circumstances led to him being detached from his emotions.
Counsel for Gini pleaded for mercy, arguing that Gini's juvenile criminal record had prevented him from getting a proper job.
Prosecutor Jennifer Cronje argued that Gini had planned the murder down to the last detail and had committed it not because of hunger, but out of pure revenge.
Judge Cynthia Pretorius postponed the trial to Friday for sentencing. - Sapa