Durban - Nicolette Lotter is a slip of a woman, pixie-like. She has a pretty smile and eyes that sparkle. Her voice is warm and lilting. It fits her appearance. And like her appearance, it belies the brutality of her crime.
On July 20, 2008, believing it to be “God’s will”, Nicolette stabbed her mother, Riekie, to death on the kitchen floor of their Westville home.
Read: Lotter siblings coping in prison
Then her brother, Hardus, strangled their father, Johan, as he slept.
The pair fingered Nicolette’s then boyfriend and the self-proclaimed third son of God, Mathew Naidoo, as the “mastermind” .
A lengthy trial ensued and on March 19, 2012, Nicolette was sentenced to an effective 12 years in prison. Hardus was sentenced to 10 and Naidoo, life.
Four years later, Nicolette sits down with the Daily News, for her first face-to-face interview, post-sentencing.
Throughout her trial, photographs of Nicolette with bright blonde curls falling down her back, were plastered across the press. Now her hair is a more natural shade, sleeker and cropped just beneath her ears. But this aside, she looks exactly the same.
“Are you nervous?” she asks, “I am.” She hands over three foolscap pages.
Earlier this week, she received a list of the questions we wanted to ask her and prepared written answers.
“I didn’t want to get thrown off and become overly emotional,” she explains.
We chat.
“I’m doing okay,” she says, “I’m just trying my hardest to make the best out of something really, really horrible.”
Nicolette is now 33 but there is something that teeters on child-like about her.
She dreams of the white picket fence. “I would love to have my own family one day. I also want to do good in my life... make a positive contribution to society before I die,” she says.
But what of the family she did have?
She misses it, she says.
“I miss having a family and belonging to a family. I miss my parents and our pets. I miss going fishing with my dad and I miss my mom’s baking and cooking. I used to visit my brother when he was still at Westville’s Men’s prison... Since he’s been drafted to Sevontein, I write to him, but it’s not the same... I miss my friends and family who used to be in my life before what happened.”
The hardest part, Nicolette says, is that she cannot go back in time “and undo what is done”.
“I wish I could tell my parents I love them and thank you for everything they ever did for me. I do pray and ask Jesus to tell them all that is on my heart and I try remember all they taught me... God gives me hope that I’ll see (them) again in Heaven,” she says.
She flips through certificates from courses she has completed in prison. There is one from an anger management course, one from a “Transformed Person” course and one from a “Drama and Performance Studies” course.
There are more, many of which relate to biblical studies, and Nicolette is also midway through a Bachelor of Theology degree.
She makes mention of God almost every time she answers a question.
“I have learnt a lot in prison, especially about (His) love, mercy and forgiveness,” she says.
Of prison, Nicolette says: “It gets very lonely... even though it is overcrowded.”
“Westville Females is very strict... It’s a relief in terms of safety but there is not much unity among inmates. I try and mind my own business and stay as busy as possible,” she says.
Her days consist of waking between 4am and 5am and reporting for morning parade and breakfast.
After, she heads to the communal shower and then to the workshop or the Unisa hub.
Then, Nicolette, a talented musician, gives guitar lessons to the other offenders and some of the staff.
“One of the women I’m teaching can play on her own now,” she beams.
“At first I was still very gullible, trusting and naive... Being in prison has taught me to become more streetwise and to be good to everyone, but to trust no-one.”
That said, she has forged relationships in prison that she hopes to maintain when she one day leaves.
“You meet a woman here and she is so motherly and nurturing and then you find out she murdered her husband and you just can’t believe it,” she says.
At the front of the prison, there is a big metal gate.
After we say goodbye, Nicolette stands there for some time. She smiles, her gaze shifting from the floor outwards and back again.
She looks so small and vulnerable.
And you cannot help but think, as she has of her fellow offenders: how could someone like this have done something like that?
Daily News