By Jo Steele and Johan Schronen
A University of Cape Town staff member and well-known animal charity worker was found murdered in her Diep River cottage early on Tuesday.
Beryl Lamberth, 55, was found on the floor of the lounge of her home in Riverside Terrace, Trent Road, by her son-in-law at 2am. Her throat had been slit.
Lamberth's daughter, who lives in Kommetjie, had tried in vain to contact her by telephone on Monday night and had later sent her husband to check on her mother.
When he arrived at the house he found a chair jamming the dog flap in the back door keeping her two bull terriers in the back garden.
Lamberth, a commerce IT administrator at UCT, lived alone.
A radio was on in the lounge and a fan, on the floor next to a large dog basket, was circulating air in a room where a wall had been freshly painted.
Police investigators established that Lamberth's handbag and her new silver Toyota Tazz were missing. Sound equipment and electronic household goods were untouched and the house had not been ransacked.
Lamberth was last seen alive on Sunday, but her rubbish bin had been put outside in front of her cottage at dawn on Monday.
- Steve Tladi, a former UCT PhD student who has been accused of murdering maths professor Brian Hahn last year, was due to appear in the Wynberg magistrate's court on Tuesday.