Cape Town - A young woman dubbed the Lakeside Butcher after she dismembered an elderly woman “has been thinking about killing someone” since she was 13 years old.
“She always said she knew one day she would kill someone,” clinical psychologist, Dr Willem Hanekom, testified at the Western Cape High Court yesterday.
Sheree Prins, 22, from Citrusdal, also told the psychologist she had killed Sandra Malcolm, 74, because she wanted to live in her house in Capri Mews, Lakeside.
It also emerged that she faced charges of indecent sexual assault and attempted robbery at age 13.
In March, Prins was found guilty of murder, housebreaking with the intent to steal and theft, and housebreaking with the intent to commit an offence unknown to the State.
She broke into Sandra’s home in April 2015.
VICTIM: Sandra Malcolm
Sandra caught her, but felt sorry for her and fed her tea and toast after Prins pleaded for help with a burnt foot.
Prins told the court she feared the pensioner would call the police, and stabbed her 24 times, before beheading, dismembering and disembowelling the elderly woman in her own yard.
“It was a battle to get proper information, (but) the accuracy of my report is 80 to 90 percent,” Hanekom told the court.
“I got different versions from the accused and her community. It seems residents were defending her.”
He recommended imprisonment for Prins, saying: “The risk of violence is high. The murder was callous and she has strong traits of psychopathy, but also shows traits of an anti-social personality disorder. Her callousness and lack of empathy, in this case, saw (her violent nature) developing from the age of 13.”
He said Prins had “low levels of self-control”, was temperamental and never thought of consequences.
“While walking in Muizenberg she told herself ‘if anyone gets in my way, I will kill them’. That was her self-talk on the night of the murder. The long-awaited violent ideation was there. She found a vulnerable person and decided to kill them,” Hanekom testified.
“The reason for her dismembering the body was to get rid of it and have the house. For now and forever, she said.”
He said one out of every 500 bodies on a pathologist’s table would be dismembered.
Offenders would usually be over the age of 30 and less than 2 percent are female.
Eighty-two percent would dismember a body just to get rid of it.
“She showed no remorse. What she did say was the victim must have felt pain, but she (Sandra) had lived her life and she was old. My opinion is Prins overkilled and the dismembering of the body showed so much rage,” he said.
Prins, dressed in a purple tracksuit, black socks and blue slippers sat expressionlessly but listened attentively as the testimony was interpreted to her in Afrikaans.
Hanekom said the convicted killer also had a history of offences as a teen, including indecent sexual assault.
“A child of eight years old sat on her lap and she started touching him and had sexual feelings,” Hanekom testified.
Asked what Prins’ sentence should be, he said: “It has to be imprisonment. In prison, she will not be a risk.”
The case continues.