#WomensMonth: 8 of SA's most notorious female murderers

Convicted criminals Najwa Dirk and Dina Rodrigues are serving their time at Breede River's women's prison.

Convicted criminals Najwa Dirk and Dina Rodrigues are serving their time at Breede River's women's prison.

Published Aug 18, 2017

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We are celebrating Women's Month, and that means celebrating the good and remembering the bad. 

While South Africa has its fair share of women who have led exemplary lives, we also have a number of women who stand out because of the sheer horror of the crimes they committed. The list below has not been published in any particular order, since no murder can be deemed 

1. Joey Haarhoff

Joey Haarhoff is believed to have actively participated in the kidnap, sexual assault and probable murder of at least eight girls, aged between 8 and 16 years old. Picture: Independent Media Archives

The accomplice and lover of paedophile Gert van Rooyen, Joey Haarhoff played an active role in the kidnap, sexual assault and probable murder of at least eight girls across South Africa. Haarhoff and van Rooyen were never convicted for any of their crimes, despite a mountain of evidence against them. When one of their victims escaped in 1990, van Rooyen killed Joey before comitting suicide. The bodies of their victims have yet to be found.

2. Daisy de Melker

Cold-hearted killer Daisy de Melker poisoned her own son. Picture: Independent Media Archives

Born on June 01, 1886, Daisy Louisa C. De Melker was a trained nurse from Germiston who poisoned two husbands with strychnine for their life insurance, and poisoned her only son with arsenic. While it was widely known that she had committed all three murders, Daisy was only convicted for the murder of her son. She is the second woman to have been hanged in South Africa.

3. Sandra Smith

In 1989, Sandra Smith became the last woman to be executed in South Africa.

The last woman to be hanged in South Africa, 22-year-old Sandra Smith and her boyfriend Yassiem Harris murdered Mitchells Plain schoolgirl Jermaine Abrahams on September 1st, 1986, when they broke into the Abrahams home. Smith, a married woman with two children, is believed to have been the one who committed the vicious murder depite Harris claiming responsibility. After demanding her mother's jewellery from the terrified 16-year-old, the pair savagely attacked her, and Jermaine was stabbed repeatedly. The dying teenager begged for mercy and asked her attackers for water, but instead they stuffed a dishtowel in her mouth and slit her throat.

4. Dina Rodrigues

Dina Rodrigues pictured on the final day of her trial in the Cape Town High Court for the murder of baby Jordan Leigh Norton.File picture: Andrew Ingram

Jailed for life for masterminding the shocking murder of six-month-old Baby Jordan in 2005, Dina Rodrigues is probably South Africa's best known female killer. Jealous of Jordan Leigh Norton, the baby that her boyfriend Neil Wilson had with his previous girlfriend, Dina hired hitmen to kill the infant in a staged house robbery. She paid Sipho Mfazwe, Mongezi Bobotyane, Zanethemba Gwada and Bonginkosi Sigenu a pittance to carry out the murder that catipulted her into the headlines for more than two years.

5. Lindi Mangaliso

The wife of wealthy Cape Flats businessman Victor, Lindi paid two hitmen to kill her husband on December 16, 1984. The reason for the crime? According to family members Victor was an abusive husband. And his R500 000 life insurance policy surely seemed like a nest egg to start a new life with. Shockingly, the murderous nurse was only prepared to fork over R500 and R800 to the two men who stabbed her husband to death.

6. Marlene Lehnberg

Nineteen-year-old Marlene Lehnberg and her accomplice Marthinus Choegoe stabbed 46-year-old Susanna van der Linde to death at her home in Boston, Bellville. So why did Marlene stab the mother-of-three to death with a scissors? Well, she had fallen in love with Susanna's 47-year-old husband Christiaan, who was nearly two decades Marlene's senior when the pair worked together at Red Cross Children's Hospital. 

7. Najwa Petersen

Najwa Petersen is serving 28 years in jail for her role in the murder of her husband, Taliep. File picture: Leon Muller

The second wife of legendary Cape Town musician Taliep Petersen, Najwa hired Abdoer Emjedi, Waheed Hassien and Jefferson Snyders to stage a home invasion in which they fatally wounded him. The trial, which garnered international attention because of her husband's fame, lasted three years. She was jailed for 28 years.

8. Thandi Maqubela

Thandi Maqubela was convicted and sentenced to 18 years imprisonment for the murder of her husband, acting judge Patrick Maqubela. File picture: Brenton Geach

Thandi was convicted of killing her husband, despite the fact that an official cause of death was never proffered. The state contends that Maqubela used a piece of cling film to suffocate her husband in his bed. The acting high court judge was found dead in his Bantry Bay, Cape Town, flat in 2009 just days after reportedly telling then Justice Minister Jeff Radebe that he planned to divorce his wife.

* Sources: SA History and Independent Media archives

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