End Of A Family Idyll

They seemed the perfect couple – now she’s dead, he’s in the dock and neighbours are talking of strife and sex addiction

- Joanie Bergh

THE scene behind the high walls topped with rows of electric wire tells of a once comfortable family existence: a lawn – battling in the drought but still green in places – a sparkling swimming pool, a deep veranda, a cluster of garden furniture for summer entertaining.

Yet all semblance of serenity at this home on Riesling Street in Constantia, Cape Town, has now been shattered.

The mom is dead, her husband of 30 years has been arrested and their two daughters are traumatised. Allegations of sex addiction have been levelled against him and friends have told of problems in the marriage.

It’s hard for some people who knew them to fathom. “No, I don’t believe it at all,” one friend says.

Just two days before Gill Packham (55) went missing on Thursday 22 February, she and her husband, Rob (57), were seen strolling hand in hand down the leafy street. “They looked so happy,” a neighbour says.

The first sign that something was wrong was when the couple’s younger daughter, Nicola (25), who lives in Johannesburg, posted on Facebook that her mother was missing.

She’d been trying to reach her mom all day and asked if anyone had seen her.

By 6pm Nicole reported Gill missing to the police. She told them her mom had last been seen at about 7am leaving the family home on her way to Springfield Convent School in Wynberg, where she was the administrative officer. 

But Gill never arrived at work. 

Rob ran a neighbourhood WhatsApp group so the community could keep in touch about safety matters and other issues.

“On the day of Gill’s disappearance we didn’t hear anything from Rob,” another resident says.

“There was no message that said, ‘My wife’s missing, has someone in the street seen her?’ ”