IT'S STILL A MYSTERY

Four months later there are no answers as to why Amanzimtoti pastor Liezel de Jager was murdered

- JOHANÉ SCOTT

THE rectory in a quiet suburban street in Amanzimtoti seems peaceful, as if its occupants have simply left on an errand and will be back any minute. The garden is neat and there are curtains hanging at the windows.

But it’s been just over four months since a family lived in this house – four months since someone murdered Dutch Reformed minister Liezel de Jager on this very property.

The young mother will never again leave the house by the back door at the crack of dawn for her daily jog and her two daughters aren’t seen riding their bikes in the street anymore.

Only her husband, Werner, is spotted at the house every day, even though he too no longer lives here and is staying with friends nearby.

A neighbour, who wants to remain anonymous, says it’s the same scene every time. Werner arrives in his murdered wife’s white Honda and parks in the driveway – just as Liezel did after her run on the morning of her death.

He walks past the spot where her body was found and goes into the house. After a few minutes he comes back out and drives away.

Werner always greets her when he sees her, the neighbour says, but she doesn’t know what to say to him. She’s afraid to ask too many questions, afraid to say anything at all because there’s still so much mystery surrounding his wife’s murder.

Werner is skinnier than before his dramatic disappearance, the neighbour adds. Shortly after his wife’s murder he went missing for four days and was eventually found in his car in a sugar plantation, injured and incoherent, after his family reported him missing.