WHY DID HE KILL OUR BOYS?

She came home to find a chilling letter from her partner saying she would never forget that day - then she discovered her two young sons smothered to death, and their father was later found hanging from a tree

- ISABEL VENTER

IT’S the long, dark nights she dreads the most. Sometimes she wakes in the pitch black and in the few seconds before harsh reality comes flooding back, she believes her baby boy is lying beside her, safe and warm under the covers.

But Ryan, her beautiful nine-month-old son, is gone forever. Her older son, Ruan (4), is dead too and she’ll never again hear his laughter or see him running full tilt through the house.

The rooms are silent, the boys’ toys packed away – a constant reminder of her aching loss.

Nikita Venter (26) sits on a couch in her parents’ home in Brakpan, Gauteng, a frail figure with red-rimmed eyes.

Nearby her father, Desmond, tries to offer comfort but he too is devastated.

“We’ve probably shed 20 litres of tears over the past three weeks,” he says. “We’re still trying to process what’s happened. How can a father kill his own children one after the other?”

Compounding Nikita’s grief is the fact that some people have accused her on social media of somehow being culpable and not doing enough to protect her boys.

“I read what people are saying and I get so angry,” she says.

Yet she can’t stifle the niggles of guilt. “We had a fight the Wednesday before it happened but how was I supposed to know he’d do what he did?”

Hansie Brandt (40), her partner and the father of her sons, is dead too – he hanged himself from a tree after killing the little boys.

“You can’t blame yourself,” Desmond tells his daughter. “What he did will forever be a mystery to us. The children are in heaven now. Children always go straight to heaven.”