I Never Want To See Him Again

Ina Bonnette speaks of her shock after her attacker emailed her from jail asking for a meeting.

- Jana Van Der Merwe

IT HAD consumed her for the better part of five years but she believed she’d finally come to terms with it.

The brutal rape and depraved attack she’d endured at the hands of the so-called Modimolle Monster – and her son’s murder – were in the past and she was well on the road towards recovery. Or so she thought, until something happened to bring the horror rushing back for Ina Bonnette.

The 48-year-old financial adviser had just arrived at her office in Modimolle, Limpopo, after visiting clients in nearby Bela-Bela when she got a phone call from a social worker at Zonderwater prison in Cullinan, northeast of Pretoria – the jail where her ex-husband Johan Kotzé is serving a life sentence for murder, rape, assault and kidnapping.

When the call ended the harrowing events of that day hit her like a cannon ball. On her computer screen was an email from Kotzé (56) himself.

“Ina, I’m grateful for the opportunity to write a letter to you with an invitation to speak with me so I can apologise . . .”

This was the first she’d heard from her tormentor since 3 January 2012 – the day he tortured, violated and mutilated her. The day he paid three masked men to rape her and the day he shot her son, Conrad (19), in another room of his rental house where he’d had her tied to a bed.

“I had to read he was extending a hand of friendship – the same hand that had mutilated my body and pulled the trigger, murdering my son,” Ina tells us.

“It was all just ‘I, I, I’ . . . ‘I’m reaching out to you . . .’ ‘I want to . . .’ ‘I . . .’ ”

It’s three weeks since she received the email containing Kotzé’s letter and Ina is braaiing boerewors for us at a nearby nature reserve.