The blanket-wrapped bodies of two men and a woman were found in a house in the upmarket suburb of Doornpoort, near Pretoria on Monday, police said.
Inspector Percy Morokane said the men, aged 29 and 33, and the woman in her late 20s, had been dead for some 24 hours. The owner of the double storey house in Adamsvy Street is a 33-year-old research professor at the Pretoria Technikon. Police late on Monday that professor William Papo was one of the victims. Morokane said there was a power failure at the house on Sunday night which had been attended to by a security company who said their guards found nothing amiss.
The professor did not report for work on Monday morning and the security company was sent again to the house by a female relative of the professor. This time they found the three bodies in different rooms on the ground floor.
Morokane said police would conduct post mortem examinations to discover the actual cause of death but it was obvious the three had been murdered.
Morokane said: ”The smell of death hangs over the house and even the area commissioner told me it was the most horrendous killing he had seen in seven years in the service.”
The professor’s female relative has confirmed that a quantity of electrical equipment was missing from the house and two vehicles, a bakkie and a luxury BMW were missing from the garage. One of the vehicles had since been found abandoned in Kempton Park on the North Rand, Morokane said. – Sapa