Two men who stabbed an elderly woman and cut off her fingers to remove her rings in her apartment in Malmesbury near Cape Town were sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment on Thursday.
Cape High Court Judge Deon van Zyl in his ruling said the incident, which happened on Christmas Eve in 2004, turned a festive occasion into a grieving one for the woman’s family.
Collin Maarman (24) and Elton Joseph (19) were found guilty of the premeditated murder of Engela Groenewald, and of housebreaking and armed robbery.
The judge said minimum sentences, which included life for premeditated murder and 15 years for aggravated armed robbery, were introduced in an attempt to punish serious crimes severely.
Van Zyl ruled that the age of the two at the time of the murder, as well as the fact that they had already been in prison for a considerable time, justified a less severe sentence.
However, he had to consider whether the vicious and barbaric attack on a defenceless, elderly woman outweighed the mitigating factors.
He said at least 12 of the multiple stab wounds to her body had been fatal, and that the pathologist in the case had described the attack as ”overkill”.
Cutting the woman’s fingers off to remove her rings and tearing the lobes of her ears to remove her earrings were the ”height of loathsomeness”.
Although he did not consider life imprisonment appropriate in this case, long-term jail sentences were called for, the judge said.
On the housebreaking and armed robbery charges, Maarman was sentenced to 10 years and Josephs to 12 years, but these sentences are to run concurrently with the 18 years for murder. — Sapa