The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) is conducting ballistic tests on confiscated firearms belonging to the French fugitives shot in the Karoo last week and on the weapons used by police officers involved in the operation.
The couple, both wanted for the murder of student police officer Jacob Boleme, had been on the run from police for a week.
Tiyani Sambo, the national spokesman for the ICD, said the police were trying to ascertain whether the couple were shot by police or whether there was any merit in media suggestions, and in Sutherland, that Phillipe Menière and his partner, Agnes Jardel, committed suicide.
The reclusive couple lived frugally and owned two bicycles and an old Toyota Corolla, which had broken down, according to the police. They closed their bank accounts, withdrawing their last R8 500, which was found in a safe in the Sutherland farmhouse where they had lived for the past decade.
This corresponds with a will drawn up for the couple, who were not married, by Johannesburg lawyer Peter Caldwell in 1995.
“They came to me to draw up the will and, although I can’t go into details, there was nothing much more than that,” he said. “They were very pleasant people and he said he was working at the Johannesburg General Hospital. They were about to move to the Cape.”
Investigation
Tiyani said the ICD investigated most cases in which a police officer was shot and the alleged culprits died. “We sent three people to Sutherland to investigate. We were looking at the circumstances surrounding the shooting of the couple,” said Sambo. “We’re looking at the police action and whether it was justified.”
Postmortems were carried out in Kimberley on Tuesday and the ICD is awaiting the results.
A police manhunt was conducted for Menière (60) and Jardel (55), who were accused of shooting and killing Boleme and shooting and injuring Warrant Officer Glenwall du Toit. The pair were helping to evict them from a farmhouse on the Hardie farm, where they had been living rent free.
Police spokesperson Lieutenant Colonel Hendrik Swart said the farm owner, Gerhardus du Plessis, had complained to police that he had found unlicenced firearms in their possession and the couple had become reclusive.
Medical supplies, emergency packs and survival guides were found in the farmhouse of the couple, who appeared to be members of the United States-based Ramtha School of Enlightenment (RSE).
Swart said it was believed the couple had run off into the veld but had moved back to the empty house on Du Plessis’s farm four or five days later, where they died.
McIntosh Polela, the Hawks spokesperson, said the couple were to have been given a pauper’s burial, but the offer of a Stellenbosch farmer to pay for their funeral would be considered.
Polela said the French embassy did not want to take responsibility for burying the couple and it was not expected that family members from France would attend.
“You must understand that the couple had been isolated for years from society and from their own families. Jardel’s brother gave the French embassy his permission for her to be buried in South Africa, while Menière appears to have no living family.”
Polela said that staff from the French embassy had formally identified their bodies.
“The couple went to the embassy in 2005 to renew their French passports and had got to know some people there,” he said.
The RSE said in a statement that the organisation had no contact with the couple since they had attended a seminar in Johannesburg in January 2004.