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SATANISM IN SUBURBIA: Children peer at the Krugersdorp house where Jacques Scheepers killed his father, brother and a policeman this weekPicture: JON HRUSA
Schizophrenic satanist scatters his dead father's brains around their house after murderous shooting spree
by: ELIAS MALULEKE
ON WEDNESDAY at about 4.30pm, Jacques Scheepers, 23, gave the family's gardener, Moses Messelar, R80 to buy two battery-powered torches, two packets of candles and matches.
Messelar said Scheepers - who later that day shot dead his father and brother, and killed a policeman the next day - was very agitated.
"He said we would need the torches during the night when we patrolled the yard to keep evil people away."
Scheepers then placed sand-filled tins on the porch and placed burning candles around them, and at the main gate of the house.
His father, Francois, 43, a retired magistrate and a Jehovah's Witness, told his son to stop taking kitchen appliances out of the house in Sarel Oosthuizen Street in Monument, Krugersdorp, Messelar said.
Jacques Scheepers then started arguing with his father and told his youngest brother, Francois, 14, to leave the house. He then grabbed his father's hunting rifles and 9mm pistols from a safe and threatened to shoot him.
Jacques Scheepers phoned his brother, Charl, a police inspector, who lived in the quiet West Rand town with his family.
Inspector Scheepers arrived at the house shortly after 7.30pm, accompanied by their stepfather, Jan Wheeler.
Charl Scheepers pleaded with his brother to let them inside, but he refused and threatened to shoot them if they came any closer.
"Go away, I am tired of all this, the time has come to end it all," he shouted.
Charl Scheepers ignored the warning and walked toward the kitchen door. Police said he was shot in the chest at close range when he approached the door. He managed to stagger away from the house and was rushed to hospital where he later died.
Scheepers then shot at his stepfather. The bullet hit a wall and the shrapnel hit Wheeler in the face. Wheeler bolted out of the yard.
The head of the Krugersdorp detective unit, Director Eugene Smit, said it appeared Scheepers shot his father in the head at close range with a heavy calibre hunting rifle in the kitchen, before dragging his body into the lounge.
He then scooped out his father's brains and threw some of them out of a bedroom window. He also removed some of the skull and put it on a Bible in the bedroom.
Then he lit candles in a circle around his father's body, switched off the house lights and locked himself in a toilet, while police reinforcements waited outside.
At about 11am on Thursday, Smit gave orders for police to storm the house. Scheepers shot dead Captain Stoffel van Niekerk of the Krugersdorp public order policing unit, before he was shot dead in the toilet by police.
Smit said Scheepers's mother, Hannah, who is married to Jan Wheeler and lives in Randfontein, had supplied police with a letter from a doctor which classified her son as a schizophrenic.
Senior Superintendent Kobus Jonker, head of the occult-related crime investigation unit in Pretoria, said he was called in to investigate whether satanist practices lay behind the murders.
He said he had found many occult-related sketches, poems and bottles filled with what appeared to be muti and human flesh in a basement in the house.
"The sketches and poems were written by Jacques and it was evident he had stored the bottles in the basement," Jonker said.
He said he had found bits of brain all over the house and in Scheepers's bedroom.
There were Bibles scattered all over the house, all opened at the Book of Revelations, which includes verses such as: "When the thousand years are over, Satan will be let loose from his dungeon . . . " and "The beast was allowed to mouth bombast and blasphemy, and was given the right to reign . . . All on earth will worship it."
Jonker said: "Hair was also placed on the open Bibles.
"We also removed a bottle full of mouse tails and other bottles filled with all kinds of substances in his room."
He said it would take about three weeks for forensic tests to determine if there was human flesh and body parts in the substances.
Jonker said police had also confiscated a large quantity of CDs containing heavy metal music.
Messelar and the six other black backyard lodgers at the house said Scheepers senior led a bizarre life.
By day he was a respected and caring man who read the Bible. But at night he let his son dabble in magic using muti, dark clothes, herbs, daggers and candles.
The lodgers said they had been invited to join in the occult ceremonies, but had declined.
Jacques Scheepers claimed he was a prophet, they said, but he was "a crank", who changed his attitude like the weather.
"One moment he would be a sweet person and generous, the next he would turn violent," said Messelar.
He and the other lodgers claimed that during his bad spells, Jacques Scheepers would throw tantrums and break things, and only his elder brother, Charl, could calm him down. "He could not be touched by anyone if he was angry, except Charl," Messelar said.
Scheepers's mother, Hannah declined to comment on the murders.
Police are investigating and have opened four inquest dockets.
Children who kill their parents
by Cornia Pretorius
JACQUES SCHEEPERS joins a long list of children suspected or found guilty of killing their parents.
On Tuesday Jonathan De Silla, 25, was arrested for allegedly shooting his millionaire parents;
In 1992 Xerxes Nursingh, then 19, pumped 10 bullets into his mother and grandparents in Durban;
In 1994 David Heritage, 24, shot and hacked his adoptive parents to death while they were sleeping in their home in Bryanston, Johannesburg;
Kip Kinkel, 15, appeared in court in Oregan, in the US, again this week, charged with the murder of his parents and two school pupils,
Lyle and Erik Menendez are serving life in prison for the conspiracy and shotgun murder of their wealthy Beverly Hills parents in 1989. Lyle was then 21 and Erik 18.
Experts say there are no clear-cut reasons why children kill their parents.
why do certain children murder their parents, while millions of children who experience similar difficulties don't resort to killing?"
She said killers often thought they could get away with it because of South Africa's high crime rate.
of South Africa's national detective service, said it was impossible to profile a child murderer because every case differed.
Claire Alderton, a clinical psychologist at the trauma clinic at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, agreed that the triggers for murder varied, but they include incest; emotional and sexual abuse; mental illness linked to involvement in activities like Satanism, where a parent could be viewed as evil; and psychopathic tendencies, where children just don't have a conscience.
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EDITORS NOTE:
Did anyone believe Jehovah's Witnesses didn't carry guns????
Edited by - Simon on 14 June 2002 7:58:33