While people gathered to pay their final respects to Daan and Erka Rousseau, the man charged with their murder appeared in court.
|||Cape Town - While friends and family gathered to pay their final respects to Daan and Erka Rousseau at a funeral service held in Wellington on Monday, the man charged with murdering the couple appeared in court.
The elderly couple were found murdered in their home in Wellington last Wednesday around 8pm, after their oldest son Pierre - who was unsuccessfully trying to get hold of them - asked police to check their house.
Police spokesman Colonel Tembinkosi Kinana said the couple’s bodies were found in their bedroom, with their hands tied behind their backs and plastic bags over their heads.
Police suspected they had been strangled and suffocated.
The Rousseaus, Daan, 71, and Erka, 70, were living out a peaceful retirement in the rural town. They owned a house in an upmarket area on Charon Street.
Erka was a deacon with the local church, and kept herself busy with charity drives and church services.
Warrant Officer Andre Traut said that on Thursday, police arrested Zuko Tisana, 39, after he was found with a cellphone stolen from the couple’s home.
Tisana was charged with murder. He appeared in the Paarl Magistrate’s Court on Monday, but the case was postponed until May 24 for a bail application. Traut said the man was in custody.
Another son, Siegfried, said it was assuring to see that police were taking the case seriously.
“You always hear about the killers getting away but this doesn’t seem to be the case this time.”
Siegfried, who was on his way back from his parents’ funeral, told the Cape Argus on Monday that while he was buoyed by the arrest, there was still much more that needed to be done. “We just have to hope that everybody involved with the case does their bit.”
But he emphasised there could never really be justice.
“Whatever happens, (the killers) still have their lives - something they took from my parents.”
kieran.legg@inl.co.za
Cape Argus