One of South Africa’s most wanted men, Gerhardus Jansen van Vuuren, 39, who allegedly stalked, punched and stabbed his ex-girlfriend to death in front of neighbours and security guards in her gated estate, was rearrested in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, on Thursday.
Andrea Venter, a Johannesburg accountant, had left her home town of Rustenburg to flee the increasingly hostile advances of Jansen van Vuuren, after applying for a protection order against him in 2007.
But Jansen van Vuuren found her address and, in May 2011, was allegedly waiting for Venter at her Fourways complex. She was punched in the face with a knuckle-duster and stabbed 14 times with a pocket knife. She died at the scene.
Jansen van Vuuren then tried to slash his throat in a failed suicide bid.
On Friday, Venter’s father, Dries, Venter, said: “We are now finally going to court.
“It was a tragic thing that happened.
“We are now expecting him back in the country. Interpol will bring him back and then we are going to court. He needs to get the sentence he deserves.
“He was very aggressive to all of us. He abused us all, all the way to my daughter losing her life,” he said, referring to Venter as his “meisiekind”.
In 2011, Jansen van Vuuren was twice denied bail as a flight risk. But the IT technician was released on R15000 bail by Judge Fritz van Oosten, and vanished soon afterwards. The last time he signed in to comply with his bail conditions was on May 15, 2013.
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In August 2013, Interpol found Jansen van Vuuren in Brazil.
The National Prosecuting Authority confirmed he had been arrested and fingerprint tested and that an extradition process would begin soon.
Jansen van Vuuren fled to Brazil on a false passport under the name Daniel Joseph Mouton and was arrested by Brazilian police – who discovered that he was on an Interpol red notice.
After serving two years of his four-year, four-month jail sentence for passport fraud, Jansen van Vuuren was inexplicably released in the middle of 2016, and had not been seen again, until his arrest this week.
SAPS spokesperson Brigadier Vish Naidoo confirmed that Jansen van Vuuren had been arrested by Brazilian Federal Police in Rio on Thursday.
For Venter’s parents, Dries and Anntjie, the disappearance of their daughter’s alleged killer left them fearing for their lives.
Earlier, Dries told eNCA that when Jansen van Vuuren was dating his daughter, the young man had often threatened to kill him and his wife if she left him.
Venter was Rustenburg’s first test-tube baby, a miracle that her parents had waited 13 years for. She was 25 years old when she was beaten and stabbed to death.
All her parents want is justice for their daughter, whose life was turned into a living hell by the man now accused of her murder.
The Independent on Saturday
