Brutal Murder! These guys killed couple and drowned son, aged 12. Read More!

Twisted: From left, Sipho Mbele, David Motaung and Patrick Petrus Radebe smiled in court as they admitted to their sick crimes

Even in a country that sees 44 murders a day, the case has left the public horrified.
A gang of robbers gunned down a father, raped and murdered his wife. 


Then, in a final act of sickening brutality, they drowned the couple’s 12-year-old son in scalding bath water. Amaro Viana was murdered to prevent him from identifying the three housebreakers who carried out the raid in suburban South Africa.

The gang included the family’s gardener and the son of a domestic servant.
It was claimed they were motivated by the way they had been treated by the Viana family.

Appearing in court yesterday, the gardener Patrick Radebe, 24, confessed to being part of the gang which broke into their home in October last year. Vereeniging Regional Court heard that, after gaining access to the house in Walkerville, a suburb of Johannesburg, the gang lay in wait for Amaro’s engineer father Tony, 53, to arrive home.

When he walked through the front door, they attacked him with golf clubs and a machete-like knife known as a panga before tying him up and ordering him to tell them how to open the family safe.

Torn apart: Amaro with his mother Geraldine and father Tony, who were shot to death by the robbers, along with Gabriela Correia, Mr Viana's daughter by his first marriage

Sick attack: Amaro, pictured with half-sister Gabriela, was tied up and gagged before being scalded to death

When Mr Viana’s wife Geraldine, 43, and her son returned to the property, they too fell victim. Mother and son were tied up in separate rooms.

Two of the men then raped Mrs Viana before both she and her husband were shot dead. According to their court confession, Radebe and his co-accused Sipho Mbele, 21, realised that the couple’s son, if left alive, may be able to identify them to police.

‘We went to the bathroom and turned on the tap,’ the pair’s statement read, ‘We gagged him because he was crying. We forced him into the bath face down, knowing that he would drown.’

The Viana’s family dog was also killed when its stomach was slit open with a knife.
Thankfully Mr Viana’s daughter from his first marriage, Gabriela, was not at her father’s home when the robbers struck. 

According to one report they were led back to their cells smiling after being in court.


Despite a recent improvement in crime statistics, South Africa remains one of the most dangerous countries in the world.