Viana Amaro

Age 12 Years. The Viana family murders took place on October 1, 2011, at their smallholding estate in Walkerville, a semi-rural area south of Johannesburg. The case profoundly shocked South Africa and gained widespread international attention due to the extreme and gratuitous torture inflicted on a young child by individuals the family trusted. The attack wiped out three members of the family: 53-year-old engineer Tony Viana, his 43-year-old wife Geraldine Viana, and their 12-year-old son Amaro Jose Viana, who was a Grade 7 student. The couple’s teenage daughter, Gabriela, survived the tragedy purely because she was not at home when the killers struck.The perpetrators orchestrated a targeted home invasion, breaking into the property and lying in wait for the family to arrive. Tony Viana was the first to arrive home, where the attackers blindsided him and brutally assaulted him with golf clubs and a machete. They tied him up on the lounge floor and forced him to open the family safe. When Geraldine and 12-year-old Amaro returned shortly after, they were immediately ambushed, bound, and separated into different rooms. Two of the attackers brutally raped Geraldine in the main bedroom before shooting her dead with her husband’s own firearm. The killers then returned to the lounge and executed Tony with a single gunshot to the head, and they also slit open the stomach of the family's pet dog. The final and most infamous act of the crime involved young Amaro. Recognizing that the boy knew exactly who they were, the killers gagged him to stifle his cries, dragged him to the bathroom, and drowned him face-down in a bathtub filled with scalding, boiling water.The investigation quickly revealed a severe betrayal of trust, as the attackers were intimately familiar with the household. The perpetrators were Patrick Petrus Radebe, who was the Viana family's own gardener, Sipho Mbele, who was the son of the family's domestic worker, and an accomplice named Sphiwe David Motaung. In July 2012, during their appearance at the Vereeniging Magistrate's Court, Patrick Radebe and Sipho Mbele pleaded guilty to three counts of murder and one count of rape, while Sphiwe Motaung initially pleaded guilty to house robbery charges. The defense claimed the group was motivated by a desire for revenge regarding how they felt they had been treated by their employer, using it as a justification for robbery. Media and court observers noted with widespread public outrage that the men openly joked, laughed, and smiled as they were led back to their holding cells following their guilty pleas. In September 2012, Radebe and Mbele were handed multiple life sentences for their roles in the executions, rapes, and the drowning of the child, ensuring they would serve decades behind bars.