Bester Sharon Lee

Age 52. On the evening of Saturday, October 28, 2017, a farm worker walked to the main house around half-past eight to complete his routine chore of feeding her dogs. Upon entering the residence, he discovered her lifeless body in her bed. Because there were no immediate, obvious signs of external physical trauma, it was initially suspected by those at the scene that she had suffered a fatal stroke. The horrifying reality of what had actually transpired was revealed days later on Wednesday, November 1, 2017, when a formal forensic autopsy confirmed that Sharon Lee Bester had been brutally murdered by strangulation. Armed with the post-mortem results, the South African Police Service launched a thorough investigation under the direction of station commander Captain Susan Botha. Detectives quickly established that her home had been broken into, and several personal items, including her laptop, a digital tablet, her cellular phone, and her white Land Rover, were missing from the property. The investigation led directly to Johannes Bangiso, a twenty-year-old farm employee who had grown up on Zout van die Aarde. He had targeted his employer on the night of Friday, October 27, 2017, breaching the house with the intent to burglarize it. During the encounter, he strangled her to death in her bed before ransacking the home. Following the murder, he stole her valuables and used her Land Rover to drive to Riversdale to pick up his girlfriend. Police arrested him after he was spotted driving the stolen vehicle and found him in possession of her stolen electronic devices. The legal proceedings culminated in September 2018 at the Mossel Bay Circuit High Court. Johannes Bangiso was convicted on charges of housebreak-in with the intent to steal, aggravated robbery, and murder. In passing judgement, Judge Nathan Erasmus noted that while the cold facts of the case showed a severe betrayal of an employer by someone who grew up on the property, the court took into account that the twenty-one-year-old accused eventually played open cards with the state and expressed genuine remorse. Johannes Bangiso was sentenced to an effective twenty-two years behind bars for his actions.