Cross Bina

Age 76. Age 77. Their daughter Lita Cross remembers : "They broke into the house at 8.30am on a Sunday when my parents were at church and waited for them to come back. They got home at 3.15pm." "They shot my mum three times, through the knees and through the back. She was not immediately dead; she died from blood loss after about 25 minutes. During that time they poured boiling water from the kettle over her. "My dad they tied up in the bathroom, they tied him by the neck. They slapped him and put him in the bath. Boiling water was poured down his throat. The postmortem showed that he was burnt inside and that his stomach was full of water. It lasted five hours." A domestic worker found them the next morning. The South African Police Service (SAPS) tracked down and arrested two suspects within days of the crime. The perpetrators were caught with the couple's stolen firearms hidden under a mattress, and John Cross’s personal wristwatch was discovered inside one of the suspects' pockets. One of the convicted men was a long-term former employee on the Cross farm. Both attackers were successfully prosecuted, convicted of premeditated murder, and sentenced to 50 years in prison.