respected a lady.”
He didn’t exert a lot of influence
over her, he said. “She had confidence
in me. If I saw that she sat, or was
dressed, without propriety, I brought
this to her attention. During work I was
very conscientious, very proud. During
working hours Miss Lehnberg was a
receptionist and conducted herself as
such. After work she was good company
for me.”
He agreed that he had sexual relations
with her in the workshop but he never
called her by her name of Marlene. She
was always Miss Lehnberg, or “Sweets.”
Asked if it were true that two other
female employees were in love with him,
he said: “If they fall in love with me,
and more people fall in love with me,
can I help it?”
When he told the court that as far
as Marlene was concerned, she never
asked him whether he loved her, Mr.
Justice Diemont interposed: “I find this
difficult to believe.” Van der Linde then
said: “Miss Lehnberg never said to me,
‘I love you,’ except in the letter I got
from her. That was the first time she
mentioned that.”
The court was treated to an
extraordinary image of their final sexual
romp, as described by the stiffly upright
Afrikaner during cross-examination
by Mr. Dennis Delahunt, defending
Marlene. Van der Linde said he decided
to stop having intercourse ever again
with Marlene from the day she told
him she was expecting his child. In the
event, she miscarried.
But in fact he had sex with her
one other time after that. That was
one evening before she left for
Johannesburg. “Miss Lehnberg dared
me to do it,” he said. “ It went half-way.
I realised what I was doing and stopped
immediately.”
Mr. Delahunt: “Mr. Van der Linde,
that is a very peculiar thing that a
man should decide, half-way through
intercourse. Why did you come to such
a decision?”
“There is no reason. At first I wasstabbed her in the chest.”
There was mayhem in the living-room
as Choegoe continued stabbing with
the scissors. Furniture was upturned
and blood spattered across the carpet.
Susanna was screaming, and pleading
with Marlene to leave her alone. Then,
as she was repeatedly stabbed with the
scissors, she rolled on the floor, gurgling
and groaning. When she finally went
into her death throes, Choegoe drew
back from her body, gasping for breath.
He remembered: “Miss Marlene said,
‘Can you see how easy it is?’”
Then she went outside to bring her
car closer to the house. When she came
back she sprayed him with the dye gun,
into his mouth and over his clothes. She
told him she was “making a bluff.”
Marlene drove Choegoe back to his
home, and then set off for Johannesburg
to fulfil her escape plan. She reckoned
the more distance she could put
between herself and the murder scene,
the safer she would be. While she was
driving north, Chris van der Linde,
alarmed that his wife wasn’t answering
the phone, alerted his daughter Zelde,
who went home and discovered her
mother’s body.
The police soon concluded that two
people were involved in the murder.
Their thoughts turned to the mysterious
“Cape coloured” cripple whom the
victim had several times reported. When
they heard that Susanna’s husband had
a girlfriend named Marlene they also
started thinking about her.
They found Marlene quickly enough.
At first she denied everything. Finally
she said, “Marthinus did it. I asked him
to do it and I took him there. It did not
bother me at all. It was as if I had got
something off my mind. I was prepared
for what would be the result.”
Marlene handed over Choegoe’s
address and the one-legged killer was
picked up at his home in Retreat.
Charged with murder, he said: “When
Miss Marlene dropped me off at my
house after the murder, I said to her,
‘Miss Marlene, if you don’t keep your
promise, I’m going to the police.’ She
replied that I could trust her, but that
if she did not keep her promise I could
do what I liked, because she was not
worried.”
T
he Scissors Trial, as the press
dubbed it – a lurid tale of a sexual
encounter between a puritanical married
Afrikaner and his desperate, emotionally
immature mistress – caused a sensation
when it opened at Cape Town Criminal
Sessions on March 4th, 1975. The
two killers, sitting side by side in the
dock, took no notice of each other.
Choegoe seemed slightly bewildered by
the proceedings, while Marlene wrote
sheaves of notes, passing them over to
her counsel.
She also wrote a note to Van der
Linde during an adjournment, because
she thought he looked depressed. She
imagined it would go directly to him.
Instead it was opened by the prison
censor and read out in open court, to
her obvious embarrassment. It said:
“It’s so upsetting seeing you sitting there,
everyone looking so downhearted. I know it
must be hell for you. Please remember I’m
with you all the way. I still love you and
will never change. Remember, I can read
your thoughts and know your feelings. I
have lost a lot of weight...it’s only that I
miss you such a lot.
“In a short time this so-called
extraordinary story will be something of the
past. It’s only unfortunate that they have to
publicise the details of our relationship.”
Like her co-defendant Choegoe,
Marlene chose not to give evidence on
her own behalf, but witnesses testified
that they saw her and Chris van derLinde together, and others saw her
going to the Van der Lindes’ home
on the day of the murder. But these
witnesses were merely the curtain raisers
to the prosecution’s star witness, Chris
van der Linde himself.
From the start, he insisted, his
relationship with Marlene was “a
fatherly friendship,” explaining, “I did
not love Miss Lehnberg. I loved my
wife. I liked Miss Lehnberg.”
How many times did he have sex
with her, he was asked? He replied: “It
happened. I cannot say how many times.
You will have to ask Miss Lehnberg.
She can help me there.” Told not to be
evasive, he said, “No, honestly, I am not
able to say how many times.” But they
were having sex regularly until his wife
heard about it.
Marlene, he went on, was very good
at her work. “I gave her a lot of support.
She asked me many questions. She was
always a proper lady, and I have alwaysChoegoe continued
stabbing with the
scissors. Susanna was
screaming and pleading
with Marlene to leave
her aloneCrowds outside the
courthouse in Cape
Town following the
verdicts