ISIS-linked gang found guilty of murdering British botanists and feeding bodies to crocodiles
An ISIS-linked gang who attacked and killed a British couple before feeding their bodies to crocodiles in South Africa has been found guilty of their murder.
World-renowned botanists Rod Saunders, 74, and his wife Rachel, 63, were ambushed while searching for rare gladioli flowers in remote mountains. The devoted couple, who were married for over 30 years and lived in Cape Town, met a horrific end while setting up camp beside a forest dam in a national park.
A court heard that they were brutally tortured for Rachel’s gold credit card PIN number and bank account details before being hacked, stabbed, and beaten to death. They were then disposed of after being wrapped in their sleeping bags and thrown off the Tugela River Bridge in the Ngoye Forest National Park to Nile crocodiles.
Just 48 hours earlier, the botanical experts were being interviewed by BBC presenter Nick Bailey for a Gardeners World special in the remote Drakensberg Mountains. Shortly after the BBC2 wildlife documentary team and the horticultural experts parted ways, the couple was attacked after parking their 4x4 to prepare to pitch camp.
Durban High Court heard how the gang leader and Muslim convert Sayefundeen Del Vecchio, 44, acting alone, had identified them to his wife and lodger as a "good hunt". He later attacked and forced them to reveal their bank details, and after killing them, texted his wife Bibi Patel, 34, and their lodger Mussa Jackson, 40, to say the "prey are in hellfire".
Italian-born Del Vecchio told his wife Patel, the daughter of a Muslim cleric, and Malawian lodger Jackson to meet him in the Saunders’s stolen Toyota Land Cruiser. The Durban High Court heard that by then, Rod and Rachel Saunders were dead in the back of it.
Post-mortems revealed that Rachel had been hacked multiple times in the back of her skull with a machete-like heavy blade and stabbed repeatedly in the upper back. She had also been brutally beaten with a heavy blunt instrument believed to be the same murder weapon responsible for crushing the skull of her husband, Rod.
Both victims were then stuffed in their sleeping bags and thrown in the back of their Toyota Land Cruiser 4x4. They were then driven to meet with the wife and lodger in the forest. They drove to the Tugela River Bridge, and the trio tossed the victims in their blood-soaked sleeping bags to the crocodiles below.
But their bodies, ravaged, were found washed up, and their remains were in such a terrible state they were unrecognizable. It took two pathologists using DNA and a dental expert to finally identify them.
Now, eight years after the murder, the trio has been convicted. A court heard that they were caught by their own greed, having gone on a R734,000 (£37,000) spending spree with Dr. Saunders’s gold credit card over a two-day period. They also bought Bitcoin and siphoned her savings into their own bank account.
A suspicious shop assistant watching them spending wildly finally challenged them for proof that one of them was Dr. Saunders, and the gang fled the store, alerting the police. Officers were already searching for the much-loved couple, unaware they had met such a grisly fate, after work colleagues had alerted them when the pair did not keep regular check-ins.
Following the trail of credit card spending finally led them to the gang, who were found to be already on a terrorist warning list, and the Saunders’s phones were found at their home. The elite South African police squad, the Hawks, also found their jewelry, personal belongings, camping equipment, laptops, and finally the stolen Toyota.
Inside the 4x4, they found heavy blood stains which were linked to Rod and Rachel. The court heard the couple, who ran Summerhill Seeds in Cape Town, regularly drove into the wilds of South Africa in the remote northeast to find seeds from rare gladioli flowers. They collected them and sold them worldwide by mail-order from their garden center company.
Judge Esther Steyn yesterday found all three guilty of double murder, kidnap, robbery, and theft after one collapsed trial and a mammoth 160 court days which heard 60 witnesses. Judge Steyn said DNA evidence, cellphone data, and phone usage had linked all three "without doubt" to the murders, which were carried out with "joint purpose and equal guilt". All three refused to leave the police holding cells at the court to hear the verdicts.
Judge Steyn said: "The state has relied as well on circumstantial evidence, but the court is satisfied that the pieces of the puzzle presented fit together perfectly. Bit by bit, the evidence formed into a mosaic, and the court is satisfied all three acted together in killing the deceased," saying it added to the witness evidence, DNA, and phone data.
Speaking by video link to the court, a Saunders family spokesman in the UK said, "Still after so many years, the incident itself and the aftermath causes distress to the family. It was an awful incident, and we do not want to dwell on the event as it was dealt with in detail at the trial."
Sentencing was adjourned until June 19, but under South African law, they will face a mandatory life sentence, which is a minimum of 15 years scaling up to a full life sentence. The court was previously told the couple left Cape Town on February 5, 2018, and drove 900 miles north to meet a visiting BBC wildlife documentary team led by presenter Nick Bailey.
He had posted a photo of the trio together on his Instagram in the Drakensberg Mountains in KwaZulu-Natal province, where the couple were the stars of a BBC2 documentary. He introduced them as "world-renowned botanists who had been searching for gladioli seeds for over 50 years" and praised their "incredible knowledge" of the flora of South Africa.
Posting a selfie of the couple, he wrote: "These guys know their South African native plants and vitally where to find them. They sell an incredible range of wild seeds online." After parting, the couple drove off to the remote Ndumo Game Reserve, 90 miles north of Durban, to seek out their elusive gladioli seeds—and unwittingly a date with death.
They spent two days climbing mountains looking for gladioli as they moved around the dam and were last seen alive at an area near Vryheid on February 9 by witnesses. The court heard gang leader Del Vecchio, 44, had also seen the elderly couple who he had identified as a "good hunt in the forest" when he alerted his wife and lodger.
He used WhatsApp to contact them on February 9 to say he had a "target" in the Ngoye National Park. On February 10, Del Vecchio messaged again that he now "had the target" and said his "prey are in hellfire" and told them to drive out from the house to meet him in their stolen Toyota 4x4.
Del Vecchio texted them: "Kill the kuffar [non-believers]. When the brothers go out and do this work, it is very important that the bodies of the victims are never found."
Jackson later confessed that when they went to the rendezvous, the bodies were wrapped up inside their sleeping bags and they threw them in the river. He later denied the confession, saying it was forced out of him by police. Prosecutor Mr. Mahen Naidu said: "It is alleged between February 10 and 15, 2018, in the Ngoye Forest, the accused did intentionally and unlawfully kill Rodney Saunders and Rachel Saunders."
The exact murder spot was believed to be between eShowe and Mthunzini. The Hawks police team raided the home of the accused 18 miles from the murder scene and found an ISIS flag flying in the garden and ISIS pamphlets and literature in the house.
Due to the links to ISIS, the Foreign Office put out warnings about a terror threat to British tourists in South Africa after it was revealed Del Vecchio and his wife were on a terrorist watchlist. No terrorism-related charges were brought against the ISIS-supporting trio.
Rod married South African-born Rachel, who has British citizenship, in the 1980s when he was a senior manager based at the world-famous Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in Cape Town. Formerly Dr. Rachel May, she worked nearby as a leading university microbiologist and they quit their jobs to set up Silverhill Seeds, working with staff from their home to sell seeds globally.
They also traveled the world lecturing on the flora of South Africa, and shortly after their deaths, a book on gladioli they were working on was finished by horticultural friends and published to acclaim.
Head of Investigations
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