“They started beating Dan on the head with the hammers and as he cowered, one hit him hard on the back of the head with a monkey wrench. He groaned and slumped to the floor and they began to kick him. They kept shouting at him demanding money. He couldn’t speak properly because they had broken his jaw and he mumbled that we didn’t keep cash, but he would write them a cheque for R20 000,” Bucher said.
“They hit him again in the face with the hammer reducing it to a bloody pulp,” she said.
As Knight took his last breaths, the intruders ransacked the house and took anything of value.
Bucher was locked in a bathroom after her assailants had tried to suffocate her with a surgical glove.
“I climbed out of a window and ran around to Dan. They had beaten him so badly that his face was unrecognisable and one had hit him so hard with a wrench that his skull was fractured and part of his brain matter had spilled on to the carpet where he lay. I put my hand near his mouth and there was no breath and I knew he was gone,” she said.
