As they walked towards the camera through South Africa’s Drakensberg Mountains, Rod and Rachel Saunders were introduced to British viewers on BBC2 as world-renowned botanists who would trek the extra mile to find rare gladioli.
“We have been coming to Drakensberg since we were 16 and I’ve always had a passion for high-altitude grassland flora,” Rod explained in a 2018 feature with the Gardeners’ World presenter Nick Bailey. He later described a trek of about 20 miles to find one species not seen for 50 years. “A banshee yell went up when I found the plant,” he said.
Soon after Rod, 74, and Rachel, 63, said farewell to the film crew, however, they were kidnapped, bludgeoned to death and their bodies dumped in a river in KwaZulu-Natal in 2018, prosecutors will tell a trial in Durban this month.
The last known picture of the British couple was a selfie posted on social media by Bailey, who wrote: “These guys know their South African native plants . . . and vitally where to find them. They sell an incredible range of seeds online.”
This week court proceedings began against their alleged killers, Sayfudeen Aslam Del Vecchio, 39, his partner Fatima Bibi Patel, 28, and Mussa Ahmad Jackson, 35, their Malawian lodger at the time. They deny charges of kidnapping, robbery, murder and theft.
Del Vecchio and Patel were arrested at their home, 18 miles from the murder scene, on February 15, 2018, after detectives traced a link to their mobile phones from their victims. Jackson, who rented a room in their home, was arrested a month later.
WhatsApp and Telegram messages also found on their phones added an unexpected twist to the killings. On February 9 the suspects discussed preparing to “kill the kuffar and abduct their alias, to destroy infrastructure and to put fear in the heart of the kuffar”. They also described the couple as “prey” who were ripe for a good “hunt”.
The development prompted the Foreign Office to issue a warning about a possible terrorism threat in South Africa. Detectives found Islamic State pamphlets and a flag at the defendants’ house at the time of the arrest, according to local reports at the time.
Del Vecchio, a convert to Islam, and Patel, the daughter of a Muslim cleric, have featured on the South African security force’s watchlist. Del Vecchio had been seen on a quad bike watching planes taking off and landing at King Shaka airport in Durban more than two years before the murder. The charge that the suspects had links to Isis has not been submitted to trial.
South Africa is Africa’s most industrialised country, and 2 per cent of the population is Muslim. It has never suffered a major Islamist attack but has become a hub of dirty money financing terrorism in southern and east Africa. Its weak security institutions, porous borders and rising lawlessness have led to large-scale trafficking of drugs, arms and people as terrorist groups seek to fill their war chests.
According to official reports, the couple’s remains were recovered after being eaten by crocodiles. Local fishermen said that remnants of their sleeping bags, including zippers, were seen in the teeth of crocodiles months after the bodies were retrieved from the water.
The Saunderses had been married for 30 years, spending up to six months each year scouring the wilds for rare seeds, which they supplied to buyers worldwide in a thriving mail-order business. They left their home in Cape Town in their Toyota Land Cruiser on February 5, 2018, for a meeting with the BBC crew in the mountains, according to court documents.
Their plan, they told staff from their company on February 8 in the last contact they made, was then to camp in Ngoye Forest Reserve, 90 miles north of Durban. They spent one night in the forest before being snatched, and at some point between February 10 and 15, were beaten to death. Their bodies were cocooned in sleeping bags and thrown into the Tugela river, the court has been told.
Staff at Silverhill Seeds, the couple’s business, raised the alarm over the disappearance, an indictment said yesterday. Police said at the time that a fisherman had found Rod’s body. The two were not identified until weeks later when the police requested that DNA tests be carried out on all unaccounted-for bodies in local mortuaries.
The alleged killers used the couple’s Land Cruiser and bank cards to draw out £37,000 in cash. Police also found a drone, camping gear and generators, all bought with the couple’s bank card. Blood from Rachel Saunders was found in the vehicle’s boot.
The trial was adjourned yesterday until October 25, after the judge was forced to recuse herself because of a technicality.