The pathology of women who commit serial murder with their partners is something of a mystery. It can be the extreme outcome of what the experts call a folie a deux (French for "madness of two" — or a shared psychosis).
The two most notorious South African couples who fall in this category struck during the '80s when it seemed the country itself was steeped in madness.
In June 1983, 19-year-old Charmaine Phillips and her 35-year-old lover, Pieter Grundlingh, began a 16-day murder spree between Johannesburg and Durban.
They killed four young men for no apparent reason. Some of the murders were committed in front of the couple's young son.
Their second victim was tied to a tree and shot dead "because he urinated" in front of them.
Phillips took the rap for the murders, but Grundlingh was also sentenced to hang. In 2004, Phillips was paroled.
Between 1988 and 1989, paedophile Gert van Rooyen and his lover, Joey Haarhoff, terrorised communities around Johannesburg and Pretoria. At least six girls, all between the ages of nine and 16, were kidnapped, sexually assaulted, and likely murdered. When police closed in on them, Van Rooyen killed Haarhoff and then himself. From time to time — including this year — theories crop up that the bodies have been found. Their locations, however, remain unknown.
