Blurb
When 18-year-old Morné Harmse walked into his high school in 2008, armed with a samurai sword, he had one mission – to commit a massacre.
Inspired by the Columbine high school killings, his fantasy to make people "take notice" had been brewing for over a year. By the time his sword-slashing spree had ended, a pupil was dead and three others brutally injured. Now, 14 years later, Harmse is out on controversial parole.
“Samurai Sword Murder” finally puts together the pieces of this brutal tragedy.
About the author
Nicole Engelbrecht is a Cape Town-based true crime writer. She hosts South Africa’s most popular true-crime podcast, “True Crime South Africa”, as well as the official companion podcast to the Showmax doccie, “Devilsdorp”. She's ghostwritten popular international true crime titles and has produced extensive content on the Krugersdorp cult murders.
Extract
It’s 7am on Monday, 18 August 2008. Cars trundle up Schoeman Drive, briefly stopping as parents deliver their children to the gates of Nic Diederichs Technical High School. The exhaust pipes of idling vehicles spew visible plumes into the still-cool morning air. Krugersdorp is more than ready to bid farewell to winter, but the freeze will keep its icy grip on the area long after the events that are about to unfold.
Students call out to their friends as they near the entrance to the school. There’s the weekend to be dissected, the arrival of Monday to bemoan, and for the Grade 12 scholars, the buzz of impending freedom is almost palpable.
Just the Friday before, pupils had been allowed a “civvies day”, to wear casual clothing to school, a welcome break from the usual drab uniform of grey pants, white shirts and a blazer or school jersey. For those in their final year, the casual day had coincided with a culmination of discussions held over the preceding few days to discuss their plans after matric.
It was in one of those discussion groups, facilitated by teachers at the high school with their final-year students, that 18-year-old Morné Harmse had expressed some concerning doubts about his future. Principal Mac Redelinghuys would later describe Morné’s answers to educators’ questions in these sessions as “silly” and a “cause for concern”. The boy’s responses seemed to indicate he had a limited view of his future, which, for most 18-year-olds, was not entirely unexpected. However, some sources would report that his remarks were far more defeatist in nature than those of his peers.
During the preceding week, certain teachers had apparently counselled Morné on some of these comments in which he’d indicated that he did not believe his parents had much faith in him and it would be better if he were in jail.
Worryingly, he’d also mentioned that he was not at all prepared for his upcoming preliminary matric examinations.
Such a despondent attitude to the future should have been cause for alarm, especially from a teenager who, in the last few months of his high-school career, was under significant pressure. His hopeless comments were possibly hinting at plans to self-harm or even at suicide. Had a therapist or psychologist been privy to his comments during those discussions, a very different level of risk may have been identified.
Later, when it was too late, Morné’s teachers would claim that they had decided to call him back in for a discussion that Monday morning to try to understand what was happening with the boy. They must have known that it would not be an easy conversation. Morné was quiet in class. He spoke only when directly addressed and, even then, his answers were often short and guarded. Outside the classroom setting, however, Morné – according to his peers – appeared far more communicative and even seemed quite happy to voice his views.
As Monday morning dawned in Krugersdorp and students gathered in groups around the school grounds, a few streets away, Morné Harmse was preparing to leave home. On this morning, he had decided to walk to school with his 15-year-old brother, Corné. This, in itself, was out of the ordinary. His mother, Liza, would later say that she would generally drop both her sons off at school in her car. On this day, Morné also left home earlier than he usually would. As he walked to school, slung casually over his shoulder was a large red tog bag.
It would later come to light that he’d left the house early to avoid having to answer any questions his mother might have.
The contents of that bag were the culmination of close to a year’s worth of wild fantasies and careful planning. While Morné had elements of “the plan” in that bag, there were other boys who left their homes that morning with the rest of the missing pieces.
To paint a complete picture of what occurred at Nic Diederichs Technical High School on Monday, August 18, 2008, it’s necessary for us to first go back in time. Not by too much, mind you, as the important information can be found in discussions the boys had with each other just a few days earlier. On Friday, 15 August 2008, the school’s “civvies day” probably meant that students would have been in a far more relaxed mood than when they wore their restrictive school uniforms. At break time, five boys* gathered in their usual meeting spot. The boys had been friends, on and off, for some time and regularly communicated by text message and saw one another on weekends. The boy leading the discussion was pint-sized Morné Harmse.
While most of the other boys towered above him, Morné was visibly shorter at just under five feet tall.
The topic of conversation that emerged that day had come up before. Based on a number of accounts, it seemed to have started with Morné acknowledging that he and his friends were in their final year of school and wondering how they could make “their mark” and be remembered. Soon, though, his suggestions would include ones that entailed violence, ones that entailed killing fellow pupils.
As is the case with many incidents of school violence, the other boys involved insisted, after the fact, that they had not thought the conversation was serious. Although this was not the first time Morné had mentioned committing a violent act at his school, the group of boys later told investigating officer Lieutenant-Colonel Chris Heyns they had always been sure he was “only joking”. They’d thought the suggestion of killing fellow pupils was no more than the bravado so often prevalent in teenage-boy pack behaviour. Surely it was all just talk?
Despite these claims, the other boys huddled around Morné that Friday and participated in preparations for the suggested attack. When we analyse how little they actually focused on successfully completing these tasks, though, it does seem that, at least for the others in the group, it was all just a crazy fantasy.
Morné, however, was dead serious about the plans. His initial question to the group that civvies-day Friday was centred on how they would indeed carry out a school attack. Some of the boys had seen news on television of similar attacks that had happened in America. The word “massacre” was used in this conversation. Sam* said he would use a gun. That would surely be the most efficient way to complete such a task. Morné asked who in the group had access to guns, and both Sam and Ben* said their parents had guns at home.
(* The names of the other boys involved in this conversation have been published in the media, but in this book, pseudonyms will be used to protect their identity. Not only were the boys minors when the incident occurred, but they also were not convicted of anything related to this crime.)
“Samurai Sword Murder” is published by Melinda Ferguson Books, an imprint of NB Publishers and retails at R290.