Anna Maria Rabie

When she was 17 she was well known as the most beautiful girl the people of Graaff-Reinet had ever laid their eyes upon. She was a brunette with delicate features and a perfect figure. The trouble was, she also knew it. She was spoilt and wanted everything that took her fancy. However her parents was poor and so she commenced using her outrageously good looks to get what she wanted. She married Jacob RABIE (23 yrs) on June 1829 when she was 19 years old, not for love, but because he was a rich and successful farmer. The marriage was concluded by Ds. Andrew Murray at Graaff-Reinet's first thatch-roofed church. The young couple lived in a house in Cradock street. Things soon started to go terribly wrong in Cradock street whenever Jacob had to visit his numerous other farms. The neighbours started whispering but at last things got so bad that Jacob's concerned elder brother, Jan Bastiaan RABIE, told him about his bride's philandering ways with other men. Unfortunately Jacob did not believe his brother's well-meant warnings and ended up being murdered by his beautiful wife and her widower lover, Johannes LIEBENBERG. The two carefully planned the murder to make it look like a suicide. However, Hendrik ENSLIN (Graaff-Reinet's Justice of Peace and top PI) put 2+2 together and the murderers were caught out by the lies and mistakes they made in their planning as well as the evidence of witnesses. Because of her bad reputation nobody had any sympathy for Anna when she and her lover were hanged together at a public excecution. Ds. Andrew Murray prayed for their souls before the hanging. From the Judgement department instructions were received that the murderers should be buried separately. Johannes LIEBENBERG was buried at the northern entrance of the town at "Semelspoorthoogte". The beautiful Anna was buried near the southern entrance to town, west of the Willie Pienaar Training School, on the banks of the Sondagsriver (across from her home in Cradock street).

CORRECTION: Huisgenoot had it wrong - Anna Rabie was NOT the first murderess in SA - that dubious honour goes to Anna Mouton, who was executed in 1714 (more than 125 years earlier)...

Not Anna Mouton.......Marie/Maria Mouton,wife of Franz Jooste.

https://eensgesind.com/tereggestel-die-storie-van-anna-rabie-en-joh...

Hervolgens is hulle versoek om saam begrawe te word geweier en is hulle aan die teenoorgestelde kante van die begraafplaas begrawe. Die stuk hierbo gaan selfs verder en beweer hulle is aan die twee uiteindes van die dorp begrawe. ‘n Benaderde plek vir Anna Rabie is opgelaai by Media. Dit kan ook oorkant die rivier wees.

Johannes Liebenberg is begrawe by “Semelpoorthoogte, this is on the northerly side of town on the Middelburg road” *. Dit kan ‘n groot area omvat. Alhoewel ek geen simpatie met hulle het nie, was so ‘n aksie oormatig. Hulle is dit waarskynlik nog in lewe meegedeel om hulle te straf, maar nogtans… dis irrasioneel. *https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Liebenberg-949 (konteks Anglo-Boere-oorlog)

‘n Mens wonder oor haar kinderloosheid. Jacob moes inderdaad geweldig baie weg gewees het om nie kinders by haar te verwek het nie, in 12 jaar van getroude lewe. Maar Johannes was daar. Haar skoonheid het dus nie vrugbaarheid beteken nie, of hulle het ‘n baie effektiewe kontrasepsie- of vrugafdrywingsmetode gehad.

Sterfkennis: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:3Q9M-CSQX-MQTH-L?i=1677...

Verromantiseerde storie as dat sy sou spook: https://www.pressreader.com/south-africa/sunday-tribune-south-afric...

David Abraham Swanepoel