Barend Smartryk Johannes Jacobus Jansen van Rensburg

Barend Van Rensburg (23), a tuber on the railways at Upington (map), was married to Rachel de Kock (22). He married her because she was pregnant and he feared moral scandal might lose him his job. However, he was in love with Ellen Lennox (19), a clerk in an attorney's office and the daughter of the notorious horse thief ‘Scotty Smith’. Together Van Rensburg and Lennox consulted a coloured ‘witchdoctor’ to work a divorce from his wife through ‘toorgoed’, but when this failed he replaced his wife’s ‘Sleggs Headache Cure’ with strychnine. There was only a glimmer of hope for a reprieve in a premeditated murder. The judge was shocked at white poverty in Upington and thought that in itself might be a reason for mercy. He also thought that, even though Lennox was more intelligent than Van Rensburg, she was very much under his influence. The Minister of Justice, who had not seen or heard the murderess, took a different view.

From: https://mindofhesouthafricanmurderer.blogspot.co.za/2009/04/barend-...