V3747 Stanley Allen Hansen

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Hansen faced two charges of attempted murder and two of murder. On 13 December 1986 he had tried to kill Dennis Marthinus and Geraldine Sauls by stabbing them with a knife. On 15 December he managed to kill Geraldine Sauls by stabbing her to death. After his arrest and appearance in court he stabbed Emily Patel to death in the back of the police van taking him to the cells, on 19 December 1986.

Hansen pleaded guilty to all four charges and was quickly convicted. The full picture emerged when evidence was being led on the presence or absence of extenuating circumstances.

In mid-1985 Hansen was released from prison after serving a sentence for theft from a motor vehicle. He moved to Bredasdorp where he met Miss Geraldine Sauls. Her boyfriend was Mr Dennis Marthinus, who was in prison at the time. Hansen and Miss Sauls struck up a relationship after she told him about Marthinus, saying that the affair was over. Hansen warned her that if he ever caught her and Marthinus together he would kill both of them. Hansen moved in with Miss Sauls and her parents and by all accounts their relationship was a fairly steady one until the end of November 1986, shortly after Hansen was convicted of possession of cannabis and given a suspended sentence. Sauls’ parents asked Hansen to leave their house just as word arrived that Marthinus had been released from prison and was back in town. Miss Sauls left with Hansen and they moved to another house down the street.

Hansen started hearing rumours that Sauls was seeing Marthinus again. He threatened Marthinus and argued with Sauls about this. On 13 December he sent Sauls to the grocery store, but she did not arrive back home at the time he expected. He took a knife, went in search of her and found her with Marthinus at the side of the road. He tried to stab Marthinus in the heart, but Marthinus turned at the last moment and received a wound in the back and ran off. Hansen could not catch him. Then he turned on Sauls and stabbed her once in the chest and once near the collarbone. After this his senses seem to have returned to him, because he carried Sauls to a doctor’s rooms for treatment.

The police arrived at the doctor’s with Marthinus. The police sergeant inexplicably told Hansen to close his knife and go home, ordering him to report to the police the next morning. The police took Sauls to the hospital, but her injuries were not serious enough to warrant her admission and she was sent home. She returned to her parents’ home.

The next day, Sunday, Hansen went looking for her and, when he saw her at her parents’ home, shouted that he was going to kill her. Then he went looking for Marthinus, but could not find him as the police were keeping Marthinus in protective custody. Hansen later told the Court that he had made the decision to kill Sauls so that he could be arrested, reasoning that he would then also have the opportunity to kill Marthinus in the police cells.

On Monday 15 December Hansen hid in a bush across the street from the house where Sauls was staying. He called out to Sauls and she came out of the house, but went back in immediately when her sister Lorna cautioned her. Hansen climbed through a window and went after Sauls, but she had escaped through the back door and had run to a neighbour’s house. There Hansen caught up with her and stabbed her several times before dragging her outside where he continued stabbing her. He then picked her up and threw her over a fence into the next property. There he stabbed her yet again. As he was finally walking away from her she called to him. He went back, kicked her and sat down astride her as he stabbed her until she was dead. The police arrived and he handed the knife over to them.

The post-mortem by the District Surgeon of Bredasdorp showed that Sauls, who was one and a half metres tall and weighed only about forty-five kilograms, had died of haemorrhagic shock caused by loss of blood and respiratory failure caused by a collapsed left lung. She had eighteen stab wounds altogether.

On Thursday 18 December Hansen made a full confession to the Bredasdorp Magistrate, admitting guilt on the murder charge and the two charges of attempted murder. In court the next day he gave a detailed explanation. Later in the day he was put in a police van with other prisoners to be taken to the Caledon prison. For some reason the police allowed a female prisoner, the sixteen-year-old Emily Patel, to be transported in the back of the van with the male prisoners. During the journey she asked Hansen to sit next to her. She asked him for money, a paltry twenty rand, to pay her fine for trespassing. He gave her two earrings, but when she asked him if he had really killed Sauls he decided to kill her.

He told her so after asking the other prisoners to close their eyes, but she apparently did not believe him. He stabbed her in the neck with the leg of a broken pair of scissors he had hidden under his clothes. Next he ordered Miss Patel to undress completely and, when she had done so, he stabbed her in the back. He ordered her to dress again, which she did. Then he stabbed her repeatedly until she was dead. The other prisoners in the van did nothing to stop him, to protect Patel or to alert the policeman driving the van.

When the police stopped at Caledon with their load of prisoners they found Emily Patel dead. Hansen immediately admitted that he had killed her and handed over the weapon he had used. Patel died as a result of acute shock caused by a blockage of the heart and loss of blood. She had been stabbed altogether forty-five times.

Hansen repeatedly admitted in open court and also prior to the trial that he had intended to kill each of his victims. Geraldine Sauls’ killing had been premeditated and had occurred in plain view of a number of witnesses. He had pursued her over a period of days, had lain in wait for her, and had then stabbed her repeatedly. He killed Emily Patel for no discernible reason at all, and almost defiantly in a police van in the presence of a number of witnesses. It was as if Hansen was thumbing his nose at the law.

A panel of psychiatrists reported to the Court that Hansen was fit to stand trial and that he had the capacity at the time of the offences to appreciate the wrongfulness of his actions and to act accordingly. The Court could see no remorse in Hansen for what he had done and could find no extenuating circumstances. On 8 May 1987 he was sentenced to death on each of the murder charges.

On 1 December 1987 Hansen was called out of his cell and informed that the State President had decided not to grant him mercy. He was hanged on 8 December 1987 after spending seven months in the death cells. He was about thirty years old.

I didn’t know what to think of Hansen. He was asking to be arrested and sentenced to death. His behaviour was similar to that of the cell murderers, who killed with a single-mindedness that took no account of the fact that there would be a number of eye witnesses. Did Hansen kill Emily Patel as a substitute for Dennis Marthinus?

The behaviour of the police was astonishing. Instead of locking Hansen up they put his intended victim in protective custody. And, by any reasonable standard, the police were responsible for Emily Patel’s cruel death. They put her in the van with male prisoners, and that in the company of a man who had not been searched properly.