Some time after Stewart Wilken, the cannibal serial killer of South Africa was imprisoned, I received a call from St Albans Correctional Facility summoning me since Stewart was out of control in his cell and he called for me. While I was at St Albans, my colleague, detective Derick Norsworthy, who had secured the confession of Stewart, arranged for me to interview Brydone Brandt, a serial killer who had been arrested by detective Peet Bessinger and imprisoned in the same facility. I was not involved in this investigation at all, but grateful for the opportunity to interview Brydone Brandt.
My interview with Brydone reminded me of the Greek myth of Hercules and Cerberus, both embodied in one man. The 12th and most dangerous labour of the Greek hero Hercules was to capture Cerberus, the vicious three-headed dog, gatekeeper to the entrance to Hades, the Underworld. On his way to the Underworld Hercules fought many monsters, heroes, and ghosts, protecting the innocent. Hades dictated that Hercules could have Cerberus, but only if he overpowered the beast with nothing more than his own brute strength.
The Fates did not smile upon Brydone Brandt when he was born on 15 April 1964 in the South African town of Welkom. His father personified Cerberus’ father Typhon, a fire-breathing giant covered with dragons and serpents. Family fun to Brydone’s aggressive and sadistic father, was to unleash his sons upon one another, like a pack of dogs. Brydone, being the youngest son, or little runt, did not come off too well during these fights, but it made him defiant. His father would also tie the children over a chair and hit them with a sjambok or a wire when they were naughty. His father was also a wife abuser. Clearly Brydone had no positive father figure, neither in his own father, nor in his brothers to identify with – corresponding to one of my predictions in my origins of serial killers’ theory. So, much like abandoned boys, Brydone compensated by creating a hero figure in his imagination – a strong, larger-than-life protector of the innocent, fighting monsters in his quest, whom I compare to the Greek hero Hercules.
Brydone’s deviant sexual behaviour probably originated from the fact that he was still breastfed by his mother up to the age of nine. There was also incest in the family. Brydone claimed when he was ten years old his second eldest brother began sexually molesting him. His eldest brother also forced the younger brothers to commit incest with their sisters.
Since they were poor Brydone could not afford drugs, but he made do with sniffing petrol and drinking turpentine – frying his brain. He admitted to ‘accidently’ killing chicks. So, as a child in his home environment, Brydone learnt how to fight, to rape and he was a rape victim himself, always yearning for the hero to come and rescue him.
Two behavioral disorders diagnosed in children are Oppositional Defiance Disorder and Conduct Disorder. They are similar but Conduct Disorder is worse for it is characterized by consistent acts of violence. Brydone’s was so bad that by the age of 14 years, he was placed in an Industrial School for Boys by the Welfare. A background check also revealed that he was considered “uncontrollable’ at school for continuously running away, fights and assaulting a teacher. Yet despite it being called a “Place of Safety” his life in the Industrial School did not change much as he was persistently sodomized by older boys, he was bullied and involved in fights. Eventually he was sent to a reformatory, which is basically a prison for children. He claimed he often went hungry and they were treated as criminals. Interestingly that Brydone denies that indeed by this time he was a juvenile delinquent and a thus criminal. Throughout his narrative of his life, he always impressed upon me that he was indeed the ‘wronged hero’ in these fights and that he was in fact a soft-hearted kind man.
He completed grade ten and joined the army. He claimed that he was a member of the military police, once again he was discharged for fighting. A pattern was by now firmly established of Brydone getting into physical fights, always blaming the other parties for ganging up on him and authorities taking their side. He had absolutely no insight in his own involvement or taking accountability for his actions. His ideal self, to whom he had to live up to, was Hercules, the hero.
After the army, he worked at the Municipality of Welkom in the Parks division, but then as a young man of 20, by March 1984, almost having trained for it all his life, Brydone turned into a professional criminal. Up to 1992, authorities could have considered his crimes as small-time, for he was charged with crimen injuria, theft, assault, damage to property, driving under the influence of alcohol, and fraud for which he received suspended sentences or fines. No-one realized the small-time habitual violent offender, whose only punishment was fines, had already committed murder and had gotten away with it. He alluded that he had worked as a male prostitute for men and women, when he needed money – probably to pay his fines.
His father died in 1990. In 1991 he was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment for stealing furniture. He was released soon enough.
Brydone tells that in 1992, he intervened when a man was assaulting his wife, for it reminded him of his own father beating up his mother. He told me that he could not stand a man hitting a woman, so he stepped up – typically Hercules the hero, fighting a monster and protecting the weak, stepping in to his story. And then in the same sentence, Cerberus raises his three heads: Brydone tells had previously been charged of rape by his girlfriend. He claimed she did this out of spite because he hit her when she abused her baby. Brydone is incapable of acknowledging Cerberus inside him, always calling upon Hercules to conquer his inner monster.
Yet Brydone’s claim of ‘defending himself’ was regarded as attempted murder by the court and he was sent to jail in 1992. His mother committed suicide while he was in prison.
Upon his release in 1996 he lodged at a boarding house in Port Elizabeth and worked as a bodyguard for a’ Mafia-type doctor’. He alleged that he was requested by this doctor to kill a certain man and a woman called Julia Nomkonwana, but instead he invited them to move in with him, again Hercules coming to the rescue of the oppressed.
By September 1997, Brydone lodged at another boarding house. He shared accommodation with a 52-year old man called Glenton Dean Morris. Brydone alleged one night when they were both drunk he had a fight with Glenton over money, during which Glenton attacked him with a shifting spanner. Brydone retaliated and killed Glenton. Then he cut up the mattress that Glenton had died on and stowed it into plastic bags which he shuffled into the dustbins outside. He also dumped Glenton’s body upside down in one of the dustbins. A blood drenched and delirious Brydone was picked up by an ambulance and taken to hospital. Other residents had found Glenton’s body and alerted the police to Brydone being the murderer. He was traced to hospital where he was arrested for the murder of Glenton Morris by detective Peet Bessinger.
On 22 September 1997, Brydone made a full confession to a magistrate, admitting to more murders. He confessed on 9 December 1989 he took Jean Natlazo, a prostitute, to the Port Elizabeth Municipality building where they had sex. He claimed that they had an argument about the price and he lost his temper and killed her with a knife. Her body was discovered on the stairs of the building, lying on her back. She was half naked and her private parts were cut to ribbons with a knife.
Brydone confessed the following month, on 5 January 1990, he met Sarie Schoeman and two other prostitutes. He drove all three prostitutes to the Marine Drive near the University of Port Elizabeth on the coastline. They sat at the roadside tables where they discussed prices for sex. Brydone and Sarie got into the car and left the two other women next to the road. He drove on to the Marine Drive bushes, next to the ocean. A little later the other two women saw Brydone driving past them alone. The women went looking for their friend and found her body with a wine bottle inserted in her private parts. The cause of death was a fractured skull, caused by a rock. They removed the bottle, left the body where it was and did not alert the police. A while later the body was discovered again by vagrants, who alerted the police. Unbeknown to them at the time, it had been dragged further into the bush than where the other two prostitutes had found it originally. It was naked, lying face down and a stick was inserted into the private parts. It was only later when the case came to light that the police managed to trace the two prostitutes. They then showed the police where they had originally found the body with the inserted bottle and this was not the same place as where it was discovered for the second time by the vagrant.
Brydone later admitted to detective Bessinger that he went back to the scene, collected the body and drove around with it in his car. Then he went back and dumped it further in the bushes. He denied ever inserting the bottle or the stick. ‘Hercules’ claimed that he was a good lover who read in magazines how to satisfy a woman lovingly. He could not acknowledge Cerberus who reverted to inserting a phallic foreign object into a woman. I suspect Brydone might have suffered from erectile dysfunction and that he inserted the phallic object to symbolically appease this, not to punish or humiliate the victim, for she was already dead when he inserted the second object.
Brydone also confessed that on 9 December 1996, in the boarding house while he was sharing his bed with a young boy, Julia, whom in his Hercules’ role, he had rescued from the Mafia-type doctor, joined them. He said she was drunk and he asked her to leave. She refused and they had a fight. Cerberus triumphed over Hercules. In his confession, Brydone said he could not remember how it happened, but she fell and broke her neck. He said he paid another man to remove her body and this man shoved her body in a green plastic bag and dumped it behind the Feather Market Hall. The body was discovered, but the case remained unsolved, until Brydone confessed to it. Dumping the body in a dustbin is the same modus operandi he followed with the murder of Glenton.
He claimed that he had killed another prostitute and left her body in Donkin Park, but no evidence could be found to this effect.
In May 1999 he was sentenced to four life sentences for the four murders of Jean Natlazo, Sarie Schoeman, Julia Nomkonwana, and Glenton Dean Morris,
Brydone’s pattern continued in prison. He was involved in many fights, one which left him a big scar on his face. By the time I met Brydone in prison, he claimed that he had converted to Christianity. “I love to sing and give sweets to little children.” “I just want to make people happy”. “My heart goes out to all the men and women who have been rejected by their loved ones without reason… to the women who have to take so much from their cowardice men assault, drunkenness, etc, while there are so many men who will love and comfort them, of which I am one”. “Maybe I am too sensitive, too loveable and too protective…” said Brydone. He also wrote me several letters after my visit, all adorned with little flowers, reminding me of a teenage’ girl’s love notes. I never responded. In prison at last, Hercules prevailed over Cerberus, but in prison Brydone has no access to his preferred victims. The monster Cerberus still lurks in his subconscious – his Underworld – and will be unleashed if ever he is released on parole.
By Dr Micki Pistorius
Top image: Hercules and Cerberus by Peter Paul Rubens (1636) (Public Domain)
