“You will hang by your neck until you are dead.”
(Sentencing of Daisy de Melker by Judge Greenberg, 1932.)
It’s a hell of a thing, killing someone. Can you imagine it? You have to touch them as you pull them closer till they are near enough to put the rope around their necks. They might shout and rail like an animal, but it will be in vain as they are now tethered. You tighten the sturdy chains connecting them to the hangman’s beam. Clank-clank. Clink. You put the bag over their face. The carotid artery will be pushing warm blood through for the last few times. It pulsates against your skin. Final checks that you placed the knot in the right place – just ahead of the ear, beneath the angle of the left lower jaw. Get this part right. You want the knot to jerk the head violently up and to the right as they drop through the trapdoor, wrenching the upper neck vertebrae apart. Otherwise, it will simply be strangulation, and that would be cruel.
De Melker deserved to die. She was convicted for poisoning her son, but suspected of also murdering two of her husbands, plus there are question marks surrounding the early deaths of four of her children. She was executed at Pretoria Central and retains celebrity status as SA’s first and most notorious serial killer. Hers was a sensational trial, with seats to the public gallery trading for large amounts on an impromptu black market. People could not look away.
When I announced I would write something about her, my Facebook lit up. Everyone knew something about someone who lived somewhere close to her. Strangely, a sense of pride accompanied most comments rather than shame. In my hometown of Germiston, she is a luminary, as the murder she was found guilty of was committed here. She’s ours. We are fascinated with her. In my case, I offered a facile explanation for my fixation. I claimed my admiration stemmed from surprise that anyone from Germiston could be so good at something, and stick with it, that they would become famous for it. If anyone from Germiston stayed true to the Oprah-esque maxim of “believe in yourself and never give up”, – it would be old Daisy. Or it could simply be that we share a hairstyle, according to internet commentators.
But there is more to it than that. Our obsession with serial killers reveals a darker side of human psychology. Jung coined the phrase ‘the shadow self’, and Freud’s concept of sublimation becomes helpful in explaining why that is so. It is a way of transferring disturbing thoughts into more socially acceptable behaviours.
Daisy killed people, ostensibly for an insurance payout, which was a way to advance her status in life. On the other hand, the executioner was only doing his job for a measly monthly paycheck. They are entirely different, don’t you see?
Daisy’s desires expressed a sense of purpose, control and the sensuality of murder, intensified by the fact that you are participating and not merely watching. She could hold her son’s hand while he was writhing in pain, his body convulsing as he lost control of his muscles, body tense with terror, insides exploding with deconstruction, looking into his mother’s loving eyes.
The hangman is denied such intimacy and direct connection with the act. A bag covers the convict’s face. After you hear the thud as the body falls through the trap to the chamber below, you might listen to struggling and gurgling sounds, which will become fainter and less frequent. The standard time to wait was 15 minutes. That should be enough. They have started padding the chamber below the gallows, just as well, so you don’t have to hear. Your violence is sanitised.
The difference, I suggest, between the two lies not with the killers – but in us, the audience. We gave the one permission to kill and not the other.
We are violent, vengeful and untruthful creatures. Right from the start, when there were only 4 of us after being chased out of Eden. One of us killed the other. A quarter of the human population was wiped out just like that. I don’t think Genghis Khan or Mao even achieved that. Hitler and the British Empire didn’t even come close. (I might be wrong about the British Empire.)
It is an entirely natural thing for us to do, slaying. Not the most optimal behaviour always, but very effective. The threat of force is still the only way to maintain peace, and democratic systems survive because we’ve agreed on who is allowed to inflict violence on our behalf. I have yet to meet a person for whom the slaughter of another human is unacceptable. Of course, we have different words for it and different rules about who is allowed to do it and under which circumstances. Some call it abortion, others capital punishment, self-defence or national security, but that is simply a way for us to create moral and physical distance between us and our intuitive capacities. Our boundaries are fluent on this matter and change with generations and circumstances.
Thus we sublimate our urges by viewing the actions of the hangman as righteous and in the interest of society (which it is) while also learning something about potential predators like De Melker, which could help us in future (which is also true). That is why we love serial killers. And picking sides in wars on other continents. We redirect grisly feelings within ourselves by expressing them safely, similarly to when we get a thrill watching horror movies or laugh at the brutality of kiddie cartoons. We might bunk work to search for Daisy de Melker’s house or salivate over Ukrainian War porn because ‘the scum’, according to us, ‘must die!!!’ Pew-pew, things go Boom. Our shadow selves are looking into a mirror.
A further cause for reflection is the observation made by psychiatrists that serial killers start by mutilating and torturing animals as children, refining that sense of dominance over humans later. It is another indicator that the most reviled in our society somehow reflect a common truth and contradiction about all of us. We recoil in horror at animal cruelty and slaughterhouses but demand to see the manager if our sirloin comes back well-done instead of rare. That is how we are. It is certainly true for me.
I just received a lead that the original De Melker prosecution file is still in a cupboard somewhere in the lawyers’ offices of Wright Rose-Innes in Germiston. I shall hunt it down immediately. Afterwards, I shall go to Spur and order a steak, medium done.