Dr Jane Luck and her husband, Rolf, were brutally murdered earlier this week
Image: FILE
When her elderly mother did not pick up her son after soccer practice, as she always did, Charlotte Luck immediately knew something was wrong.
And she knew it even more so when she phoned both her mom and dad, one after the other, and neither answered.
Worried sick, fearing the worst, and about 50km away, Luck asked the neighbours to go and check on them.
What they found when they got there was every bit as bad as she had feared, her mother, renowned psychologist and art therapist Dr Jane Luck, and her father, Rolf, had been viciously beaten and killed.
The bodies of the two people who had lovingly raised her, and who had been at the centre of her life since the day she was born, were found lifeless inside their farmhouse in Glen Loerie, in the Crags, a smallholding and farming area about 20km from Plettenberg Bay.
"A piece of me died too at that very moment," an emotional Luck told IOL on Thursday night, just more than 24 hours after police made the grim find.
Police spokesperson Warrant Officer Chris Spies said the discovery was made after the couple's Mercedes-Benz was captured by a licence plate recognition camera travelling at high speed along the R339 in the direction of Uniondale.
"The vehicle was subsequently flagged on a local security WhatsApp group," Spies said.
"Police members responded to the registered address linked to the vehicle, where they discovered the bodies. Both victims sustained multiple injuries."
Police and community organisations then went on the hunt for the vehicle, which later overturned near Uniondale.
The driver fled the scene on foot, covered in blood, but was apprehended shortly afterwards.
The suspect, 34, is expected to make his first appearance in the Plettenberg Bay Magistrate's Court on Friday.
Jane and Rolf were 71 and 77 years old respectively.
The Luck couple's Mercedes-Benz, found in the bush near Uniondale after it was flagged on a local security WhatsApp group. The suspect fled the scene on foot and was apprehended shortly thereafter.
Image: SUPPLIED
Luck said she was in Knysna at the time, caring for her other son who was sick in a school hostel, blissfully unaware that her parents' badly beaten bodies had already been found while she frantically tried to reach her mother.
Her youngest son, six-year-old Leo, was still at his friend’s house after soccer practice, waiting for his grandmother to come and pick him up.
"I was with my other son taking care of him, taking him to doctors. I kept calling our neighbours, saying please go and check on my parents. They haven't fetched Leo from his friend from soccer, and it's not like them," she recalled.
Luck said she raced back the moment she was told what had happened.
"I arrived shortly after that. I was racing to try and get home and find out what was happening."
What she found when she got there was something she said she will never be able to forget.
"It was an absolute bloodbath. All I can say is it was a massacre. I don't want to describe any of the injuries. It's too violent," she said.
While at the scene, she said, surprisingly little had been taken from the property.
"There were iPads left on the table. But obviously they took the car, the laptop and an e-bike ... three bicycles have also been taken but nothing else," she said.
Luck had the daunting task of identifying her parents' bodies at the laboratory on Thursday — a sighting she said will replay in her mind over and over again.
"It just seems crazy that they were just so viciously attacked," she added.
Why the suspect did what he did is something Luck said she cannot make sense of.
"The viciousness of the attack makes no sense," she said.
"I guess what went through my mind was how anyone could inflict such vicious injuries on two elderly, kind people who just went through life trying to do good in their community and in the environment around them. It just makes no sense to me. No sense at all."
Luck said the family has been trying to come to terms with what had happened.
She and her brother Joseph are the only two of the couple's children still alive, after their sister died when she was just eight-years-old.
Jane was a psychologist and art therapist who spent her career helping people work through their darkest moments.
She ran the local Al-Anon support group, helped clear alien vegetation from the farm, and kept paths open down to the river so her grandchildren could run to Whisky Creek to swim and fish.
Since the news broke, neighbours had been arriving at Luck's door with flowers and gifts.
"She cared for so many people. She specialised in art therapy, helping people get through trauma. She was a real pillar of the local community. For me personally, she's just been the most amazing granny. She's dedicated to her grandchildren, always taking them on hikes, trips up into the mountains, into the gorges," Luck said.
Rolf was a geophysicist, an academic, well-read, and by his daughter's account, one of the most intelligent people she has ever known.
"My dad was more of an academic. He was a highly educated geophysicist who spent most of his time researching and reading. He was just one of the most intelligent people I know," she said.
His own father had been a university dean in Kenya, and his grandfather, a doctor who became a blacksmith in retirement, had hammered the gates of Formosa Garden Village by hand in an old forge on the same property.
"My grandfather built the gates of Formosa Garden Village by hand, hammered it out in his old forge there on the farm," Luck said.
Luck and Joseph grew up on that very farm, the same one on which their parents were killed.
"My kids are the fourth generation of kids to grow up on that farm," Luck said.
Last weekend, barely recovered from a hip replacement and finally able to walk properly again, Rolf had been on the lawn trying to kick a soccer ball with his grandson.
"My mom was just always so proud of her grandchildren, always there to support them, whatever they were doing, just a really happy, loving person, very enthusiastic about life. I just want to remember them laughing. Especially with their kids," Luck said.
Colleen Noble, who runs Redford House, a guesthouse in the Crags where Jane had run a weekly art studio for years, said the news had left her in a state of shock.
"I cannot even write a message on the phone to anybody or anything. I am in deep shock. I just can't believe it," Noble said.
She described Jane as a woman who was impossible not to love.
"She was very warm, outgoing, bubbly, like your normal artsy people. Jane was very outgoing, and she just loved people, and she was definitely nobody's fool. She was a bit of a forthright person, and she was highly gifted in many different areas," she said.
Dr Jane Luck
Image: SUPPLIED
Noble said Jane had been passionately involved in removing alien vegetation and restoring the natural forests around the Crags, and had belonged to walking clubs both locally and in Magaliesberg.
She was, Noble said, extraordinarily fit, a trait that apparently ran deep in the family.
"Her father walked to the top of Formosa Mountain on his 85th birthday. He was a mountaineer... so she comes from a very fit, mountaineering family. She was a lovely person and just crept into one's heart," she said.
Professor Greg Kerr, who taught painting classes at Redford House and counted Jane among his students for several years, said he was struggling to find the words.
"Her loss is astounding. It is just unbelievable," he said.
He described her as someone who lit up every room she walked into.
"She was not pretentious, she was just a clever, caring, remarkable, friendly, supportive person," Kerr said.
"She just had enormous personality. She was sparky. She had a wonderful smile and a lovely laugh.
"Whenever I teased her about her work, which I did frequently because I do that with my students, she took it in the best spirit possible. Jane was a great learner, she was a very talented painter and I had a lot of time for her," he added.
Kerr said all the people in his class had been writing about her since the news broke.
"All the people in the class who have been writing today all said how welcome she was to the newcomers. What a splendid friend she was. She loved the outdoors. She was just the most wonderful person. She was loved by everybody who met her. I'm going to miss her so much," Kerr said.
Spies said the investigation was ongoing.
IOL