Relief as two guilty of Thornhill murder despite no body being found

For 12 excruciating years, the family of slain German national Claus Schroeder prayed for his killers to be brought to justice.

In the Port Elizabeth high court on Friday, their prayers were answered.

Their relief was palpable as judge Thembekile Malusi pronounced Jens Leunberg and his former partner, Kristina Adler, guilty.

However, as the pair were led down to the holding cells, they took with them the secret to where Schroeder’s body had been dumped.

The conviction, a first of its kind for the city in that a body was never recovered and there was no evidence of an assault, has paved the way for Schroeder’s family to move forward.

But without his bodily remains, his wife, Tanja,  still has a long way to go in the healing process.

“We have waited for so long to be where we are and where we wanted to be. We knew from the beginning they were involved,” a tearful Tanja said after the judgment.

“If someone said to me 11½ years ago we would wait so long to get confirmation, we would never have believed them.”

Malusi found Leunberg guilty of the murder, and Adler guilty as an accessory after the fact.

Both were also convicted on two counts of fraud.

“I will never forget the day one of the investigating officers from Thornhill came to see me for my help,” said advocate Hannelie Bakker, who was the deputy director of public prosecutions in Gqeberha at the time.

She said she had immediately recognised the surname of the missing person.

Schroeder's son, Toby, was a budding young surfer who was being coached by Bakker’s husband.

Bakker, who subsequently left the National Prosecuting Authority to open her own practice, said when senior state advocate Marius Stander took over as lead prosecutor on the matter, he had taken the case to a whole new level.

“He poured himself into this case. He did not leave one ‘T’ uncrossed,” Bakker said.

Immediately after judgment was handed down, Leunberg walked downstairs to the holding cells while a bewildered Adler, who had been his common-law wife and is mother to their children, sat  in the dock trying to make sense of what had just happened.

Adler had been out on bail since shortly after her arrest in 2011, but the state now wants her bail permanently revoked.

Malusi rejected the evidence of Adler and labelled Leunberg’s version of events a falsehood.

Schroeder went missing on August 14 2009 after he went to collect payment from Leunberg for the sale of his farm, Owvanuk, near Thornhill. His body was never found.

Tanja and her husband arrived in SA in 2000 and settled in Jeffreys Bay where they began to establish their business before having two sons. Leunberg and Adler arrived seven years later and within a few short months, the two couples met.

A business partnership was discussed — and that is what the state believes was behind Schroeder’s murder.

Malusi said in his two-day judgment that all was not what it seemed.

It was found that Adler had initially applied for a business permit to enter the country and had supplied falsified bank statements showing that she had R2.5m disposable cash needed to enter the country, while Leunberg applied for a spousal permit.

From there on, a myriad of misrepresentations, lies and falsehoods were presented to the Schroeders in order for Leunberg and Adler to get their hands on property and assets owned by the Schroeders.

“The evidence provided by the state clearly establishes that [Leunberg and Adler] had acted in common purpose,” Malusi said.

Malusi also found that Leunberg had freely admitted to lying and fed a “pack of lies” to Tanja after Schroeder went missing.

During the trial, Adler said she had no knowledge of any murder and on the day Schroeder went missing, she had seen him at the Owvanuk farm the couple had taken occupation of, but had not seen him leaving and walking towards the gate as Leunberg had claimed.

Leunberg, on the other hand, painted a different picture, claiming that he and Schroeder had conspired so that Schroeder could elope with his alleged mistress, only named in court proceedings as “Belinda”.

But Malusi doubted this claim after hearing evidence from Schroeder’s two sons, Tobias and Daniel, as well as staff who had worked for the family. They all labelled the allegation ridiculous.

It was a blood spot found on the VW Kombi parked on the farm premises, circumstantial evidence of reliable witnesses, and falsehoods presented by both Adler and Leunberg that resulted in their convictions.

“In my view, the version given by [Leunberg] is a pack of lies, a fabrication, and it should be rejected. He is a self-confessed liar.

“In my view the conduct of [Adler] is that of an accessory after the fact,” Malusi said.

Malusi found that both Adler and Leunberg were financially insolvent and that they had pretended through falsified documentation to be well-off.

Bakker said: “[Warrant Officer] Danie Siebert, who came across from the Commercial Crimes branch to help with the fraud aspect, ended up being a murder detective.

“It was like a puzzle of thousands of pieces that [Stander] had to build. And finally when he put that last piece in the puzzle, the whole story unfolded.”

Commenting on the case, current deputy director of public prosecutions,  advocate Indra Goberdan, said it was a long journey for the state after the trial eventually started  in 2016.

“Hats off to [Stander] and the investigating officers who did a fantastic job in putting pieces of evidence together.

“It took a long time to get to this stage and hopefully the [Schroeder] family can put this behind them — we were able to give them a sense of justice,” Goberdan said.

After their convictions, Adler brought an application to have her bail extended pending the outcome of sentencing. Judgment in that application will be heard on March 9.

For Tanja, her trust in the justice system had been restored.

“I saw first-hand the amount of work they put in, we had the best prosecutor on the case, we couldn’t have wished for anything better,” she said.

Tanja hoped both convicted murderers would get life terms of imprisonment.

“My hope now is for them to [tell me] where my husband’s remains are. I hope [Adler] will say something so that my family can have total closure.”

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