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PHOTO: Mark and Colette Mirams have established themselves in Uitenhage, Colette’s hometown.
It’s Thursday 10 January and Riku Nortjé, one of the notorious “suitcase murderers”, anxiously waits to finally leave his Johannesburg jail cell.
His brother, Jano (41), is still in Pretoria’s maximum security prison for the murder 18 years ago of a Dutch pensioner, whose body they’d cut up and stuffed into three suitcases.
And Colette Mirams (formerly Nortjé, née Van Staden) – the third role-player in the controversial trial – is having a drink at her poolside in Uitenhage, Eastern Cape, where she now lives.
She’s far removed from the drama unfolding in Gauteng where her ex-husband’s brother is being released. For her, life has turned out quite differently than it has for the suitcase-murder brothers.
We catch Colette (39) by surprise when we call at her house. “Tell your photographer to f**k off!” she shouts angrily as she hides, dressed in a bathing costume, behind a curtain.
Later in her boutique we overhear her telling two clients in no uncertain terms that we’re unwanted visitors poking our noses into business that doesn’t concern us.
“We all have dark things in our past . . .”
Read more of Herman Scholtz’s article in YOU 24 January 2013.
