For 26 years she has fearlessly prosecuted some of the Eastern Cape’s most violent criminals, but nothing could prepare specialist senior state advocate Zelda Swanepoel for the moment she came face to face with her father’s lifeless body.

Seeing her parent, Johannes Marx, 79, bound to a chair, the socks used to gag him still present, is a horror that will live with Swanepoel for the rest of her life.