Crime News: Multiple murderess gentle bird lover
Hoover, J. E.
Former cellmate recalls friendship with Charmaine Phillips, multiple
killer turned bird lover
ADELE BALETA
Beware of Sharky that was the word in South Africa's jails when you were
sent to Kroonstad Prison for women.
"Sharky" was the alias of Charmaine Phillips, who had been sentenced to
four life sentences for her role in the "Bonnie and Clyde" murders in
the early 1980s.
Phillips is still in jail and is desperately applying to be released.
But far from justifying her terrifying Sharky nickname these days, she
has changed into a gentle person who keeps a pair of lovebirds as pets,
her former cellmate reports.
Women sent to Kroonstad Prison used to get word via the grapevine that
Sharky was "bad news" and it would be a good idea to give her a wide
berth.
So you can imagine how petrified Irene Prins was when she was convicted
of fraud and sent to Kroonstad for a term in the Free State jail some
years ago.
Speaking in her modest Claremont home this week, Mrs Prins, 30, says she
was "terrified" of meeting Phillips alias Sharky whose reputation as an
aggressive cold-blooded killer was legendary.
But, now eight years after her release from the Free State "hell hole",
Mrs Prins paints a different picture of the woman who, with another
prisoner called "Tiger", ruled the other inmates.
The attractive mother of two toddlers described Phillips, saying: "She
hardly smiled. She kept to herself and did not allow anyone to get close
to her. If you made trouble with her, she would nudge you and threaten
you saying: I'll f you up'."
But Mrs Prins says Phillips, now 34, has softened over the 15 years she
has spent inside. "She was devastated and cried for days after her pet
cockatiel, which followed her everywhere, escaped over the rooftops of
the prison. Eventually she managed to buy a pair of lovebirds."
She and Phillips shared a dormitory and became good friends. Phillips
was given four life sentences and her lover Pieter Grundlingh was sent
to the gallows for the murder of four men in June 1983.
In court, she admitted to killing the men but she now insists she did so
to try to save Grundlingh from the hangman's noose.
She now says she never pulled the trigger and wants her freedom.
Mrs Prins, formerly Irene Flusk, also believes Phillips should be
released. She said hardened inmates, including Theresa Hall, who was
jailed for 14 years for two attempted murders after lacing her husband's
and mother's food with arsenic, spoke openly about why they were inside
but not Phillips.
Three weeks before Mrs Prins was released in 1990 after serving five
years of her 15-year sentence, she plucked up courage to ask Phillips
about the brutal murder spree that had shocked the nation.
Mrs Prins said: "Charmaine never said a word for about two hours and
then she said: No. I never did it'."
She told Mrs Prins that one of the victims who was tied to a tree had
begged her for mercy. As she was reassuring him that he would not be
killed, she said she felt a bullet, fired by Grundlingh, whizzing past
her ear and hitting the pleading man.
Phillips told her fellow inmate she was badly beaten by Grundlingh every
time she tried to leave him.
"When she does not wear make-up, the scars from the beatings are visible
she is petite and takes great pride in herself," Mrs Prins adds.
A talented artist, Phillips paints portraits of the warders and inmates.
She also earns money by selling greeting cards. She runs the
hairdressing salon and has won prizes for her hair creations. She
painted a portrait of Mrs Prins prior to her release.
Kroonstad jail is a tough place to be incarcerated, says Mrs Prins who
cried openly when she spoke about the suicide of a 19-year-old inmate
and friend. Arrested as a teenager for credit card fraud, Mrs Prins's
face was beamed into South African homes on SABC TV's Police File as one
of the country's most wanted criminals.
Now a qualified chef and happily married, she said she had no qualms
about being in the
newspapers. "I am not ashamed of my past. I regret it, but I have been
punished and I have learnt," she says.
Like Phillips, she had a troubled childhood and left home at an early
age.
"I got into drugs, got involved with a syndicate and began a
relationship with a bank robber."
She escaped from prison three times. Once she paid a police officer to
set her free. Scars bear testimony to when she slit her neck and her
wrists as part of a successful escape from hospital. On another occasion
she swallowed a razor blade and lost an ovary as a result.
"I am lucky to have my children," she says.
Phillips's greatest desire, Mrs Prins says, is to be reunited with her
16-year-old son Piet Junior, who is the spitting image of Grundlingh.
The boy was a six-month-old infant when he became an unwitting fugitive
as his parents raced across the Free State, Transvaal and Natal to
escape a huge police manhunt.