Pierre Basson

Pierre Corneille Faculyn Basson (3 January 1880 – 10 February 1906) was a serial killer in the Cape Colony, present-day South Africa. He murdered at least nine people, including one of his brothers, in and around Claremont, Cape Town, so he could later claim their life insurance payout.

Facing imminent arrest for the murder of a farmer, Basson shot himself.

Early life Pierre, the oldest of four siblings of farmers Johannes and Anna Basson, was born in Paarl on 3 January 1880. He came from a respected family of Huguenots who were early settlers of the Cape Colony, and was generally regarded well. However, unbeknownst to most, Basson started exhibiting violent tendencies from an early age in the form of cruelty to animals. Various sources give differing accounts about what exactly he did, but a notable incident was him roasting a cat alive over a slow fire.

Afterwards, he stopped committing violent offences for a number of years but gained a reputation as a petty thief—which caused issues at home. Despite his criminal tendencies, Basson exhibited above average intelligence at school and later graduated from one of the most prestigious colleges in the Cape Colony.

On 15 October 1900, when Pierre was around 20 years old, his father died after a short illness, leading to Pierre receiving a sum of about £2,500 in life insurance. Later on, rumors arose that the elder Basson might have been the victim of a homicide, but this has never been substantiated.

Murders As adult, Basson started working as an insurance agent and rent collector, and would frequently convince various acquaintances to insure themselves in his name. Between 1903 and 1906, many of these acquaintances either disappeared or died in suspicious circumstances.

The first notable death was Basson's younger brother, Jasper. Around 1903, the two brothers went fishing in Gordon's Bay – later that day, Pierre returned alone and claimed that his brother had fallen off a cliff and drowned. In anger, Basson at first threatened to shoot the newspaper editor, but after calming down, he forced his mother to issue a public statement in which she claimed to have indeed handed over the money to her son.

On 10 February, several officers went to the Basson residence to dig out the fowl house, as they had received a tip from a Khoekhoe woman named Caroline in which she claimed to have overheard Pierre ordering somebody to help him bury a body there. Unbeknownst to them, Basson was inside the house and watching them dig, and about half an hour after the dig began, he suddenly started apologizing to his mother and went to a nearby room. There, he retrieved his brother's Bergmann pistol and, after admitting that he was guilty and implicating his best friend as an accomplice, he shot himself in the mouth, dying instantly. Eventually, authorities found Schaefer's naked body covered in quicklime, which bore signs of being drugged and strangled. Family members would later claim that they had seen Pierre digging in the fowl house over the previous week, supposedly to install a new drain, but all claimed that they were unaware of what his actual motives were.

Following his suicide, Basson was implicated in at least nine murders over the course of three years. Three men alleged to be his accomplices in Schaefer's murder - Basson's best friend Tobias "Toby" Louw, Hendrik Christian van Holdt and a Malay servant named Abdulla - were later arrested for supposedly burying the man's body in the fowl house. In the end, charges against Van Holdt and Abdulla were dropped and only Louw was set to stand trial, but was acquitted of all charges and released.