True Crime South Africa

Episode 157 The Murder of Octavia and Maximo Engelhorn

When Julia Engelhorn divorced her husband Mario, she had no idea that a spark of fury had been ignited within him which would soon lead to an explosion of pain and grief for her entire family. (24-hr trauma helpline 082-821-3447) (Support the show on Patreon https://www.patreon.com/truecrimesa) (Support the show on PayPal https://www.paypal.me/truecrimesa)

Duration:: 1h 22m
Broadcast on:: 01 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: aac

[Music] If there was a moment where he wondered about the sanity of what he was doing, he was not about to let that stop him. He had a sense of love for them, but his desire to hurt her was far stronger. This is True Crime South Africa. I'm Nicole Engelbrecht and you're listening to episode 157, the murder of Octavia and Maximo Engelhoon. [Music] Since 2019, True Crime South Africa has been telling the stories of the victims of violent crime in South Africa. The podcast is independent. That means no big or even little corporates fund it. And that's just the way I like it. And it's the only independent podcast in South Africa that consistently charts in the top 10. Keeping a podcast like this going is time consuming. And for the most part, it remains a one-woman process. It's me, I'm the one woman. You, yes you, are the reason this podcast continues to flourish and help bring in tips on missing person and cold cases. If you'd like to help keep the show running, please consider supporting our sponsors, signing up to Patreon or PayPal, follow the show on the socials, as the kids say, and share it with your fellow partners in crime. You can find our social links and learn more about our sponsors at True Crime South Africa/Donate. Shoutout to this week's Patreon and PayPal Superstars. A huge thank you goes out to Palesa Lekranjane, Numzaan, and Nolo Motengu for your support on Patreon. Thank you so much everyone. Patreon supporters get one additional exclusive episode a month, a shoutout on the pod, and other exclusive content including Q&A's with me as and when it's available. It's a minimum of $1 a month. I think you should do it. Please, and thank you. Kaaba. This episode has been a long time in the making. The case was brought to my attention by a long time listener with personal connections to the family in question. I don't know if she would want her name mentioned, but you know who you are, and I thank you for connecting me with Julia and giving me the privilege of being able to tell Octavia and Maximo's story. As I've said before, the episodes in which I get to connect with a victim's family is always extra special to me. I will warn you that this episode does involve the death of children. But with that said, as hard as it is to listen to, it's equally important to hear. So even if you have to listen in portions, please try to if you can. Octavia and Maximo deserve it. My main source for this episode was Julia Inglehorn's book, Precious Scars, which is available for purchase on Amazon. I also had the honor of speaking with Julia, and you'll hear audio clips from our discussions throughout the episode. So, let's get into episode 157, the murder of Octavia and Maximo Inglehorn. The following episode may contain sensitive material, including descriptions of violence, sexual assault, or graphic descriptions of injuries to victims. If you feel you may be triggered by such material, please consider this before accessing our content. To access trauma counseling or services, please see the helpline information on our show notes. Julia Inglehorn grew up with three sublings. Her family loved in Switzerland when she was little, and when she was 11, they moved to the UK. As the Inglehorn sublings became adults, they scattered around the world, and Julia decided to study a hospitality and tourism degree. In her book, Julia explains that she comes from a fortunate background. Her grandfather is Kurt Inglehorn, who owned the multinational chemical company BASF. As a result of this lucrative business, the family was well off, and Julia was financially independent. This I mention only because, firstly, Julia is an incredibly humble and down-to-earth person, but also because this aspect becomes important later when Julia meets the man who would change the course of her life. I think it's also an interesting aspect of this case because it goes to show that intimate partner abuse really can and does happen to absolutely anyone and the ties that bind us to unhealthy relationships are not always just physical means. After completing her studies, Julia was unsure what she wanted to do. Although she had completed her degree, she really wasn't keen to get into the hotel industry, so she decided to spend some time with her sister, who was living in Spain, and study further. It was while living there and enjoying a night out at a bar one night that she met, Mario, deus, yellow. When they met in 2005, Julia was just 23 years old, and Mario was 12 years older than her. She admits that she felt he was completely out of her league at that time, and I think that speaks to a power dynamic that had already started to form. Mario came from an ordinary working-class family that as a source close to his family would later describe him, he'd always had delusions of grandeur. Mario was a qualified and practicing mexalo-facial surgeon when he met Julia. She saw him as polished, successful, and a man who was really in a different league to the other young men she dated before. Julia says that she felt incredibly flattered at the attention Mario paid to her. In her words, "He paid attention to me in a way I'd never experienced before. It was flattering." Now, Julia doesn't get too deep into exactly what level this attention took, but the relationship moved very quickly. And while I'm hesitant to pathologize every interaction in retrospect, I have to wonder if the level of attention he paid to her was perhaps equivalent to love bombing. The process of purposefully overwhelming someone without of context gestures and levels of attention that are not only inappropriate for the point they're at in the interaction, but also meant to completely sweep the individual off their feet and move them along in the relationship far quicker than they would have ever intended. Within a year of meeting Julia, Mario proposed to her. Julia acknowledges that she said yes, but she now knows that the feeling she had when she did this was dread. Not the nerves and normal anxieties she'd put it down to at the time. She was swept up in the moment, and as would become habits in their relationship, she didn't want to upset Mario. So she agreed, thinking she could always back out later, she decided it wasn't what she wanted. As was the first part of their relationship, the wedding planning process soon swept Julia away. Mario showed absolutely no interest in the process. It was clear he planned to show up, say his vows, and wanted little more to do with it all. He even made arrangements to return to work the day after their wedding. Mario had initially made a very good impression on Julia's entire family. Again, without retrospectively labelling everything, her description of his initial interactions with her family and how they would quite suddenly change after they were married makes me feel that he was loved bombing them too. Mario very much wanted to be part of the Inglehorn family, and it would seem that it wasn't necessarily only because he was in love with Julia. Before long, he would be asking for loans from the family. The trustees who administered the family trust funds were hesitance, but Julia wanted to be supportive toward her husband, and at that point, still believed he was a conscientious and skilled businessman, so she advocated for him with the trustees, and the loans were granted. Not long after the wedding, though, Mario began to show less and less interest in her family. By the same token, he seemed to have very shallow relationships with his own family too. He often told lies about where he was so that he didn't have to see his family members, and roped Julia into lying for him too. Julia and Mario began trying for children quite soon after they got married. After a year and a half, Julia fell pregnant, and she was excited to share the news with Mario, but he seemed less than enthusiastic, which seemed strange to Julia. She pushed it aside, though, assuring herself that Mario was just busy with his practice. In 2007, one of Julia's sisters moved to Cape Town, South Africa, and after visiting her there, Julia and Mario, who had been considering moving out of Spain for a while, decided that they loved the country and wanted to move here. It would be a process, though. Julia and Mario's son, Caesar, was born in 2009. Julia immediately adapted her lifestyle to being a mom, but Mario didn't seem to think his life needed to change at all. He had always enjoyed a very active social life, and he and Julia went out several times a week. Often, he would go out on his own too. When Caesar was born, Julia wanted to be a hands-on mom, and this, of course, meant she wouldn't be able to go out all the time like she used to. Mario, though, insisted that they could just hire nannies and nightmares, and there was no need for Julia to be doing all of the work herself. Of course, she wouldn't have had to do all of the work herself if Mario had done anything at all, but it was clear that that was never going to happen. Julia tried to come to a compromise to keep the peace, and tried out a few nannies, but despite the idea of being Mario's, he always seemed to find faults with the nannies Julia hired. In their early years of their marriage, Mario still had his dental practice. In true Mario fashion, anything that went wrong with the practice was never his fault. He had chosen a very poor location, and thus resulted in a low customer retention, but he would never admit this. Any issues at the practice were blamed on his employees or his partners. Despite his flailing business, though, Mario didn't have anything to worry about financially. Julia shares in her book that when they lived in Spain, the home they lived in was purchased by who, and she paid all of the expenses. She also paid for everything for Caesar. Mario was living a very good lifestyle, with absolutely no financial contribution. Despite this, Mario was incredibly controlling over their finances. Once Caesar was old enough, Julia decided she wanted to get more involved in some of the family businesses. It would involve a bit of a drive to destinations a few times a week, but Julia was excited to build a few interests outside of the home and add value to her family's businesses. Mario, on the other hand, was not at all keen on the idea. Again, not wanting to pathologize in retrospect, but Mario clearly did not want Julia having a life outside the home. And Julia says he was always very annoyed about what he felt was wastage of money. In this case, he claimed that Julia would be putting unnecessary mileage on the car and wasting petrol by working outside of the home. Thankfully, Julia decided she wasn't going to let Mario counter her plans and continued on with what she wanted to do. The irony was, of course, that Mario spent most of his time away from Julia and Caesar. She says that as the years progressed, eventually Mario was only coming in in the early hours of every morning. He would then pass out on the couch or in a chair at his desk. He barely saw his son and spent very little time with Julia either. Mario had always had ideas beyond his dentistry practice, but he'd never been able to show anything for the loan he'd taken from Julia's family. He'd claimed to have an investment business on the side, which he went into full-time after he alleged he'd suffered a debilitating injury while riding a scooter, which had essentially ended his dentistry career. The details around the accident were strange, though, with Mario waking Julia up in the middle of the night, demanding she take him to the hospital. He claimed he'd crashed into a wild boar and hadn't wanted to call the police and an ambulance at the scene because the boar was a protected species. The story hadn't really made sense to Julia at the time, but Mario was very good at creating a chaotic environment so that she didn't have time or bandwidth to really ask deep questions. Mario had sold his dental practice after this, and whenever Julia asked about the investment business, his responses were so overly complicated, and his stories so winding and complex, she gave up trying to understand how his business was doing. All she knew was that he spent the vast majority of his time working, according to him, and that left almost no time at all for their son. In 2012, the family moved to South Africa. The plan was that Julia and Caesar would go first and settle in, and then Mario would work to get his businesses in safe hands, and he would then join them. Mario did not visit very often at all, and when he did, he rarely stayed for more than two weeks at a time. Julia was happy in Cape Town though. She would later admit to herself that although she wanted Caesar to see his father, she did not look forward to Mario's visits. His time in Cape Town was always exhausting for her, that she was continuously walking on eggshells and needing to cater to him. Mario behaved as though he were incapable of looking after himself, and always wanted to be the centre of attention. Although Julia was not really keen on having another child, Mario began to insist that Caesar needed to have a sibling. He claimed he didn't want him growing up alone, and eventually Julia was one over to the idea, and then began trying for a second baby. That second baby ended up being two babies though. As in 2012, Julia discovered she was pregnant with twins. Julia would spend most of this pregnancy on her own in South Africa. Her husband made little effort to be involved in her pregnancy, or ensure she was cared for and safe. In her book, Julia reflects that although she was not blind to Mario's faults, on far too many occasions, she chose not to confront his behaviours, because for as long as she could remember, she'd really just been bad at confrontation. Her family had always jokingly called her Switzerland, because no matter what the disputes, she did her best to remain neutral and never aggressive. Julia was heavily pregnant over the holidays that year, and she couldn't fly, but didn't want Caesar to miss out on a family holiday overseas, so he accompanied her sister on the holiday. This was also supposed to be an opportunity for Mario to spend some time with his son, but Julia would learn that he'd only visited once, and even on that occasion, he'd left in a huff after a meeting with the family trustees, and hadn't bothered to spend any time with his son. On the 26th of August 2013, Julia was induced after driving herself to the hospital. Mario was in the car, but his heavily pregnant wife had to drive, as despite Julia's frequent requests for him to familiarise himself with the route to the hospital in case of an emergency, as she neared her due date, he seemingly never found an opportunity to do so. Regardless, Julia delivered the twins safely that day. A beautiful boy and girl, who she named Maximo and Octavia. Julia's mom came to South Africa to help her daughter adjust to life with three young children. Mario had allowed one month to spend in South Africa during the time the twins were born, and Julia would soon find that having both her mother and her husband in the house became untenable. She noticed Mario was sulking and broody while her mom was there, and he eventually complained that she was giving too much attention to her mom and not enough to him. Not only is that a totally immature take for a grown man to have when his wife is just given birth, but also it's incredibly too faced, considering he really was an expert when it came to not paying attention to his family. Julia was taken aback by this, and when Mario went back to Spain, she recalled thinking to herself that at least now she only had three children to take care of. Julia's sister had mentioned to her that she seemed happier when Mario wasn't there. At the time, Julia brushed the comments aside, but as it became clear that her husband wasn't making any move to complete the transition to Cape Town, Julia had to admit to herself that it was true. She was happier, and life was easier when Mario was not there. She was raising their children on her own. Mario would occasionally scup with the children, and Julia sent regular photo and message updates, but Mario rarely reacted, and his interactions felt superficial. Even putting his shortfall as a father aside, their personal relationship as man and wife had been distant and unfulfilling for a long time. Despite being the main breadwinner, Julia had never felt like she was in an equal partnership with Mario. He didn't seem to value her input on anything and would make her feel small when she voiced her opinions, calling her "little girl". I'm sure the age difference played and made a role, but Julia was, by now, in her cities, and the mother of three. She was financially independent and strong and smart enough to be running the family's life on her own in a foreign country, yet her husband seemed to find any opportunity he could to demeanor. He also continued to have a sporadic and confusing work history. Everything he did seemed geared toward gaining more status and what he saw as the position in life he deserved. He told Julia that he'd been appointed as honorary consul of Macedonia in Spain, the most important thing to him about this job is that he would get VIP treatments wherever he went. Julia began to stop making the efforts to reach out to Mario. She still sent photographs and updates on the children, but you no longer initiated telephone calls to him. When Julia pulled back, Mario did not push forward with any additional effort from his side, at least not in a positive way. Instead, he began to find new ways to manipulate and control Julia and the children from afar. Julia travelled overseas with the children often and with new laws developing around minors travelling over borders and additionally, because Caesar had not been born in South Africa and the twins parents weren't South African citizens, there was paperwork that needed to be kept up to date in order for Julia to be able to travel with them. Julia had been asking Mario for ages to sign the residency papers for the children. Around this time, he began to stall and then told Julia that he believed if he signed the papers, she would stop him from seeing the children. This was ridiculous, of course, and it never even crossed Julia's mind. The situation made her realise, though, that Mario was keen to make her life more difficult. In 2014, Julia finally admitted to herself that she no longer wanted to be married to Mario and after much deliberation about how to approach the conversation, being the non-confrontational person she is, she found his response strange. He claimed that he had no idea she was unhappy or that there was any issue at all in their relationship. Julia was taken aback. Their relationship had been incredibly poor for a long time and she couldn't believe that Mario had honestly thought there was nothing wrong. Despite his alleged surprise, he made no attempt to change Julia's mind. Instead, he made some vague reference to his failing health. Julia was eventually able to drag out of him, a claim that he was suffering with brain aneurysms, and Mario said he likely wouldn't live long enough for her to divorce him. Then he said it didn't matter anyway because she didn't love him anymore. Julia would later come to understand that it was likely that many of Mario's claims about his health had been fake, made up to draw attention to himself or get out of doing something he didn't want to. She would never have any positive proof of this, but there was also never any real proof that he was sick either. There were also other things about Mario's life that Julia didn't really know for sure, but strongly suspected, almost entirely in retrospect, unfortunately. Besides the alleged while bore incidents in which Mario had refused to call the police and in ambulance to his location, there were other incidents Julia recalled where Mario reacted strangely to the presence or possible involvement of the police. Julia still wonders today exactly what he was worried about. She does know that the investment business he was running was essentially a loan shock operation, and in addition to that, she would later discover that his habits of never having anything in his own name was a way to dodge taxes. But as Julia set out to put the divorce proceedings into effect, she had no idea about any of this. She simply felt that she'd fallen out of love with her husband and had been living as a single mother for most of their marriage. Mario initially seemed happy to agree to the divorce, and Julia found it oddly easy to come to an agreement about the financial split. She wasn't really asking for much though. In fact, considering Mario hadn't really contributed to their family financially at all, there wasn't anything she wanted from him. She agreed to let him live in the house in Spain, which she owned for a year, and she would pay the utilities and the like. She would also cover the costs of his visits to South Africa, and he would get a once-off bulk amount of money in settlements. With Mario claiming he wouldn't contest us, Julia went ahead and got the papers ready, and when she and Caesar went to Spain later that year, she and Mario met at her attorney's offices to sign off the paperwork. Unfortunately, Mario found something small in the paperwork he didn't like, and he threw a huge tantrum, using to sign the papers and saying he would get his own lawyer instead. On the same trip, Mario displayed a behaviour that terrified Julia. She still needed Mario to sign the paperwork she needed for the children's travel and residency. She hadn't brought the twins with her because they were too small, and she needed to get their paperwork in order. One of the parts of the plan for the visit was that Caesar would stay with his father for a few days. The separation agreements included the stipulation that when the children stayed with their father, and Nanny, the children knew, would stay with them to assist. Mario, after all, had never really cared for his own children, but he was also an incredibly difficult man, and on this occasion, he soon sent the Nanny away. And when it came to the day on which Julia was supposed to collect Caesar, Mario began refusing to hand him over. He also refused to sign the paperwork she needed to get him back to South Africa. He strung this art for several days, even making Caesar phone his mother and tell her that she had to go home and fetch the twins, and then his father would let him go home with her. Julia had to hire a private investigator to watch Mario's home, and one morning she got a call telling her that Caesar had left with the gardener and his girlfriend. The man was a longtime employee of Julia's, and his girlfriend also worked at the house, so Julia wasn't worried that Caesar was with them, but she did see her as an opportunity to collect him. That day, she was able to safely retrieve her son, and she also got some concerning information from her employees. The gardener and his girlfriend told Julia that they no longer wanted to work at the house, because they were afraid of Mario. Julia was so desperate to get her son safely back to South Africa before Mario discovered she had him that she didn't get a lot of information about the nature of their fear, but she did give them permission to leave their posts and wish them well. This was just one of the instances where people began to express that Mario may be dangerous. Julia had never considered it. He was full of himself, yes, and manipulative and certainly seemed keen to make her life as hard as possible, but she had never even considered the fact that he might be a danger to her or her children. When Julia's family had heard about his alleged brain aneurysms and his claim that he didn't have long to live, they too had asked her to be careful around him. In instances where a partner is not physically abusive but abusive in other ways, the level of danger that partner poses can easily be underestimated. I've covered several cases like that on the podcast, and of course we know that the most dangerous time for any victim of abuse of any kind is when they decide to leave the abuser. But soon, Julia was safely back in South Africa with Caesar and reunited with the babies. Octavia and Maximo were growing fast, and Julia describes how their personalities were developing. Octavia was always the one that kind of was much more strong-headed, so she got that from me, and if anything was not her way, she would scream down the house. Maximo was always much more relaxed. If she took a toy from him because she wanted it, he had no problems. He was always more quiet and observant, so Octavia would be the one that would pull those ahead, and he would watch from a distance and, you know, after a while, make up his mind and then follow. It was very funny how different they were, but how well they obviously got along because they constantly played together. They were always together. Of the next year, and a bit, Mario continued with his attempts at making the divorce process as difficult as possible. Julia came to realize that he was not really sad to be losing their relationship at all. If anything, he was only unhappy that he would be losing the financial benefits and perceived status of being married into her family. He continued to use the paperwork for the children to manipulate her, and his lies became bigger and more complex. At one point, just before he was expected to move out of the house in Spain, so it could be sold, Mario claimed that the house had been broken into, despite nothing of the sort ever having happened, and the home having excellent security. Mario never could provide a proper list of what had allegedly been stolen, but by the time Julia eventually saw the house again, it had been almost completely stripped of many pieces of expensive art and other cherished items. Julia never was able to figure out what had been stolen if the break-in had ever really happened, or if Mario had sold the stuff off himself. In addition, when Julia was finally able to get Mario out of the house and approach the local estate agent to put it on the market, she discovered that Mario had already put the house on the market, except he couldn't legally do that because he didn't own the house. Julia had to wonder what he would have done if he'd managed to find a buyer. When the children visited with Mario during this time, he controlled how often she would be allowed to speak with him. He refused to use her nannies, and claimed he preferred to care for the children himself, which was a first for him. But Julia later discovered he'd had a nanny looking after them the whole time. Despite all of his attempts to thwart the process, Julia was eventually able to get the divorce decree granted by a South African judge in November 2015. After the divorce, Mario continued to make Julia's life difficult whenever he could. He would have the children for visits, but refused to tell Julia where he was living. She was understandably uncomfortable with her children being at an unknown location for after two weeks at a time, so she had to use the PI again to find out where Mario was keeping the children during these visits. By the beginning of 2017, Julia felt as though she and Mario were finally beginning to slip into some semblance of a routine post-divorce. He was pretty quiet most of the time, and she kept to her side of the divorce arrangements, in that when he came to visit the children in South Africa, she would pay for his flights and accommodation, as well as ensure he had Wi-Fi at the place he was staying at. On the 17th of March 2017, Mario arrived in South Africa for a planned visit with the children. Julia had arranged a flat-in-heart bath for him, and she prepared all the children's belongings in advance. Mario had agreed to have Julia's trusted nanny, Sadie, stay over with the children while they visited with him, and Julia drove through to the flats to drop the morph. She noticed that, although he'd already been there for a few hours, he hadn't made any effort to buy groceries for himself and the children, so she went across to the store and stocked up on the necessities. She was grateful that the children settled in easily with Mario that day. Sometimes the twins, especially Maximo, didn't want to go with Mario, and that made things difficult, because Mario would get angry and insinuates that Julia was influencing the children against him. On that day, though, they settled in quickly, and as Julia left, the twins were settled on the couch with their tablets happily watching a program. She didn't want to disrupt them, so she slipped out of the door at ease in the knowledge that Sadie was there with them, and she would see them again in two weeks. She would look back at that moment so differently in the future. Over the next two weeks, Mario, as usual, made it difficult for Julia to have calls with the children. As the end of the visit neared, Julia looked forward to collecting them and to Mario going back overseas for a while. On the day that collection was arranged, the 6th of April, Julia was supposed to fetch the children from the flats at 1pm, but early that morning, as she was getting out of the shower, she heard her Skype calling and saw it was Mario phoning. She let it ring off, and called him back as soon as she was finished. As Mario's camera activated on the call, and the room he was sitting in came into view, Julia immediately noticed that the curtains were drawn, and it was very dark. Mario asked her if she had liked to come to the flats earlier than arranged, and they could fetch Caesar from school together and then take the children for ice cream. Julia loved the idea. She wanted the children to see her, and Mario is still being courteous and kind to one another, so she leapt at the opportunity to spend some time together, even though it would likely be uncomfortable. She had something else she needed to do before she went through to the flats, so she arranged to arrive at 12 city. Mario tried to push for her to come earlier, but eventually agreed and wrung off. Julia got a message from Sadie shortly afterwards to say that Mario had told her she could leave earlier that morning, and she wouldn't be needed anymore at the flat. Julia thought nothing of that. The children were coming to her that day, and Mario was right. She wasn't really needed by him anymore. When Julia arrived at the flats just after 12 city, Mario opened the door for her, and she noticed the flat was still dark. The curtains drawn. He motioned for her to be quiet, saying softly that the babies were sleeping. She thought that this was odd as it wasn't their nap time, but figured they were probably not really in their routine. She stepped inside and closed the door behind her. Then she saw several kitchen knives spread out across the kitchen counter. She immediately thought this was incredibly dangerous with small children about when her eyes moved back to look at Mario properly. Julia noticed something was very wrong. Although he was usually not the most emotive of people, his face was completely expressionless. And when he spoke, it was monotone, almost robotic. He told Julia that he was going to make her life as difficult as she had made his. Julia's heart sunk as she realized he had not invited her there to give the children an experience of their parents getting along. Then Mario reached for one of the knives on the counter and held it out to her, saying, "You should kill me before I kill you." Fear flooded Julia. She had never really felt a risk around Mario. Something within him seemed to have shifted. Her thoughts immediately went to the twins. In an attempt to reason with him, she asked him what he was doing, warning him that he was going to wake the children. What Mario said next changed everything, forever. The children are dead. With her heart pounding, Julia's body began to react on its own. She had no idea why he was saying such a horrible thing, but there was still a knife in his hand. She found herself reaching out and placing her hand over his as he held the knife. This distracted him for just a second, and Julia used that to her advantage. She ran upstairs to where she knew the children had their bedroom. There, she would witness what no mother should ever have to see. Octavia and Maxima were both laying on their backs in their beds. The covers were pulled up to their chins. Octavia's head was tilted slightly to the side, and Levidity, the reddish, bluish, purple discoloration of the skin, due to the settling and pooling of blood following death, had already started to collect on the side of her face. Tiny bubbles of blood rested on Maxima's lips. His stomach googled. Julia pulled the blankets off of her children, still not willing to admit to herself that Mario had been telling the truth. As she touched her baby's bodies, though, the same chubby, perfect, warm body she'd cuddled to sleep on countless nights throughout their lives, she knew. Both were already cold and rigid. They had been dead for some time. In that moment, Julia was so overwhelmed with grief that she did not think at all about the danger she was in, as Mario appeared in the doorway. He was still holding the knife, but just stood there, taking in the scene. Suddenly, Julia thought about Caesar. She demanded to know where her son was. Mario said he was fine. Mario would come up and down the stairs a few times, as Julia sat there with her babies. She had no concept of time and shock had her acting out of instinct, but she put both the children on one bed and held them sobbing into their bodies in her days. After a few moments, though, a sort struck her that she was in danger, too. And Mario had not come upstairs in a while. Julia realized she couldn't go back downstairs and confront him, as he would likely kill her. So she opened the window and managed to lower herself down, out of a fourth floor window, down a drain pipe and onto the floor. Being in shock, she had no idea that she injured herself several times on the way down and was bruised and cut up by the time her feet hit the parking lot of the complex. The parking spot where she'd left her card, what felt like moments earlier, was empty, and she realized Mario had left and stolen her car. Julia ran up to the stunned security guard, screaming that Mario had killed the babies, and he needed to phone the police. Then, a horrifying thought struck her. Was Mario on his way to fetch Caesar from school to kill him, too? Her bag was still in the kitchen of the flat, so she didn't even have his cell phone. The guard handed him hers, but shock and grief froze her mind, and she couldn't even figure out how to Google Caesar's school name to phone them. A woman who'd been passing through stopped to assist, and she was able to get the number, and Julia confirmed that Caesar was still at school. She told the school that if Mario arrived, they should not give Caesar to him. Police arrived on the scene at one city PM, although it felt like an entire lifetime had passed since she'd pulled into the complex and walked into the flat. It had been just an hour between the moments that now punctuated Julia Inglehorn's forever altered life, before and after. Julia gave the police a halting explanation of what had occurred and the registration number to her vehicle, and the lute was put out for the vehicle and Mario. He had locked the flat up when he'd left, locking Julia inside with her deceased children. So police had to break the door down. The small hope that Julia had harbored, that perhaps she was wrong, and her babies were not beyond help, was dashed at 2.09 PM, when paramedics declared both Octavia and Maximo dead. As the news spread among Julia's friends and family, her sister collected Caesar from school and took him to their home. Although still deeply in shock, Julia wanted to be the one to tell her son, that the brother and sister he loved so much were dead, and his own father had killed them. Mario, dear, Siella, was arrested within just a few hours in Taka. He'd attempted to flee from police, but was arrested. Upon his arrest, it was discovered that he'd stabbed himself in the abdomen. There were also scratches on his neck. He was taken to hospital, where he was placed under armed guard, and there after on suicide watching hospital. Julia's family and friends rallied around her and Caesar in the days after the murders. Although most had grown to see Mario in a rather poor light, no one had ever dreamed he could be capable of cold-bloodedly murdering his own children. Julia gave her official statements to police the day after the murders. She was advised to expect a process to move pretty slowly. Thankfully, she had a South African divorce lawyer who helped her to understand what would happen next and how the system worked in South Africa. In addition, she says that the police were good at keeping her updated about the case. Caesar found it incredibly difficult to adjust. Julia understands that he was and still is in a particularly difficult position, given that Mario was his father and he loved him. And this was also his first experience with death, and the fact that it was his baby brother and sister just added to the complex situation. He could not understand how and why his father would do such a thing to his brother and sister, and the adults in his life were in no position to help him understand this, because no one else could really comprehend what Mario had done either. In the early stages of the investigation, very little information was given to Julia, because police had to rule out that she was not in some way involved. Initially, of course, police only had her word that the children were deceased when she had arrived, so they would have to piece together the evidence to get a full picture. Mario claimed that he remembered absolutely nothing about what had led to the children's deaths. He was essentially saying that if he did have something to do with their murders, then he didn't remember, and the implication was that he claims to have had some sort of psychotic break. As the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place, Julia learned that on the morning the twins had been killed, Mario had dropped Cesar for school, and then he and the twins had been involved in a car crash. The truck driver that Mario drove into said that Mario had purposefully moved his car into his lane and accelerated, striking his vehicle head on before he could swoop out of the way. Miraculously, neither Mario nor the twins were injured in the accidents, but those on the scene said he had behaved very strangely and initially refused to get out of the car. When he did get out, he refused any check-ups for injuries for him or the children. The rental car he was driving had been totaled, and Julia finally realized why he'd stolen her car that day. A kind stranger had offered to drop him and the twins off at the flat. Julia's heart broke. When the woman told her that as she tried to leave after dropping the morph, the twins had clung to her legs and seemed fearful to be left alone with Mario. The revelation of this incident showed that Mario had attempted to kill the children and himself, presumably at least once before. Mario's family had not reached out to Julia at all since the twins' murders. She understood that it must be incredibly difficult for them to come to terms with what had happened, and she also understood that they would be supportive of Mario. Eventually, Mario's brother reached out to Julia and she met with him. He was kind to her and just wanted to know what had happened from her perspective. Interestingly, a friend and legal representative of Mario's brother, who accompanied him, mentioned to Julia offhand that she had always felt he had delusions of grandeur. Even though Mario was in prison, Julia's family was concerned for her safety. He'd often mentioned that he had friends who had worked in the KGB and when the comments were made, the implication was that these friends would do things for him that he needed to get done. Julia was the most important witness in the case, so it wouldn't be beyond the realm of possibility that Mario might try to get rid of her. His deep hatred for her had already been made clear by the fact that he would kill his own children to hurt her. Mario had secured the services of famed defense attorney William Booth, and the bail hearings set for him were postponed twice as Booth sought additional evidence he felt would improve Mario's chances of getting bail. The chances of this were pretty slim, considering he was not a South African citizen and was a major flight risk. As the prosecution prepared for a trial, more information cancer lights that shed serious darts on Mario's claim that if he had committed the murders, he'd done so in a psychotic break. The first was that he had planned an escape. He had told a friend who was supposed to collect him from the airport in Spain when he arrived back from South Africa that he didn't need to fetch him. He told his friend that his plans had changed and he would be flying somewhere else. Octavia and Maximo did not have any external wounds on them, so Julia had to wait for the autopsy results to discover how they died. The pathologist found that the twins had been smothered, but the toxicology test showed that they'd also been drugged. The drug that Mario had used valproic acid was not available in South Africa, so Mario had to have brought it into the country with him. Thus spoke to premeditation. He had known when he'd left Spain that he was going to kill the children. Mario had also disposed of the container, which means he tried to hide his actions, dragging the children with detract from his claim that if he'd committed the murders, he'd done so in an altered state, especially since he'd planned and prepared to bring the drugs with him. In addition to the flights, Mario seemed to be planning to take to a different destination when he left South Africa. Police also found fake passports in the flat. One of the passports had belonged to an unknown woman, and it would be one of the many unanswered questions in this case. Who was the woman Julia wondered? Had she been Mario's girlfriend? If so, was she planning on meeting him wherever he was fleeing to? Either way, it seems clear that the murders were premeditated, and despite Mario having stabbed himself in the stomach, it did appear that he had planned, at least at some point, to survive the incidents himself and flee from justice. Taking this into consideration, the prosecution was successfully able to get bail denied for Mario in September 2017. In the ensuing months, the prosecution attempted to come to an agreement with Mario and his defense attorney. Julia would not agree to anything less than 20 years direct imprisonment, but Mario refused this, and as he had done with their divorce process, he did everything he could to delay and thwart the legal process. The trial was initially due to start in March 2018, but further delays ensued, and the trial didn't start as planned. In the interim, Julia, Caesar and her family had done what they could to begin the healing process, but the looming trial and the lack of justice for the twins made this difficult. Finally, another trial date was set for April 2019. The prosecutors assured Julia that there would be no more delays allowed, and justice would soon be done. As Julia struggled through another Christmas without two revered children, she thought that, at least by the following Christmas, the legal part of the nightmare would be over, and she and Caesar would be able to move forward. But just as Mario had done throughout their relationship, he decided that things were going to happen on his terms, and no one else's. On the 14th of January 2019, Mario Bierce-Yella was found dead in his prison cell at Paul's More Correctional Facility. He had taken an overdose of pain medication, which he seemed to have been hoarding for months. The overdose was so massive that he'd lost consciousness while still having a mouth full of tablets. When Julia received the news, she was torn. In a way, she was grateful it was over, but now her babies would never get justice in a court of law. Most importantly, though, she was worried about how this was going to affect Caesar. He had wanted to speak with his father while he was awaiting trial, and everyone had advised Julia it wasn't a good idea. She promised Caesar that as soon as the trial was over, she would arrange for him to be able to speak with his father so that he could get the answers he wanted. Now, he would never have their chance. Unfortunately, Mario did not leave a note for Caesar or anything to remember him by. All of his belongings were in other people's names, so his son would not inherit anything from him. Between 2017 and 2019, as part of her grieving process, Julia wrote letters to Octavia and Maximo. In her book, Precious Scars, she includes parts of these letters. Julia says that writing the letters as well as the book was cathartic. It helped her to get her emotions out on a page. It also helped her to understand how she had actually found herself in the place she did. As part of the evidence collection process, she'd been asked to go through all of her emails with Mario and print out the ones that spoke to his deep anger to water. In going through their communications raids, Julia started to see how much she had looked away from. In putting Mario's behavior on paper, Julia began to see the patterns. She was able to oscillate the aspects of Mario's personality that she hadn't seen before in the same light. Or she'd put down to him just being difficult. She now understands how deeply narcissistic his behaviors were and recognises his deep manipulation of who. Although she understands that she's in no way at fault for what Mario did, in learning more about his behavior, Julia has come to realise that there may have been ways she could have dealt with him differently if she had understood. Her book is a way for other people to perhaps spot the similarities in their own relationships and see the red flags. I would like to think that I'm a bit more aware. I think when I was with Mario, either because I was too young or naive, I don't know, but many things just went over my head. I didn't have the knowledge, maybe I was just kind of blind. I think in the beginning he wasn't always a balance, let's say. It kind of just slowly came, or maybe I just slowly then realised. Again, I only once I came out of the relationship, that's when I had my goals, this happened. I didn't actually divorce him because I realised that he had emotional abusing me. It was only afterwards that I had that realisation. And I think now, I would have to say I'm probably even more strongly naive on purpose because I don't want my relationship that I had with Mario to affect me now, that I don't want to become a pessimist. I don't want to think negatively, but even more so because I don't want to become like him. And I think that's one thing I am fighting, not fighting, but consciously sometimes trying not to think badly about somebody, for example. But I do hope that I'm a bit more aware, especially within myself, that I know that's not okay. I'm not happy with it and say no. I think that's a big thing, that I was more allowing a lot of things obviously because I didn't have that awareness. Financial abuse is an often must red flag in relationships, and it can take many forms. Often it involves an abuse of partner restricting access to finances or forcing them to become reliant. In Julia and Mario's relationship though, the financial abuse looked a little different. Mario seemed happy to love off Julia's income, and in addition, he also wanted to control how she spent money in certain aspects. While only having one income in a relationship is certainly not the definition of financial abuse, it does become abusive when one partner simply chooses not to contribute in any way toward the family. Mario was also lying to Julia about his own finances and hiding things. As opposed to, I mean, when I met him, he had a doctorate and worked hard and everything. But I think he just had a personality that when he realized, "Ah, this is easy. I don't actually have to do anything or not work as hard because, I mean, as a doctor, you work a lot and it's hard work. And you see patients and everything, that maybe he then became more complacent. I said, "Okay, well, you know, this can be very easy." And I allowed him to become like that, you know, I never complained. I never said, "Hey, but you know, maybe you should pay for your son's school or halfway or, you know, I don't know something." And so I think as many things, it's both sides, really. Another part of divorcing a person who has negative personality aspects like Mario did is dealing with custody issues. Although Julia had never dreamed that Mario would be violent toward the children, having to let him take the children after she understood that there was a risk he could withhold them from her was a nightmare. We see this in many divorces where the parents live in different countries or are capable of moving the children around without the other parents' consent. Parental abduction occurs frequently and sometimes a mother or father will lose their children completely when an abusive partner disappears entirely with the children to a different country. Julia had never once had Mario to be separated from his children. Their move to South Africa had been a joint decision. It was Mario who had not made the effort to follow through. I asked Julia whether she had felt helpless when she needed to hand the children over to Mario during that time. I think I felt I had, for me in the beginning, I thought, you know, I have the divorce papers, paid states, this and that, and we both signed it, we both agreed. So, for me, that was kind of my pillar to hang on to. But in the first year or so, I had to leave the kids within one. I mean, still today, I suffered from anxiety and in the first time it was awful. And it went on for a long time. What Julia enjoyed is anyone's worst nightmare. Most people will agree that losing a child is the ultimate grief. Losing too. And your ex-partner, being the murderer, is undoubtedly a horror of proportions most will never understand. In attempting to heal from her deep loss, Julia sought out resources about child loss and grief and found that they were few and far between. She turned to spirituality to help her. So, I think, I was never really very special. I was brought up a Catholic and everything, but it never really resonated with me. I went to see an angel reader and a Sam that I mentioned in the book. And with her, you know, but before the twins died. And she kind of sometimes helped me to figure things out and so on. But especially after the twins went from the day I decided I needed a divorce up to now, she was a great help. Just not because she told me what to do, but because she reinforced that what I was thinking and feeling is right. The messages that she got were exactly the same. So, I was just not trusting my own instinct, instinct yet. And that helped a lot to help me realize, okay, so it's the same. So, it's what I'm feeling and knowing inside of me, but I'm not listening to is what I get from whatever's out there. And I think with the death of the twins, it reinforced it more. I am more trusting myself with what I feel spiritually and just listening to myself really. So, I do, I think what we need, you know, with religious, especially we try and reach something out there. It's God, Buddha, Allah, whoever you follow, but it's actually always in ourselves. All the love and joy we want, any answers we need, we just have to reach in and be able to listen, be willing to hear. Writing the book was also part of that process. Well, for the book, it kind of really went very slowly and step by step because my therapist, he suggested, you know, write a journal. And I was never really into writing journals. And even now, it's not something that comes naturally to me. And then he suggested write led to the twins, which are then did. And then I think at some point, because I didn't have that support system, I didn't occur to you to look elsewhere. I tried to find it in books, and I went to the bookstore and tried to see what books that are out there for parents who have lost children. But there were not many. And again, maybe it was just a market at that time, or maybe in South Africa, I don't know. But it was mostly about partners who had lost this spouse to cancer, or maybe a bad car accident or something like that, a long term illness, but not really kids. And it didn't occur to me that it's obviously a very difficult subject and most people don't really want to talk about it, or hear about it. And then I thought, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to write a book, but then obviously that took a while, but it was, I realized, while I was doing it, it was obviously very therapeutic, because just writing it and going back through the letters, because when they died, actually decided to write a book, I think it took me about a year, I'm not sure, or maybe less. So it was very therapeutic to read through the letters again, and it helped me to kind of figure out what happened when, because when you have this trauma, you completely forget things. There are things that just don't stick, and even now. And I think I just realized that because I couldn't find anything I wanted to be able to help other parents, that would happen to go through the same thing. And then once the book was published and everything, I said, okay, this is it, you know, it'll take care of itself. And then I realized that that's not the way this. I actually have to work at it. If I wanted to reach people, I had to be more proactive. Recognizing that the book wasn't going to market itself, and really wanting maximum and Octavia's story to reach more people, Julia started precious scars.org, a website that she hopes will become a place for parents experiencing this very specific type of grief to find resources. One of the aspects of this traumatic experience that Julia really found difficult and wanted to use the website to assist with was that she'd had no idea how to approach the grief journey with her son. She'd initially engaged with him about the twins deaths just through pure instinct. But she says that she would have loved to have had access to more information about children and grief, so she now uses the websites to provide this to others. I asked Julia about how Caesar is doing today. I mean he obviously had it very difficult and he still suffers because he always had a very good relationship with his father and his father was very good with him. They had a strong bond. And I think one of the reasons why he did not harm Caesar but the twins is because he didn't have that bond, you know, during the year and a half of the balls, he never saw them, he never, and I mean they were born in South Africa and he was in and out constantly so he didn't have that same connection. Because he said it was difficult to understand firstly that his father was capable of something like that, and why he was not harmed so he had a lot of survivor skills. And then obviously mourning the death of his brother and sister because he got a long wait with him obviously they had their fights and everything but he would read to them and he would play with them and everything. So it was very difficult for him, and just to understand, obviously he was serving at the time and trying to explain to him when even I could understand, and nobody really could that's, you know, that it was just something that sometimes just happened. And now I mean he is better, I had him, we went through different therapies, different kind of modalities to see what would help him most. And once we moved to New England, I told him, okay, this is the last one, I won't bother you anymore but if you ever need help, you know, you can always come and ask. And he's been good so he went, obviously he's 14 now he's gone through, he's going through hormonal changes and teenage years and everything. So he's good at saying, okay, I want to talk to somebody now I need an extra support, which is great so he notices that he needed and he asks for it. But it's still obviously will always be difficult because his father will always be somebody he lost, but then at the same time somebody hates because of what he's done. So he's got a very, a lot of conflict within him. The Scars.org is an incredible resource for anyone dealing with grief of any kind, but particularly for those in the club no one wants to be in, parents who have lost children. Julia welcomes the stories of those who have suffered their own losses and who have advice or guidance to share or anyone who, like Julia, doesn't want their children to be forgotten. Julia is now in a healthy relationship and she has a daughter with her new partner. She, her partner and her children live in the United Kingdom. In addition to her book Precious Scars and the website by the same name, Julia also has a Facebook page and an Instagram accounts dedicated to Precious Scars, helping others in similar situations and really keeping Octavia and Maxima's memory alive. I asked Julia, you should like to leave listeners with any parting message. I think an important part of it for me is that everybody who has a misfortune of going through this, you know, you are strong, you can, you will live through it. I mean, it's something that you will always carry with you, but you will be able to come out the other sides and still do have a meaningful life. And maybe the tragedy will help you to create something like I did with Precious Scars or maybe not, it might take you another direction. But there is still hope out there, I don't want people to give up and think, you know, that's it's because it's not, you know, you still have a lot of life left in you, you should live it. And so I think I find it always important that there is a message of hope that this is not it, you know, this is not the last of it that you can still do many things. And usually, I think the way the healing journey is ongoing for everybody, and you find your own way and own things that help you. And I think usually nature is always a great healer, may be swimming or hiking up table mountain or whatever you used to like before, you know, continue doing that. I found that art has helped me a lot. And also now, as you go on teacher, which I also love and, you know, it brings a lot of self awareness with it. And everybody has different things and for me it's just important that, especially if it's something that has happened recently, that you have to be very patient because it will take time, but you will get there. But I was never really told, maybe people don't want to know, is that you will always have this grief. It's something that you just then grow around and always carry with you. But it's not, there's not a end states, it's always going to be there. While never really understand why Mario did what he did, Julia says that she does believe he loved Octavia and Maxima. She says, though, that she has come to understand that his hatred for her was stronger than his love for his children. I think that Julia describes the pain of this loss perfectly when she says that it is something that remains and you grow around it. It becomes part of who you are going forward. Although Julia says that she doesn't want the attention to be on her and she always wants the focus to be on the twins, I must personally say that I think she's done an incredible job of not allowing Mario to take any more victims. She did not allow what he did to do what he had intended to destroy her. Certainly, at most of at least partially destroyed the person she was before, but she's rebuilt and grown around it, ensuring that every person she helps in the future through the legacy she has helped to build for Maxima and Octavia will reignite their memory over and over. Like the light of two candles being passed on from hand to hand, illuminating the darkness. I'd like to end this episode off by firstly thanking Julia Inglehorn for speaking with me and encouraging listeners to read her book Precious Scars, which is available for purchase on Amazon. Please also visit her websites and partake of the resources there and share them with others and follow Precious Scars on social media. As I've said before, there is no better way to pay homage to victims than by using the words of those who knew and loved them. So I will end this episode with the words that Julia used to say goodbye to Octavia and Maxima at their memorial service. Together, you came into this world. Together, you left. My hands can no longer touch you, nor my arms embrace you. My lips won't be able to kiss you or tell you I love you, but in my heart you will remain forever. Maxima and Octavia Inglehorn burst gently. If you'd like to hear more victim-focused true crime content, please subscribe to True Crime South Africa on Spotify or the platform you're using to listen right now. If you're looking for something still related to real-life stories, but often with a more positive slant, you can check out my new podcast series I Live Through This. You can follow both podcasts on social media, or on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, thank you for your support, and I'll chat to you soon. [MUSIC]