Chivhu killer mom gets four life sentences

Harare (New Ziana)- The woman from Chivhu in Mashonaland East province, Emelda Marizani, who slit the throats of her four daughters in 2020 to spite her cheating husband, was on Friday sentenced to four life sentences for mass murder by the High Court.

Marizanhi was convicted on all four counts of murdering her children.

It was her defence that she was mentally unstable when she committed the murders.

But the court ruled that evidence proved that she planned to kill her children long before the incident and was cruel to save her life while ending those of her young ones who had nothing to do with the differences between her and her husband, Lameck Brande.

In sentencing Marizani, High Court judge Justice Munamato Mutevedzi said she deserved four life sentences- one for every child because the murders were committed in aggravated circumstances.

Mutevedzi said the killer mother committed the crimes in a mass murder style by killing her children simultaneously over a relative period of time without cooling off and on an enclosed geographical location.

Marizani, the court ruled, used multiple fatal methods to kill her victims after giving them four cups laced with poison and instructing them to drink it.

Mutevedzi said Marizani also chose two extreme modus operandi used by murders: that of brutally killing her children after forcing them to take poison.

“The accused is a highly dangerous criminal; the court will show little to no mercy to a mother who butchers her own children. She does not deserve a second chance; she also does not deserve to go back to society.

“She is therefore sentenced to life imprisonment,” ruled Mutevedzi.

During the trial, the court proved that Marizani reached a breaking point after she confronted her husband’s girlfriend, one Chelsea Bepete, who told her that she was pregnant from a relationship with her husband.

Bepete is also alleged to have told Marizani that she was no longer loved because she was failing to deliver a son as per her husband’s wishes.

Earlier on the fateful day, Marizani had fought with her husband over Bepete’s issue.

She then went home where she poisoned her daughters’ juice before she cut off their heads and set the house on fire.

Marizani then took funeral policy papers for her children and surrendered herself at the police station.

She had also gulped some rat poison and was rushed to hospital where she was treated.

New Ziana