Three blacks were convicted Tuesday of murdering an American student because she was white, ending a trial that forced South Africa to confront the bitterness of its racial division.
Convicted of killing Amy Biehl in a black township where the white Fulbright scholar was helping with voter education ahead of South Africa's first all-race election were Vusumzi Ntamo, Mon-gezi Manqina and Mzikhona Nofemela.High Court Judge Gerald Friedman called the murder a "vicious attack" as he announced the decision before a mostly black courtroom where about 90 supporters of the accused and friends of the victim packed the gallery.
Bucking threats and intimidation, only six prosecution witnesses came forward to say they saw a mob of black youths stab and bludgeon the Stanford University graduate to death on Aug. 25, 1993, in Guguletu, near Cape Town.
Biehl had been driving black friends home when their car was stoned and stopped. According to testimony, she was pulled from the automobile and chased down by the crowd shouting the anti-white slogan "One Settler! One Bullet!"
Originally there were seven defendants. On the first day of trial, charges were dropped against three because a key witness said he was afraid to testify. The fourth defendant, a minor, was put in the custody of his parents and ran away. He has since been found and will be tried separately.
Biehl, 26, was in South Africa to research women's rights and help educate voters ahead of the election that brought Nelson Man-dela's African National Congress to power in April. She was killed two days before she was to return home to Newport Beach, Calif.
Melanie Jacobs, a friend who shared an apartment with Biehl until she died, expressed gratitude to witnesses brave enough to testify. "The case would have fallen flat without them," she said.
Asked if she thought justice had been done, she replied, "I didn't want Amy to be dead . . . I hope they rot in jail."
Reached by telephone in California, the victim's father, Peter Biehl, said he felt "relief and closure on the one hand, and a sense of just beginning on the other," explaining that the family would pursue his dead daughter's missions - human rights and women's rights in particular.
"We feel sorry for the families of the accused - now convicted," he said. "In every sense, this has been a tragedy for everyone."
Biehl's mother, Linda, said she did not want the killers to be executed. "We are not believers in the death penalty, and Amy wasn't." She said she hoped for a sentence that would be "as rehabilitative as possible."
The family did not attend the final phases of the trial. Linda Biehl and a daughter, Molly, had been harassed during one point of the trial and jeered by the defendant's black supporters in the gallery.