Couple found dead on safari in ‘brutal attack’ as horrified tourists spot bodies in river

A couple from South Africa has been found dead with stab wounds and their hands bound together behind their backs while on a safari holiday, and nobody knows what happened to them.

The bodies of Ernst Marais, 71, and his wife, Dina, 73, were found dumped in the Limpopo River within Kruger National Park on Friday (22nd May), Cape Times reports. They were spotted floating in the crocodile-infested water by a group of horrified tourists after being reported missing on Thursday.

“It was hoped that they had gone off the road and broken down after heavy local floods somewhere but then we got a call to say two bodies had been found,” a source for the national park said. “They were in the river at Crook’s Corner which has a bit of a notorious reputation and when our rangers got to the scene they pulled the two bodies up onto the riverbank to wait for police.

“Both had been stabbed in what was clearly a very brutal attack and had been thrown into the river, no doubt for the crocs.” They said this is a “very major incident” and noted that the couple’s green Ford Ranger had also been stolen.

Credit: Ernst Marais/Facebook

Nobody knows what happened, but an anonymous South African police source suspects the tourists unexpectedly came across a group of poachers, who killed them to stop them from alerting authorities about their illegal hunting of wild animals.

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“Their pick-up truck would have been an easy way to transport anything they were carrying if they were smugglers, and there are unfenced ways to get across the river into Mozambique,” he said. “A large manhunt is underway focusing on the assumption they are already out of the Kruger.”

Ernst and Dina lived in a retirement village in Mossel Bay, between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town. They also had a home on a wildlife estate close to the Kruger National Park in Hoedespruit, an area known as The Valley of the Elephants, which they visited regularly.

“The police came knocking on their door on Friday morning to see if they had returned from the Kruger early and then we heard Ernst and Dina had been found dead,” a neighbour in Mossel Bay said. “They were a lovely couple who loved going on safari and the residents are all in shock.” At the time of writing this, the investigation is still ongoing.

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Featured image credit: Ernst Marais/Facebook