Episode 210 The Murder of Ben Rheeder

When Margaret Reeders has been bin suddenly fell ill, the local doctor suspected he was suffering from a particularly bad case of gastroenteritis. But after his painful death, neighbours and families started to wonder where the Margaret's visits to a local pharmacy may have somehow contributed to his demise. This is True Crime South Africa. I'm Nicole Engelbrecht and you're listening to episode 210, The Murder of Ben Reeder. True Crime South Africa is an independent podcast and relies on listener support to keep going. There are many ways you can support the podcast, you can check out all of them at truecrimeSouthAfrica.com. The most impactful way is by joining True Crime South Africa exclusives on Patreon or Paybrew or Apple subscriptions or YouTube Memberships. Among other benefits, you'll get free access to online TCSA events, exclusive episodes, discounts on my audiobooks and ad free episodes, so you don't have to listen to me say this every week. Listen through to the end of the episode where I discuss more ways you can help support the podcast. I thought long and hard about what case I was going to cover this week. If you're listening to this in real time, you probably know why. And if you're listening to this in the future, google what was happening in ukulele in South Africa in September 2026. It felt strange to be releasing an episode that didn't at least acknowledge the fact that many South Africans are currently living in deep fear around an ongoing investigation into nine murders which may or may not have been committed by the same offender. I did consider doing an episode about this ongoing case but I decided against it. You know I generally do not cover active cases unless a family member specifically requests it and I know that I'm not going to do any harm to the case. In this specific case I also don't feel that speculation is helpful at all, even less so than with a so called ordinary case. Now I did put up a social media post on the podcast socials discussing some of my very broad opinions and what I think we can do to help. But I will never be that person who covers something specifically for clicks and views or because it's trending so ultimately I decided to release an episode with this acknowledgement of the fear and suffering that so many are experiencing right now while not diving deeply into it. There are many qualified opinions available online. Dr. Gerard Labaskakni and Dr. Miki Pistorius have both weighed in. I did make some very general comments about serial offenders and their patterns from my experience on ENCA News earlier this week and I think that's about as far as I will go. If you're on the podcast's Facebook group I am updating there with verified information from the SAPS every day. I found in the past that cases that are quite old are sometimes a little easier to cover and listeners seem to engage with them in a different way. I suspect it's because it feels like the time creates distance that allows for us to think about some pretty horrendous crimes differently. Many of you will know that I'm a little obsessed with female offenders not like in a weird way but in a I really think their crimes should be spoken about more way. So today's episode is a female offender and it's a crime that took place quite a long time ago but absolutely is still happening today. Perhaps in slightly different ways but far more often than I believe anyone really wants to think about. In researching this case I used a chapter of Benjamin Bennett's book Murder Will Speak as well as a few historical archive sites. So let's get into episode 210, The Murder of Ben Reader. The following episode may contain sensitive material including descriptions of violence, sexual assault or graphic descriptions of injuries at two 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 in our show notes. Margaret's Elizabeth Harker was born on the 6th of September 1922. Her family of origin had an interesting background. Although the ancestors had been well off enough to have a whole area in Nasna, Harkovol named after them. By the time Margaret was born her mother who had married her cousin was living in deep poverty. Margaret was the oldest of the family that would eventually grow to 13 children, born of her mother's two marriages. The Harker children often wore acts and went to bed hungry. And this was not just a tale Margaret would one day tell for sympathy. Her siblings, who by the time they were telling the story were certainly not interested in lying for their sister, also confirmed the difficult circumstances of their childhood. Margaret's and her sisters from her mother's first marriage spent a lot of time in and art of orphanages when they were children, especially after their father died and before their mother remarried. The girls specifically were sent to these institutions it was noted for training in domestic duties, such as cooking and cleaning, as really their only way art of poverty at that point in history would be to find a husband who could look after them financially. Margaret was remembered as someone who, regardless of her home situation, always took great care about how she looked. For most of her childhood she only owned one dress for every growth phase she had, but she would wash it every night to ensure it was clean for the next day and immediately meant any tears or damage that came up. Margaret would later say that although the institution she and her siblings were sent to was strict and they had to work very hard, it was a far better life than being at home with her family. They had a comfortable bed and three meals a day. In many ways she'd hoped it might last forever, but by the time she turned 16 she was informed that she could no longer stay at the orphanage and she would have to start making her own way in the world. And so shortly after her 16th birthday Margaret arrived at a home in Paul where she'd been hired as a housekeeper. She lived with and worked full that family for the next five years. When she was 21 she decided she wanted to live somewhere new. She went to work at a boarding house in Weinberg and then got hired as a cleaner at a hotel in Nasna. It was there that Margaret's hacker would meet her first husband. The man who was only referred to in records as 'snaman' was working as a barman when he and Margaret met. They married not long after, but Margaret claimed she quickly realised she had made a terrible mistake. Her husband was not just irresponsible and a heavy drinker, but he was also in trouble with the law, a lot. In fact, she said that during their brief marriage she spent more time behind bars than he had in their family home. Despite these long periods of separation the 'snaman's did manage to produce two daughters' and Margaret seemed to truly shine in her role as a mother. She struggled significantly financially though, just as she had as a child, and her husband did little to help with that. One of her deepest fears was that her children would be removed from her care and placed into an institution in the same way she and her sisters had been as children. Eventually, 'snaman' became more of a drain than an asset to Margaret, and she divorced him while he was serving yet another prison sentence. And while Margaret would speak only of her husband's poor behaviour in their marriage, those who knew her around that time said that she'd done very little to improve the marriage either. In fact, it was alleged that she had been quite a lot of time with other men while her husband was incarcerated. I often take any mention of a woman's sexuality with a truckload of salt when it's mentioned in this era because let's face it. Any woman who was not solely virginal until marriage and then remained married to the same man until death while ensuring she was married. made herself physically available to him at his whim, was seen in a negative light. And any woman who did appear to engage in sex for pleasure was often described as phrases like 'highly sexed' or 'sex crazed'. And interestingly, these types of descriptions are used very often to describe female offenders from this era too. Whether there's a link between these women refusing to follow social norms and then also going straight over the line and committing horrendous crimes is up for debate. But it might also be that the best way to create a negative image of a woman at this time was to allude to her having sex outside of a marriage. Either way, Margaret is alleged to have embarked on multiple affairs during her first marriage and would continue to engage in casual relationships after her divorce. In all fairness, it is quite well established today that offenders in certain categories often do tend to have personality traits and disorders that can present as poor quality relationships and what could be described as sexual promiscuity. Margaret was, according to those who knew her quite proud of this though and allegedly bragged that she could have any man she wanted with a married or single. By 1951, Margaret had decided to return to Nisena and live with her mother for a while. And it would be at a train station while waiting for a connecting train that her pals would cross with Benjamin Rita. Ben Rita had been born and raised on a farm near the train station. He hadn't wanted to make farming his career though and he'd worked his way through various professions until finally landing a job on the railways which paid relatively well and allowed him to be able to purchase a home in Dichrode. I'll go a park. In what is now the Eastern Cape. Along the way, Ben had married a woman of Italian descent and had two children. But when he met Margaret that day at the train station, his marriage had just broken down and he was heading out to visit his family on the farm with his two children. Ben was nine years older than Margaret who had just turned 29. Had it not been for the natural easy interaction of children, Ben and Margaret may never have spoken that day. But Ben's two children had started to play with Margaret's schools and the single parents got chatting as Margaret waited for her train and Ben waited for his brother to collect him. The pair soon figured out that they were both newly single and spent some time complaining about their respective erstwhile spouses. Ben claimed that his wife had been a terrible mother and he discovered that she had been cheating on him. Margaret explained how her husband had spent more time in prison than in their home. Many would say that Margaret's had seen an opportunity in Ben almost immediately. He was clearly out of his depth trying to wrangle his two children and when one of his children fell and hurt their leg while playing, he had no idea what to do. Thankfully, Margaret sprung in and wrapped the child's leg. Ben was grateful and seemingly impressed. And before parting ways, they said perhaps they'd communicate by mail sometime. Margaret couldn't get Ben Rita out of her head, though. And a few weeks after arriving at her mother's house, she sensed the man a telegram, proposing an arrangement that she believed would work well for both of them. Ben she knew had two children without a mother and her two girls could do with a father figure. Margaret suggested that she could come to Ben's home in Algoa Park with her children and work as his housekeeper to begin with. Then perhaps they could see if anything more developed from there. Ben quickly agreed and Margaret's and her children were soon hated to Algoa Park. The housekeeper to wife track was relatively short and by 1952, Margaret's hawker's name became Margaret Rita. Something that everyone agreed on was that Margaret's propensity from childhood to keep a neat appearance had continued through into her adulthood. The home was kept as neat as a pin, and in addition, Margaret was also very good at running the house to a strict budget. The children and Ben's clothes were always mended until they reached the point of no return. But one thing that Margaret didn't seem to have a problem spending money on, were new dresses, shoes, and hats for herself. A few problems crept into the Rita house hold quite quickly. The first was that despite having behaved quite maternally towards Ben's children initially, Margaret began to complain about their presence in her house, saying that they should go and live with their mother instead. Every time Ben had to work over time, Margaret accused him of cheating on him, and if he visited the pub with his friends, she complained bitterly to neighbours about his drinking problem. The most significant issue, though, emerged when the readers brought a lodger into the home to help with finances. The 22-year-old man who was given a pseudonym, Cornelius Elz, during coverage of this case to protect his identity, moved into the Rita house in October 1955. According to the young man, Margaret had become flirtatious with him almost as soon as he'd moved in. She, on the other hand, insisted that it had been him who had pursued her, and she'd eventually just given in to his demands, and they'd started in a fair. Ben had allegedly come home one night and found the pair in a compromising position. It's alleged that Ben had physically assaulted Margaret, but the lodger remained. Margaret would later say that she really felt it was Ben's fault that the affair had continued, because he was well aware of what would happen if a young man was in the house, and yet he kept the lodger on. The children were also badly affected by this incident. They heard the screaming, and had allegedly walked in to see Ben throttling Margaret. Margaret would later be asked why she had not ended her marriage on that day. She said that she was well aware that she had done something wrong, but also said that Ben had been drunk that night, and if he'd been sober, he would have reacted differently. Despite this, Margaret's attitude toward Ben did change that day. She soon began to tell her neighbours that she and Ben were not well suited as a couple, and she'd really only married him because she felt sorry for him. At times when Margaret was a little more heated, she would go even further, saying that she wished a slow, painful death for her husband. She also often spoke about how her "sood" husband, Ben was her second, just as a reminder, would be a much younger and more sprightly individual. One of her most famously quoted phrases came from this conversation when she said that she was tired of "licking off old bones". And it seems that she'd started to take targeted action to achieve the opportunity of having a "sood" husband, and not by divorce. Cornelia Sulse would later testify that during their affair, Margaret had told him that she'd once put rat poison on Ben's lunch sandwich, but he tasted it and thrown it out before eating enough to kill him. She also told Alice that once Ben was dead, she'd like to take him as her third husband. Alice claimed that he thought Margaret was talking rubbish and just making up stories, so he didn't really take much notice of her. He did, however, ask her why she would think of killing Ben rather than just divorcing him. And Margaret allegedly said that she couldn't bear the thought of another woman moving into the house and using all her things. By 1957, the reader marriage was completely on the rocks. Margaret had apparently stopped having sex with Ben because she claimed that he'd been having a phase, and she was worried he would bring diseases home. Of course Margaret herself was still having an affair with Cornelia Sulse, but that seemed to be an entirely separate matter in Margaret's mind. On the 27th of April 1957, Margaret Reader set out from her home and walked to a pharmacy three kilometres from her house. In between her house in Dark Road, and the pharmacy in Kemsden Road, where she headed, there were two other pharmacies, one that she would usually use for such purposes. She never could explain why she had specifically gone to the pharmacy furtherist from her home that day. When she answered, she asked for poison to get rid of a huge ant problem she had at home. The man behind the counter recognised her, and greeted her by name. If this interaction had happened before she had asked for the ant poison, perhaps she would have asked for something else instead. But at that point she had no choice but to write her name and address in the poison register. One else may have seen this as a warning sign, and not continued on to do what she eventually did. But not Margaret. On Monday the 29th of April, Ben Rida fell ill at work after eating his lunch. He became very pale, sweated, profusely, vomited and experienced severe stomach pains. He went to see a doctor, Dr. Cecil Bloch, who gave him some muscle relaxants, and told him he'd probably feel better soon. Although the abdominal effects wore off during the day, the pain soon started to spread to other parts of his body. By the time he got home, he was complaining of pains in his legs and shoulders. By the evening though, the abdominal symptoms returned, and Ben was vomiting continuously. He made his way to an emergency room at midnight, and Dr. Bloch was summoned to treat him there. Dr. Bloch gave Ben a pathody injection, and told him to come to his rooms the next morning for a follow-up. The next day though, Margaret called Dr. Bloch's office, and told him that her husband was doing much better, according to her, but he didn't quite have the strength to get to his office for the appointment. Bloch told her to continue giving him the medicine he'd prescribed, and let him know if his condition changed. Several days later, Ben was still in bed, and Dr. Bloch was summoned back to the house. At this point, Ben remained nauseous, and still had pain in his legs. Dr. Bloch prescribed medication for the nausea, and more pain medication, and said to call if things didn't improve. While Ben lay in his bed at home, Margaret visited a woman who did tea leaf and card readings. The woman later said that she had been hesitant to read Margaret, because she'd instantly got a bad feeling from her. She also usually didn't read for many, and she didn't read for people outside her immediate circle. But Margaret had been so insistent that she'd done it, essentially just get rid of her. She told Margaret that she saw a man laying down in her home, and felt that he was ill. Hesitantly she indicated that death did appear as a possibility on the cart, and this may be linked to the sick man. The woman told Margaret that she should return home quickly and get medical assistance for the man, because if she didn't, she saw only trouble in her future. The nature of the trouble, she couldn't tell, but it would certainly be something terrible. Margaret left the reader's home, was an ominous feeling, but soon shook it off. Before warned was forearmed, and if she knew trouble was possible, she could do her best to avoid it. By the seventh of May, Ben had still not recovered, and in many ways he was only getting worse. A co-worker of his, from the railways, arrived at the house unannounced to visit, and was shocked at his colleague's condition. Ben's tongue was swollen, and white, and he could barely swallow anything. He was clearly in severe pain, and the co-worker asked Margaret when last he'd seen a doctor. "Oh," she said, "she'd been so busy with housework considering she didn't have any help around the house, that she really hadn't had time, but she suppose she could arrange for another doctor's visit at some point." The co-worker was appalled, and insisted that she call a doctor immediately. Dr. Bloch was also surprised at his patient's decline since he'd last seen him, especially since he hadn't heard anything from the readers, so he'd believed that Ben must have improved. But he was still experiencing significant symptoms, and new ones too. His severely swollen tongue was very problematic, and whatever small amounts of liquid or food he could get in were being lost to almost constant vomiting and diarrhea. After administering additional medication and prescribing more to be taken later, he told Ben and Margaret that he felt Ben should be moved to hospital if dramatic improvement did not happen in the next few hours. He was very concerned that Ben was going to become dehydrated, and there had to figure out what was causing his symptoms. He indicated that he would contact the hospital and find out if there was a bed available, and if there wasn't, he would arrange for Ben to have hospital-level care at home until they could admit him. Shortly after the doctor left, Margaret visited some of her neighbours, and began to tell them that her husband was dying, and he would likely be dead in the next few days. The neighbours were horrified as they'd had no idea his condition was that bad. She mentioned Ben's looming death to another neighbour too, and in the same breath, said that at least she knew she'd be taken care of financially, as Ben had several policies and death benefits as a railway employee. After hearing the news, some of the neighbours paid a visit to the readers, and found Ben in a terrible state. He was clutching his stomach, saying that the fires of hell were eating at him. The neighbours suggested that a doctor should be called, but Margaret said she couldn't see the points of getting the doctor out there again that night, and she'd called again if she hadn't heard back about the hospitalisation in the morning. Ben had been unable to eat anything for days, and even drinking water was a difficult task. The neighbours suggested that she should feed him some oxo broth, and she seemed to like that idea, and went off to prepare it. Later that night, when family members, including Margaret's sister, arrived to visit, Margaret was spooning oxo broth into Ben's mouth, while he fought her, and cried out intermittently that she was torturing him. Margaret's brother, who had moved in with the family a few weeks before, also witnessed Margaret's continuing to attempt to feed the oxo mixture to Ben, who only screamed with every mouthful. Visitors throughout the night spoke of horrific scenes in the reader's bedroom, with Ben called up into a ball in pain, begging for relief. This remained quite composed, though, at one point. She even left the visitors with her arriving husband, and went to finish her eyeing. When Ben readers final moment came, later that night, Margaret's brother was present. Ben had stood up on shaky legs and stumbled around the room as though trying to find the cure to his illness on the walls. He was delirious, and eventually clung to the bedroom curtains, wailing. Margaret shouted at him to stop as he tore the curtains. Then he collapsed onto the bed, gossiped several times, and then he was gone, completely still, and undoubtedly dead. The reader's neighbours awoke that night to Margaret's screams filling the streets. She yelled at all who had listened that her husband was dead. Over the next few hours, neighbours, friends, and family came and went. Some paid their respects in person to Ben's body. Others were accosted by Margaret before they could do so, and spent more than an hour caught in a discussion with her about the best way she could claim the widow benefits due to her. Later came more strangeness. When people began to ask when Margaret was going to call the mortuary to remove Ben's body. "Oh no," she said. He hadn't wanted that. Ben had specifically said that he wanted to be buried out of the house, and he didn't want any autopsy. Most thought that this was strange, and wondered how long she planned to keep her husband's body in the house, but didn't want to upset a newly bereaved woman, and thought perhaps she'd change her mind once the shock had subsided. Dr. Bloch was summoned to the reader's residence, and was more than dismay to find the man he'd been treating deceased. After some examination, and considering what he'd witnessed over the last few days, Bloch felt certain that Ben had died of a serious and untreatable case of gastroenteritis. Later he would complete insurance forms from Margaret, which reflected the same cause of death. At this point, Ben Reader's death seemed nothing more than a tragic set of circumstances. His death certificate proved it, and he would not be subjected to an autopsy either, as they seemed no need. But as many would let us say, Margaret's had never seemed to be able to leave well enough alone. On the day after Ben's death, she made an incredibly strange statement to her neighbour, which would start to unravel everything. As her neighbours set sipping tea and trying to console her, Margaret suddenly told the woman that she believed Dr Bloch had injected her husband with something that had ended up killing him, because Ben had been threatening him with some information he had. The neighbours were stunned, and didn't have much time to process their shock before Margaret came out with another stanna. She was so cross with Dr Bloch for putting her and her children in this position that she was of a mind to ask the man for grocery money to tide her through until her benefits and Ben's insurance came in. Her neighbours asked her why she wasn't calling the police, and having an autopsy done to prove or disprove her suspicions. No, Margaret said, if Dr Bloch had killed her husband, it was not for her to be the judge. He would be judged and punished by God. In any case, she said, she was in such a precarious position financially, and she claimed the good doctor had promised to help her with groceries, clothing and other miscellaneous items if she didn't make a fuss over her husband's death. The neighbours left the house that day with the strange feeling. None of this added up, and the grieving widow seemed to be behaving very oddly. Several days after Ben's death, his body remained in the house and had begun to decompose and emits a smell. Visitors to the house were now more confused than ever as to why Ben's body was still sitting in the house, and Margaret said she was waiting for the funeral director to confirm the day of Ben's burial, so that he could be placed in a coffin and buried directly out of the house. She did not want his body to be out of her sight for even a minute before it was placed in the ground and covered over. This finally happened on the 10th of May, and Ben Rita was finally laid to rest. Ben's brother, David, had been very shocked to hear of his brother's passing. Margaret had written the family a letter just a week before Ben passed away, and had said nothing about him being sick. The feeling of unease over his brother's sudden passing only grew after his funeral when Margaret started to share that she wasn't very happy with Dr. Bloch's treatments of Ben. She then claimed that Dr. Bloch had asked her what she wanted him to write on Ben's death certificate. This only intensified David's suspicion that something very strange was happening with his brother's death. He didn't believe for a moment that a doctor would behave in the way Margaret had described. There had to be more to this. When he realised what his sister-in-law was due to receive in financial inheritance, David only became more concerned. While Margaret was certainly not wealthy, she would undoubtedly come out of her second marriage far better or financially than she would have in a divorce. A sum of £275 was due from the Railways and Harbour Superannuation Fund, £41 from a Railway Fund, and £35 from the Table-Based Sick Fund. She was also entitled to a widow's pension of £17 a month and a temporary allowance of £12 a month. There was another insurance, but that would pay art to Ben's first wife as the mother of his children. To give you a very rough idea of how much money that is, of course the rent did not exist as a currency in 1957, so it's difficult to apply a direct conversion and then inflation, because inflation in South Africa and inflation in the UK would have been very different. But roughly you'd be looking at about £100,000 in buying power today, and that's obviously without the house and Ben's car and the monthly benefit she'd be receiving as a widow. If she divorced Ben, she would have received nothing close to that. Another benefit in Margaret's mind at least of now being a widow was that she was free to have additional relationships, and she very quickly started hunting for that third husband she'd imagined. A bus driver who'd been engaged when he met Margaret would let a testify that he'd essentially been stalked and harassed by the woman for months until his fiancee became convinced that something was going on between them and left him. The man had never wanted anything to do with Margaret, but she wouldn't leave him alone. She sent him gifts, he sent them back, she sent her daughter with love notes for him, he returned them unopened. Eventually Margaret moved on to another target. The man's life was left in tatters. Margaret would always claim that this man and others she was tied to during this time had pursued her and not the other way around. Thanks to Margaret's unfailing gift of the gab, neighbours were still talking about the strange statements she'd made in the wake of, and even before her husband's death. Margaret seemed unperturbed by the gossip. But when a detective constable came into town on an unrelated theft investigation, his ears pricked up at the whispers he was hearing. Really strangely, the police officer's surname is also Rita, although he's not related to Ben in any way. His first name is Pietrus, and I'll refer to him as DC Pietrus to avoid any confusion. Many heard the gossip about the death of Ben Rita and his widow Margaret's strange behaviour. DC Pietrus immediately recognised the woman's name, and not because they shared the same surname, but because he'd engaged with her on a prior case. The man had been called out to the dark roadhouse on a prior occasion, when Margaret had reported that she'd had washing stolen or furlorn. Although as a police officer he knew very well how damaging gossip and false information could be, DC Pietrus listened to those who would speak to him. But up until one morning, when he received a call in his office from a woman, he hadn't really had anything solid. But this woman said that she knew a young man who wanted to speak with the police about his experiences in the Rita house. That young man was Cornelia's else, the young lodger and Margaret's affair partner. In that phone call he learned all about Elsa's first-hand experience of Margaret's strange behaviour, Ben's sudden onset illness, and how much the man had suffered before he died. After hearing that Elsa had been told by Margaret that she had put rat poison in her husband's lunch one day, and although he'd fallen ill, he hadn't died, DC Pietrus was able to get a search warrant for the dark road home. Margaret Rita was understandably shocked when police arrived at her door, but they cleverly downplayed the situation. They never once mentioned murder, instead simply saying that they were looking for poisonous substances which her husband may have had access to, which may have contributed to his death. At this point, police only had information from Elsa to work with, with regard to rat poison. Even though Margaret wasn't technically being accused of anything, she became very defensive. She insisted that there was no poison in her home, and even if there was, were they insinuating that her husband may have taken poison on purpose? "There was no way," she said. "They were ever so happy together." Then Margaret demanded to know whether it was the life insurance company who had sent the police, where they're trying to get out of paying her what she was due. "No," the officers said, "this had nothing to do with life insurance." The police found nothing of value to their investigation in the house that day. But Margaret again simply could not remain silent, and followed the men around the house, babbling about how terrible her husband's death had been, and pretty much conveying her entire life story. With nothing in hand, police decided that their next port of call was to check the poison registers of all the pharmacies in the area. Of course there was a possibility that a murderer would travel far out of their own area to acquire the weapon their plan to use, but police decided to try anyway. naturally, they started with the pharmacy right across the road from the police station, which was on Kempston Road. Yes, Margaret had gone to a pharmacy, kilometres from her own home, but she'd also chosen one that was right across the road from a police station. There, of course, police found what they were looking for. The poison, register, entry completed with the name they sought, Margaret Reader. With this evidence in hand, officers went straight back to Margaret, and asked her whether she'd ever purchased and poisoned. Flustered for a moment, she eventually managed to say that she had, it was about four months before she thought, but she couldn't remember where. She claimed that she'd brought at home to use in the house, but when her husband had seen it, he'd been very upset and insisted that she get rid of it, as the children may accidentally consume it. She'd told Ben that if he didn't want it in the house, he could get rid of it himself, she claimed, and he'd done exactly that. She'd never seen the ant poison again. The police left that day, once again not really having much tangible evidence to prove murder, but Margaret was not satisfied till it's sleeping dogs lie. Soon after the latest police visit, she was at their officers, demanding to speak with someone in charge. She wanted to lay a charge of harassment, she said. The police were causing people to think that her husband's death had been something other than a natural tragedy, and she'd had quite enough of the gossip. Margaret was essentially sent away, told that police were only carrying out their duties, and if there was any public gossip, it was only being fueled by her own behaviour. But felt sure that she'd set police straight, though, and since they hadn't found any poison in her home, surely now all this murder Malaki would fade away. Unfortunately what Margaret did not know, as she walked away from the police station, past the pharmacy where in April that year she purchased the bottle of ant poison, and headed back home, was that police were setting out to retrieve physical evidence of the true nature of Ben Reader's death, and not from her home, but from his body. They were preparing to exume Ben and perform the autopsy that should have always been carried out. Margaret would not know about this until it was done, but she couldn't seem to pass on the opportunity to complain about her plight to neighbours and friends. To one close neighbour, she expressed her horror at the police's treatments of her and her children, and in the same breath warned that if they came knocking for an interview, the neighbour should please not tell them that her husband was a regular drinker, because she was very worried that might affect the insurance payout. She veered between seeming confidence that nothing would come of the investigation, and then becoming so despondent at the situation that she told people she was thinking of buying a gun and shooting her self and her children. On the 11th of June 1957, Ben Reader's body was exhumed and transported to the pathologist for an autopsy. Margaret read a nondescript few lines in the newspaper that day about the occurrence with a growing putt synostemic. The article didn't give any names, but described the individual being exhumed as a man who had died in May of stomach complaints. It left little doubt in Margaret's mind as to who they were talking about. Despite her legal troubles, Margaret's had continued on her quest to find a third husband. Cornelius else had long since moved out of the house, and soon an 18-year-old railway worker replaced him. He'd initially arrived at the house to purchase Ben's car, which Margaret was selling. But the woman 15 years his senior had seemingly started grooming him almost immediately. And within two days of their meeting he packed up his things from his mother's house and moved in with Margaret. The pair seemed so enamored with one another that Margaret had bought the young man a car when he hadn't been happy with the one she was selling. But within less than a month, the large age gap had proven too much, and the young man was made to hand over the car keys and move back in with his mother. In the meantime the pathologist had examined Ben Rita's stomach, contents, kidneys, as well as his hair, and nail-beard tissue, areas where the predominant beats hockstick elements in ant poison, arsenic, was known to gather in victims. In Ben's stomach, the metabolic product of arsenic ingestion, arsenic oxide, was found at a count level of 1.11 grains, 0.5 grains, were found in his kidneys, and the substance was also present in his hair and nail beds. On the 7th of August Margaret Rita was arrested on suspicion of the murder of her husband Ben. She was beyond irate, and suddenly very willing to consider the earlier opposed possibility that her husband had taken his own life. In fact, she told police officers, as they snapped handcuffs around her wrists, that he'd actually made a prior attempt on his life that she hadn't told anyone about. She'd walked into the bedroom one night to find her husband trying to hang himself with fishcut. She'd saved him just in time, but it'd been certain he'd never do it again, which was why she hadn't mentioned it to anyone. But she said, this just proved that he must have consumed the arsenic himself, and ended his own life. And that may not have been art of the realm of possibility, if it weren't for the evidence found during the autopsy. The location and quantities of the arsenic found indicated that Ben had been exposed to arsenic on two occasions, once about a week to ten days prior to his death, and then again within less than 24 hours of his death. As a doctor would later testify, while it was not unheard of for people to end their own lives with arsenic, the significant pain it caused usually detuned people from trying that method twice if they failed the first time. In addition, Ben Reader had been actively seeking art medical assistance, which certainly did not seem like the actions of someone with suicidal ideation. The timing of the doses the pathologist believed Ben had received also lined up perfectly with the first time he'd fallen ill, and then the day of his death. When Margaret's trial began on the second of November 1957, she continued to insist that she was innocent and was open to public engagement, because she seemed to truly believe that everyone would see that she had not done this terrible thing. But as the state's evidence began to build up, Margaret's confidence seemed to wane. Soon, she was hiding from cameras and seemed far less sure that she would be found innocent. And instead, she began to insist that she'd been framed, and all the witnesses had either been convinced or even paid to lie on the stand to secure a conviction. The trial was certainly a public spectacle. At that time, we still had a jury system in place, but rules were far less strict around the jury's contact with the public and priests while the trial was ongoing. At lunchtime recess, the jurors would sit on the ground in the court hallways and eat their lunch, and some gallows humour began to develop which quickly spread in the press. It started after the evidence began to point to Margaret's having laced that last bowl of oxo broth, with the significance amount of arsenic, and that's having been the last dose that had killed Ben. The jurors came up with a joke along the lines of the following. One would ask, "Have you read arsenic and oxo?" And another would reply, "No, where can I get it?" The punchline was, "In readers, digest." And while it is totally off-color for a jury to be doing this, I also can't help but think that this exact form of gallows humour would likely have developed around a similar case if it happened today, except it would be a meme and would be spread on social media, rather than in the hallways of a court. After all the evidence against her had been presented, Margaret herself took the stand. She insisted that she was innocent, and everyone was lying. She would admit that she and Ben had not had the greatest of relationships. She said she'd married him because she felt sorry for him, and he'd become quite abusive to her, and was an alcoholic. The only way she could explain the arsenic and her husband's body is that he must have taken it himself. But that of course didn't make sense, because in the last 24 hours of his life, Ben Reader could barely walk, nevermind, make it downstairs to ingest more arsenic when he was already in such terrible agony and then head back upstairs to Dahl. Margaret, for the most part, was the only person who could have administered both doses of arsenic to Ben. By the time the jury returned with a verdict in Margaret's case, she was not above screaming out to the ghost of her dead husband to please return and proof her innocence. She wailed, as the jury declared that they had unanimously found her guilty of murder. The judge then took over and told the jurors that they had to make a ruling on whether Margaret deserved to receive the death penalty. After much deliberation, they decided that because the woman had experienced quite a terrible childhood, they would not censor her to death and instead she should spend the rest of her life in prison. Margaret's relief was short-lived because the judge, as was his judicial right, overruled the jury on that and determined that regardless of how terrible her childhood had been, she had cold bloodedly premeditated the murder of her husband and also caused him to suffer a long stretch of terrible agony and so the judge sentenced Margaret Rita to death by hanging. Margaret had to be almost carried from the dock down into the holding cells below. All executions in South Africa were conducted in Pretoria, so those who had been sentenced to death in other provinces had to be transported to Pretoria and await their sentence there. The case had become such a public spectacle that almost 300 people arrived at the train station on the day Margaret Rita was supposed to be sent off to Pretoria to await her death. But concerned that the crowd may become violent when they saw her, police and prison officials pulled off a bit of a hoax where they had a similar-looking woman accompanied by police officers into the train station but the crowd soon figured out that it wasn't Margaret. By the time they did though, Margaret had already been driven to another train station and quietly boarded another train. Those who had hoped to see her off with a final insult or perhaps even a word of encouragement would never get the chance. Margaret sets apart appealing her sentence, but the basis of her appeal was simply to provide more information about how terrible her life had been and how everyone had lied. The appeal judge saw no merit in the case and dismissed it. Still, there was always a chance that some politician may take mercy on her and grant her clemency. And Margaret had many people on the outside who were in her court and lobbying for her. Some truly believed that she was innocent. Others just didn't believe in the death sentence. Despite the horrific crime that she was accused of, Margaret seemingly remained a committed mother and regularly requested to see her children. Sadly, it appears that the last time the girls saw their mother was when she was taken from court after being sentenced. Margaret spent the last few days of her life on death row, taking baths, reading the Bible and writing her memoirs. As was her habit, she seemed to veer between opposite moods, a time seemingly accepting of her fate and simply passing the time as best she could. And then at other times, she raged against the unfairness of it all and clung to the belief that she would walk out of prison a free woman one day. Eventually, though, she was given the dates of her execution. Margaret Rita would walk to the gallows on the 6th of May 1958. Almost exactly a year to the day when she'd started to administer eventually deadly doses of arsenic to her husband. On the morning of her execution, Margaret was given a sedative and allowed to spend time with the prison chaplain. They read from the Bible and Margaret proclaimed that she knew she would be going to heaven. As she began the slow walk up to the gallows, she suddenly stopped moving and turned to those accompanying her. "I might as well tell the true star," she said. "I cannot go to my death with a lie on my lips." "Yes, I did give Ben the poison." The last dose was at noon. In a glass of water, he'd asked me to bring him. Then she added, "Because she seemed simply incapable of accepting full responsibility, my only regret is that the other person who is guilty with me has escaped, while I have to pay the highest price." When her final words relate to analysed by those who knew the evidence in the case, it became clear that while she had given a snippet of the truth, she'd gone to her death trying to manipulate an outcome she would never see. She'd been trying to implicate her lover, Cornelia's else in that statement. But by claiming that the final dose had been administered in the glass of water at noon, she'd actually exonerated him, because else had started a shift at work at noon that day. And I think it bears noting that in her words, her only regret was that she was going to the gallows alone, and not that she'd actually killed her husband. For Margaret, even at the very edge of the worst punishment possible, she still felt her actions were reasonable. Something I find truly interesting is seeing how murderers like Margaret were analysed psychologically at the time. With female offenders, of course, there would always be an elements of gender bias slipping into the diagnosis. Female offenders who had many sexual partners were seen as deviant, whereas this seemed a less compelling issue in male offenders' behaviour, unless there was violence involved. Generally, though, in attempting to explain how an offender like Margaret could so-called "bloodedly" watch her husband suffer over a long period of time, and then continue on to play the grieving widow. Individuals like Benjamin Bennett used a description of what we would today call "compact mentalisation". That psychological technique, which is often more subconscious than conscious, where we put things in different boxes in our minds in order to avoid negative emotional reactions. Today, we understand that while this concept exists, it's really best applied in people who have some form of trauma that isn't as a result of a crime they committed. Children who grow up in violence and chaotic in environments, for instance, may learn how to compartmentalise very early on and take that with them into adulthood. And yes, to an extent that is also what we understand killers to do, because it's not all murderers revel in their actions, and some even do suffer emotional trauma around their actions, believe it or not. But I think we have a better understanding today that there's a very big difference. In a person who has experienced trauma, putting traumatic things in boxes to survive, and what's cold-blooded killers do, which is simply that they don't have those negative feelings around what they did. They don't have to put them in boxes or protect themselves from those feelings, because they simply don't exist. If you look back on this case and think about how Margaret got caught, the only reason she was suspected was because she insisted on constantly blabbing. She spoke herself into a news. If she'd just been capable of not seeking additional attention and sympathy beyond what she was already receiving as a widow, she may very well have gotten away with us. There was no reason for the doctor to suspect his patient had been poisoned. Just like today, if a patient goes to a doctor with what looks like gastro issues, no one's first thought is going to be, "Oh, are you sure your spouse isn't poisoning you?" If Margaret Rita had had access to cremation the way we do today, and everything else had played out the way it did, she absolutely would have gotten away with murder. Even today, with our advanced toxicology, for the most part, you still have to have a pretty good suspicion of poisoning, and you need to have a general idea of what you are testing for to figure out if there is a foreign substance present. You can't just run a test for any foreign substance, because many substances naturally occur in the blood in small tracermats. So if you think that poisoning deaths stopped being a thing when arsenic and cyanide became controlled substances, I would strongly urge you to think again. Because. They may very well be a similar and less open-mouthed offender. Out there, right now, getting away with murder, Ben Reader, restricting. For more victim-focused true crime content, please follow true crime South Africa on the app you're using to listen right now. I also have another podcast you might like, called 'I Live Through This'. Follow the podcast on social media platforms for updates on new episodes, my books and events I attend across the country. If you'd like to support the podcast and grab some true crime South Africa branded merch, head over to essaycriminalogest.co.z now. You can stock up on a wide range of true crime themed merch, including Tumblr's, stickers, pens, mags and so much more. Use the code TCSA at checkout and you'll get a site-wide discount of 10%. In case you don't know, I'm also a true crime author with four published books. Samurai Sword Murder, Sizzlers, Killer Stories and Bear Bones, which is also published in Africa as Clip Cote. 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