Marlene Lehnberg

Marlene Lehnberg (born c. 1955 - 2015) was a South African murderer more commonly known as The Scissor Murderess. She was 18 years old in 1974, when she and hired killer Marthinus Choegoe stabbed Susanna Magdalena van der Linde, the wife of her 47-year-old lover, Christiaan van der Linde, to death with a pair of scissors. At 19, she was then the youngest woman to be convicted of murder in South Africa. Both Lehnberg and Marthinus Choegoe received the death penalty, but this was later set aside and she served 11 years of her 20-year sentence, in Pollsmoor Prison outside Cape Town.

In February 1972, Lehnberg began her first job as a clerical assistant/receptionist at the Red Cross Children's Hospital in Rondebosch, Cape Town. She started work in the orthopaedic workshop alongside Christiaan van der Linde. Van der Linde was the workshop's chief technician and Lehnberg, a bright, intelligent and attractive 16-year-old, was apparently drawn to him from the start.

Lehnberg's upbringing had been both ultra-conservative and strict. Her father was puritanical, a man who rarely displayed any affection towards his daughters. She had not been allowed to socialise and had never been to the cinema during the time she was in high school, she was a very intelligent young girl academically and often came first in her class but had no experience of boys or men, she was very naive and innocent and tried hard to get attention via her studies. She was drawn to van der Linde, a person whom she saw as a being warm and friendly father figure. She later recalled "he said "welcome" and my heart beat faster."

Van der Linde and Lehnberg struck up a father-daughter type relationship which grew closer as the months passed. In April 1973, a year after they first met, the couple began an affair.

Throughout the remainder of 1973, Lehnberg and Van der Linde continued to meet in secret at Rondebosch Common and Paarden Eiland. Then, early in 1974, their intimacy stopped. Van der Linde suspected that they were being watched because his wife was receiving anonymous telephone calls.

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