Angels do exist- David Spengler

Yes there were the good old days in Africa but there were also the terrible old days that nobody talks about.

I had an absolutely wonderful brother-in-law David Spengler, who was divorced from his wife, my sister Erika.

Anyway he was born and brought up in Salisbury. As an adult he bought a copper mine in Lusaka where is worked on his small simple farm with his common-law wife Muriel and her 6 year old daughter Tammy. His African staff loved this man they called my Father as he spoke to them in their own language and treated them with love and respect. He visited his aged parents often over the border in Gwelo. One fateful Saturday David, his wife and daughter together with their foreman went shopping in town. Whist he was gone Terrorists came into the farm made the staff go around the back of the house and lay on their stomachs for the hours while David was away. It was hours before they returned and the staff were not permitted to move but had to soil themselves where they lay. David drove up to the house and before opening the door found them surrounded by dozens of armed men who kicked the door and said “We have been waiting for you”. They - David, wife and daughter and the foreman were all beaten and bayoneted to death and God only knows what torture they endured before their deaths. After that the men were allowed to move and were told this is the warning to all the white men not to stay in this Country. One faithful man ran into town to get the authorities David was found with his hands stiff in a boxing position. He was not to know that he and many others were on death lists. When these death lists of white farmers were found other members of my family were named and marked for extinction and then left Zambia. We must remember - Yes there were the good old days but there were also the terrible old days that nobody talks about.


Evelyn wrote a film script for this terrible event…….

Evelyn’s house in Zambia

View a large house surrounded by lush vegetation enclosed by high walls and large iron gates. A white cat sits in the garden and the African gardener is cutting the grass. A typical ostentatious style house in a typical street in an African suburban setting. The sky above is clear blue, not a cloud to be seen.

CUT TO

Border post in the Chirundu Mountains

A dusty hot day. Trucks and cars and bicycles waiting to go through the border post between Zimbabwe and Zambia. People milling around. Border guards with prominently displayed weapons treating all travellers with extreme suspicion and thinly disguised contempt. The sounds of laugher and shouting as vendors try to sell their meager wares. A horde of children running about and playing together on the dusty ground. Poorly dressed and no shoes.

A rickety old truck, the back covered by a dirty tarpaulin, is allowed through to the Zambian side and with the exhaust pouring smoke it noisily trundles off down the road. It disappears in the distance leaving the dust and smoke flying.

Voice Over
Let me tell you about Muriel. She’s dead now, brutally murdered with a bayonet in Zambia, Africa during the Easter holidays in 1979.

I first met Muriel in about 1977. Together with her boyfriend they had smuggled themselves over the border from Zimbabwe hiding in the back of a truck. A dangerous escapade, but they made it. They arrived in Lusaka the capital of Zambia.

CUT TO

Lusaka, Zambia

View Cairo Road. Overflowing with cars and buses and hundreds of people on foot and on bicycles. Beggars on the corners of every side street. Noise and dust. Shouting, laughing, traffic. A sea of humanity. The sky overhead brilliant blue and clouds starting to build up.

Voice Over

Although it was a bustling, dangerous metropolis with undertones of intrigue, Lusaka retained a sort of small town atmosphere in that newcomers were soon identified and assimilated, for better or worse.

Anyway, not long after their arrival they met up with Dave, my ex-brother-in-law and ended up working for him on his gold mine near the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe and which he hoped would soon be up and running and make his fortune.

Along the line the boyfriend sort of disappeared from the scene and it wasn’t long before Dave and Muriel formed a liaison. I never got to know all the facts but soon after I heard they had a little girl about 3 or 4 years old who they were going to adopt. Tammy was her name. She was the daughter of one of Muriel’s unmarried sisters in Zimbabwe and who had agreed to allow this. It wasn’t such an unusual practice as Muriel and her sisters were of what we whites in Africa called coloured blood. That meant they were part black African and part, European, as we whites proclaimed to be.

Both among the Africans and Coloureds the extended family was still the practice.

CUT TO

Evelyn’s house. Just after sunset. Mother and children sitting in the large lounge and watching Television.

Voice Over

I was living in Kitwe, one of the Copperbelt mining towns which had sprung up in the 1920’s, about 250 miles from Lusaka. A smallish distance but always a hair-raising journey by road with an enormously high rate of accidents and littered with gigantic potholes.

Dave had finally decided to introduce his family to me. Not without some trepidation in view of what had occurred in his breakup with my sister, to whom I was fiercely devoted - but that’s another story.

CUT TO

Evelyn gets up to answer the knock at the door. There stands Dave, a tall well muscled man of 38. His hair is thinning and he is wearing glasses. He is dressed in his usual casual t shirt and a pair of baggy shorts to his knees and his well worn thongs. Beside him stands a short voluptuously built young woman with very dark skin dressed in a white pantsuit with her hands resting on the shoulders of a small little girl with glistening black hair. They all embrace each other, are invited in and Evelyn and Dave talking animatedly they all sit down.

Voice Over

And so they came to visit me in Kitwe one night.

My first impressions of Muriel were mixed. Her skin was dark, her lips were thick. She had sparkling large white teeth and the demeanor of what might be considered by some, ah us snobs, to be slightly low class and someone who would be out for what she could get.

Muriel’s figure was full and voluptuous and her white outfit draped itself provocatively over every curve. I assumed she was wearing a wig as the majority of the coloured people were inclined to have a head of tight curls inherited from their African blood. Muriel’s hair instead was straight, rather dull and in a short full bob around her face. If I had to make a comparison I would have chosen a sort of Tina Turner.

I don’t remember much of our conversation that night, but Muriel was demure and polite, laying a lie to her rather brazen appearance.

During the course of the Evening I reluctantly recognised what Dave saw in her. At the end and during the course of his deteriorating marriage to my sister, she had become increasingly neurotic and anorexic to the point of complete unattractiveness. My sister was a complicated and complex person, just too much to handle. She had gone to South Africa at this time and was trying to carve out a new life for herself although she still loved Dave desperately.

Muriel was strikingly different. Uncomplicated, sexy, sort of, “What you see is what you get”. That suited Dave just fine, and I guess any man. Good lustful sex and he could get on with his work.

Dave had always wistfully expressed his wish to have a child but after long exposure to chemicals involved in the mining industry it would seem that he was incapable of fathering a child. Hence the appearance of Tammy.

I thought that night that Tammy was a pretty little thing. Again with an intermingling of blood she looked more like an Asian from India with thick straight glistening black hair and large black, rather soulful eyes. She was very disquieted and rather unhappy I thought as she cried and fidgeted the whole night. Dave and Muriel were obviously completely besotted by her.

I thought it did not auger well for the future as she would probably be spoilt rotten.

CUT TO

Lusaka 1979

View set of 6 town houses in dark brick with a large green lawn in front and surrounded by trees. Nearby another group of town houses. Quiet street, end of a cul de sac. Muriel and Dave live in one of the town houses, Evelyn’s husband in another.

Voice Over

I did not see Muriel and Tammy again until about February 1979, I don’t really remember the exact date, although in the intervening years I was infrequently in touch with Dave when he occasionally visited Kitwe.

Those years later in that February my husband was working in Lusaka and living in the same block of townhouses as Dave and his family.

View plane flying and touch down at airport. Evelyn and children disembark and having collected the baggage are met by Dave. They embrace warmly and the family set off for home.

Voice Over

I was invited down for Tammy’s birthday so I and my two children flew to Lusaka to stay for a week and see how my husband had set things up. I had sort of given him an ultimatum in that if we did not make some sort of arrangement to live as a proper family our marriage was going nowhere.

And so we arrived. That was a sort of week I guess you could only have in Africa or for that matter, only Lusaka, a strange rather decadent city.

After the murders the place Lusaka I would forever label “The City in Hell”

View arrival of Evelyn, the children and Dave. Muriel is waiting with a large smile on her face. She embraces the family.

Voice Over

Muriel greeted us warmly. She had lost a little weight in the intervening years but was still voluptuously rounded and brashly dressed. When she came to kiss my cheek in welcome I was slightly repelled by her animal like scent richly blended with Charlie perfume.

View Muriel, Evelyn, Tammy, Katherine and Robert together in the lounge with half a dozen or so friends of Muriel, all women. It is about mid day and the music is blaring out.

The beers keep coming and the talking and laughing gets louder and louder.

Voice Over

Those were the days for sure. While my husband and Dave with his all important battered briefcase went dutifully off to work, the children and I spent time with Muriel and Tammy. We all sat around laughing and talking and from midday we started drinking - beer mostly but a few spirits now and then. Muriel was loud and raunchy and her language was quite something. It was fun.

View another day. Lots of friends there as usual. Muriel rushing down the stairs with a wig on. Shouting what did we think, then up again and down again in another wig and a different outfit. Robert standing very close to Evelyn and watching in trepidation.

Voice Over

One afternoon she kept rushing up and down stairs trying on one of half a dozen wigs she had and outfits and seeking our most favoured opinion. My son Robert who was six years old at the time was completely overwhelmed by Muriel, her shouting seemed to make him very nervous. That afternoon of the wigs he said “Mummy why is Muriel in disguise?” We all laughed raucously.

View everyone collapse in laughter.

Voice Over

The beer flowed, the music was very loud and the language was colourful. We alternated visiting the local club and just carried on as usual, just at a different venue.

View Muriel at the front door shouting frantically at her African servant, the two of them going hammer and tongs at each other. Both of them screaming obscenities at each other.

Voice Over

I felt a little sorry for Muriel’s African servant. Muriel continuously cussed her and screeched, ”You lazy bitch, you black ash”. She didn’t take this lying down and gave it back at Muriel threatening to quit although Muriel had told her she was fired practically every five minutes. Well, she wasn’t fired and she didn’t quit.

Evening. View everyone at the table having dinner. Smiling and talking as they ate.

Voice Over

I helped make dinner. Dave said I made the best chips he had ever tasted and so I always made the chips with some crushed garlic in the oil, something I had learned from my husband.

View Muriel dressed in lime green Lycra and Evelyn pleading with her to change.

Voice Over

Another afternoon I said to Muriel that she just could not go into town dressed as she was in a clinging lurid lime green lycra dress which clung to her like a second skin and through which her buttocks and large breasts wobbled freely. She was surprised but good-naturedly demurred to my opinion.

View Tammy’s birthday party. About 12 children of differing ages and skin colours. Children playing, dog running around wildly.

Voice Over

Tammy’s birthday came and went and photographs were taken.

View another gathering in the lounge, drinking, laughing and loud music.

Dave and husband arriving and showing extreme disapproval on their faces as they enter the door and view the raucous group.

Voice Over

That week was heady, dissipated, fun and unreal. I enjoyed myself, we enjoyed it. Dave and my husband were not amused. I remember many incredulous darts of disapproval aimed at us.

We didn’t care, we were happy and not a little drunk by it all, besides the actual influence of the large quantities of beer we consumed.

View Evelyn and children at the door of the car, Muriel hugging her and saying goodbye.

Voice Over

The time came to leave. We kissed and hugged and large tears fell from Muriel’s eyes. We had sort of become friends. She asked if my daughter could come and stay with them at the mine over the Easter holidays. I said I would think about it, but I knew I couldn’t let my beloved daughter go to a dangerous place like a mine. She could fall down a shaft.

View Evelyn in her office at work. It is an open plan office and opposite can be seen through the glass windows a larger office with about six people working there. They are all African. The phone rings and Evelyn picks it up. As she listens and talks she becomes more and more distressed.

Voice Over

The next months passed and the day after the Easter weekend, my first day back at work, the phone rang.

“Hello”, I said - it was my husband. “So, what’s happening?” Silence. Then his words, “Dave’s dead”. “Oh no!” I cried. An accident or what raced through my mind. I asked, “And Muriel?” He said, ”She’s dead too.” “Oh, oh”, I cried. “And Tammy?” “She’s dead” he said.

I started to become hysterical. “What happened, what happened?” He said, “You must come to Lusaka.” I said “When, how?” “Get on the first plane”. He put down the phone.

View crying Evelyn rushing into the other office and saying she had to go and they watch startled as she runs from the building.

She gets in her car and crying desperately she drives from the car park.

Voice Over

I garbled the story to my workmates and rushed to my friends and cried and cried. I couldn’t believe it.

View Evelyn and friends Flo and Mike together at the Italian Club and other friends rallying round to try and ease Evelyn’s pain.

Voice Over

My friends took me to the club and others there tried to comfort me. “But what’s happened, what’s happened” ,Everyone was saying. We tried to get hold of my husband to find out more. There was no communication that night.

After a bitter night of uncontrollable tears and no sleep and my friends taking care of me and my children the news was splashed on the front page of the newspaper.

View news headline.

FAMILY AND FRIENDS BRUTALLY MURDERED ON GOLD MINE JUST SOUTH OF LUSAKA

View Evelyn and children arriving once again at Muriel and Dave’s town house. Her husband opens the door and Evelyn stands sadly looking around.

The dog lies at her feet with a very miserable look on his face. He then tries to jump up to play with her. Evelyn admonishes him. She wearily climbs the stairs to the bedroom.

Voice Over

The flat was so sad and so empty. Tammy’s toys lay on the ground, several of Muriel’s wigs lay on her bed. It was just so unbearably sad.

The poor dog, an overgrown cross bull terrier mongrel couldn’t understand that nobody wanted to play with him. He sat sorrowfully around. Nobody seemed to care. Suddenly everything he did seemed to draw angry reproval.

In my sorrow I even imagined his face seemed like a caricature of Dave, my dear friend Dave. His is another story, but this one is for Muriel.

View Evelyn in the bedroom going through the cupboard and taking out items of clothing and laying them sadly on the bed. She sits on the bed and looks at the photographs taken on Tammy’s birthday.

Voice Over

I was asked to pick out some clothes for Muriel to wear when they buried her. A special outfit had to be made for Tammy as she had met her death by having a bayonet thrust through her fragile little neck.

View photograph of Tammy holding a doll in front of her hiding her from view.

Voice Over

The photographs of Tammy’s birthday were developed. On not one of them could you see her face. It was either hidden by another child, or her hands were in front of her face. In one telling photograph she had placed the doll she had received squarely in front of her face. Those photographs seemed to be a chilling premonition.

View gravesite with large gathering around all crying and moaning in sorrow.
The day is windy and overcast. Leaves float through the air and soil flies around.

Voice Over

Muriel and Tammy were buried first. They were Catholic. Dave was Jewish.

His funeral would be a few days later in the Jewish section and with his family present, his brother from South Africa and his sister from England.

Muriel’s sisters came from Zimbabwe. Coloured, elegant and voluptuous like Muriel and crying, crying. I too was crying, crying. I had not stopped since that fatal phone call.

It was a windy overcast day and soil from freshly dug graves mingled with the leaves in the sad, sad air.

View first Muriel’s coffin being lowered into the grave and then Tammy’s small coffin on top of her. Muriel’s African servant throws herself down and writhes on the ground screaming and crying as she throws handfuls of dirt over herself. She clasps her arms around Evelyn’s ankles.

Voice Over

A large crowd surrounded the gravesite.

First Muriel’s coffin was lowered into the ground. On top of her coffin in the same grave poor little Tammy’s tiny coffin was lowered. As we all wept bitterly and freely Muriel’s Black Ash threw herself at my feet. She writhed and moaned and clasped her arms round my ankles and threw dirt frenziedly over her grieving, inconsolable self.


“Muriel, Muriel” she cried.
“Tammy, my little Tammy, my darling”.
“Tammy” she screamed.

Focus in on the grieving woman and then pan the scene into the distance.

Voice Over

Goodbye Muriel, goodbye Tammy.
Gone but never forgotten.

Flashback to one of the happy gatherings in the lounge at Muriel’s flat and hear Muriel’s heady laughter above the general noise.


THE END

This memorial plaque was recently arranged by Christopher Legg along with Mike and Liz Oley and other friends of David, Muriel and Tammy at the Aylmer May cemetery in Lusaka- 

In memory of David, Muriel and Tammy Spengler who died tragically and needlessly in 1979 at Allies copper mine near Chongwa. We cherish our memories of them which will stay with us always.

Erika and Evelyn, my sisters and David at Evelyn's wedding in Kitwe, Zambia