THE heartbroken father of child killer Wendy Manthe, who watched his sobbing daughter plead guilty in the East London High Court to murdering his grandchildren this week, said despite the terrible pain he felt from what she had done, he had no choice but to support her when she appeared.

“She is my daughter. I couldn‘t just say voetsek to her. You can‘t turn your back on your child,” said Sam Manthe, who had not been present at any of her other court appearances.

“I feel terrible. We lived in a house full of people and now it‘s empty – just my wife and I and two cats,” said Manthe who shared a house in West Bank with his daughter and grandchildren.

“We always lived together, since the children were born. They were my own children in a sense – I was the only man in the house.

“I have to cope now with my grief and Wendy must cope with hers,” said Manthe, who uses a crutch following hip replacement surgery.

“My wife (Audrey) is not too good at all. She has lost all three of her children at once.” Asked how he felt when his daughter repeatedly apologised to him in court this week, he said he “has to accept her apology”.

Before court proceedings this week, a highly emotional Wendy walked straight into her father‘s arms sobbing, “I‘m sorry daddy”.

She was permitted to sit alongside him in the front row of the public gallery and wept throughout the court proceedings during which she was found guilty of two counts of murder.

Her father tentatively put his arm around her as he listened to the horrifying account of how she killed Morgan, 9, and Willow, 7.

Manthe‘s confession to the May 21 murders was read out by her lawyer, Vuyani Magqabi, and described how she smothered her younger daughter with her bare hands and strangled the other with a rope, before slitting her own wrists.

On the Thursday morning she decided to kill her children, Manthe picked up her daughters early at Cambridge Primary School, stocked up on over 30 phenergan tablets (anti-histamines that induce sleep) at two pharmacies, stopped at a cafe to buy picnic snacks and two blades, and drove to Kaysers Beach.

She told her children they were going on a picnic and that the tablets were “vitamins”. When her younger daughter became drowsy and asked to “doedoe”, she lay her down on her work bakkie‘s front seat and, according to her confession, “put my hand over her face so that she could not breathe”.

While her younger sister was being murdered, Morgan was collecting seashells for the mother who was about to kill her too.

After using her mother‘s cellphone to call Manthe‘s friend to complain that her leg was sore, a “scared” Morgan, who was told her sister was asleep, was driven to a gravel road where her mother reached for a rope she spotted at the back of the bakkie. Manthe walked around to her surviving daughter‘s side of the car and strangled her.

Manthe said she tried to cut her wrists but, “I cut and I cut but I did not want to bleed”.

She was found parked on the R72 about 30km from East London by police and an ambulance which her friends had called.

“(The) paramedic checked for signs of life. He said to me that I must remember that if I want to kill myself I must slit my wrists the other way. Policeman then took me away from my babies.”

Sam said this was the first time he had sat next to his daughter since the murders.

“I will start visiting her (in Fort Glamorgan prison) from next week.”

Asked if he had noticed any hint that his daughter was about to kill his grandchildren, Manthe said: “Everyone asks that question, but you don‘t see anything till it‘s too late ... ”

Throughout her court appearances Manthe has shown a range of reactions.

Days after she murdered her children, at her first court appearance, she looked shattered and unaware of what was going on around her in court.

This week, on the day before she pleaded guilty in the High Court, she lashed out at this reporter as she was being photographed, hitting her twice on the shoulder before court officials could restrain her.

Manthe then composed herself and sat impassively.

This was in start contrast to the sobbing, emotional woman the High Court saw on Wednesday, when she wept uncontrollably alongside her father.

Meanwhile, Wendy Manthe‘s friends and former colleagues painted a harsh picture of the woman they now say is a “compulsive liar”.

Faye Heuer, who owns Fisher‘s Bedroom Boutique in Vincent, East London, where Manthe worked at the time of the murders, is now convinced she stole thousands from her.

“I think she knew I knew that she had stolen from me and I think it maybe drove her to do what she did.”

Manthe was already facing fraud charges against former employer Brands Furnishers for stealing more than R51000 and, according to her confession, was “convinced” she was going to jail.

Heuer and another group of friends and former colleagues who did not want to be named, told Weekend Post of a long- distance love affair Manthe was allegedly having with an American prisoner called Eric she had “met” on a prison internet site. “Those letters are real love letters and are very long,” said Heuer. “She was going to fly to visit him in October ... ”

They also said Manthe had an interest in serial killers and downloaded hundreds of pages off the internet about this topic and that she had once spoken of “mothers who kill their children for sympathy”.

The group all said they did not think Manthe was serious about taking her own life.

“If you are going to kill yourself, you switch your cellphone off and plan to do the job properly,” said one woman.

While the group had little positive to say about Manthe, they all agreed she had loved her children very much.

She will be sentenced on August 17.