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ON THE eve of her sentencing for the murder of her two little girls, East London child killer Wendy Manthe’s father has described his daughter’s utter remorse and how he believes the “devil” made her commit the appalling crimes.

Manthe, 40, will find out what her punishment is to be when she is sentenced in the East London High Court on Monday.

Wendy Manthe’s chilling blow-by-blow confession of how she murdered Morgan, 9, and Willow, 7, on May 21 before failing to kill herself by slitting her wrists, led to her conviction on June 24.

Having found her guilty of two counts of murder, Judge Jeremy Pickering will now have to decide how long Manthe will spend behind bars.

Meanwhile, Manthe’s heartbroken father Sam Manthe this week said he thought the devil had led her first to suffocate Willow and then strangle Morgan with a rope after picking them up from school early and telling them they were going to Kaysers Beach for a “picnic”.

Morgan and Willow’s grandfather, who lived with his daughter and her children since they were born, said she had been “exceptionally protective” over them and that there had been no sign to warn him of the terrible crime.

Sam, who had been present at her one-day trial during which she had sobbed her apologies to him, said he and his wife Audrey now took turns to visit their daughter at Fort Glamorgan prison twice a week.

“She doesn’t say why she did it. I don’t think she knows. She said she was at her lowest ebb and didn’t know where to go or what to do. It (the day she killed her daughters) was a dark day. The devil was sitting right next to her that day and now she is suffering the consequences.”

He said this was the only conclusion he could come to.

“No normal person could do it in a normal state – especially a mother. She was mad about those kids. She was exceptionally protective and caring. If someone had to touch her children, she would have broken their neck in five places.”

Manthe, who said he had forgiven his daughter, added that she now regretted murdering her girls. “She wishes she hadn’t done it. She cries a lot and wishes her children were with her. She’s lost a lot of weight and doesn’t sleep well.”

He said Wendy was “resigned” to whatever sentence the judge will mete out on Monday, but that he would not be able to be in court because he would be in hospital following a hip operation this week.

“My wife is still building up the courage to attend,” said Manthe, who has moved out of the rented West Bank home he once shared with his wife, daughter and grandchildren.

“There are only two of us now, so we moved into a granny flat in Highgate. We gave away most of the children’s stuff to aftercare centres and sold the rest. We only kept one or two teddy bears for sentimental reasons.”

Wendy Manthe’s former employer Faye Heuer, who has been subpoenaed to testify at the sentencing, said she was “dreading” facing her in court.

“It has been stressing me out to capacity and I came close to a nervous breakdown this week. It is going to be hard to have to look at her in court, ” said Heuer, who gave Manthe a job in Fisher’s Bedroom Boutique last December, despite knowing that Manthe had been charged with stealing more than R50000 from her previous employer.

She said she had changed her mind about laying charges against Manthe after discovering that about R150000 had been stolen from her own business, because she wanted closure.

“What’s the point? I just want to get closure and I don’t want to have to see her again after this trial. I gave her a job because I wanted to give her a chance, but now I regret the day I ever met her and I can’t say this about anyone else on this earth”.

Heuer, who along with another of Manthe’s friends had frantically driven to Kaysers Beach on the day of the double murder, only to find police removing their dead bodies from the bakkie which she owned, said she had been battling with “feelings of guilt” ever since.

“If only I had not let her use the work bakkie when she said she needed to get medicine. If only I had not spoken to her about money the night before and if only we had got to Kaysers Beach a little earlier. Maybe we could have saved at least one child’s life.”

She said she had been avoiding seeing the bakkie which Manthe had used to drive her girls to their death and in which she had drugged them before suffocating Willow after she had succumbed to the Phenergan (an anti-histamine that induces sleep) tablets she had given her under the guise of them being “vitamins” and later strangling Morgan with a rope she found in the back of the bakkie.

The fact that she had found Wendy to be “a wonderful person” had made it even more difficult. “If she had been a terrible person if would have been different, but she was such a nice person – I would have trusted Wendy to stay with my own daughter.

“Now I think she should spend her life in prison because she premeditated the murder of her children.”