This Is Monsters: The Teenage Killer Who Blamed a Farm Attack

Content note: this video discusses a real familicide — the murders of a mother, father, and teenage daughter — and includes discussion of sexual assault. Some viewers may find it disturbing.

This Is Monsters: The Teenage Killer Who Blamed a Farm Attack

On Good Friday 2012, a bloodied 15-year-old roared into the tiny Northern Cape town of Griekwastad to report that his family had been slaughtered in a farm attack. It took investigators months to prove the attacker had never left the house — because he lived there.

The channel this is MONSTERS does old-school true crime documentary: season-organized, long-form case files on some of the worst people on the planet, told without tabloid theatrics. With more than 800,000 subscribers, it has quietly become one of YouTube’s most reliable case-documentary outlets — and “The Griekwastad Farm Murders” is a strong example of why.

The video reconstructs April 6, 2012, on Naauwhoek farm outside Griekwastad, South Africa: Deon and Christelle Steenkamp and their 14-year-old daughter Marthella shot dead, and their 15-year-old son Don speeding into town in his father’s bakkie, covered in blood, with a story about a farm attack. South Africa’s farm attacks were — and are — a real and terrifying phenomenon, which is exactly why Don’s story was believed at first. This 27-minute documentary is our review of how it fell apart.

At a Glance

What the Video Covers

The video opens where the case opened: shortly before 7 PM on Good Friday, Don Steenkamp bursting into Griekwastad’s nearly deserted police station to announce his parents and sister had been shot on the family farm. The initial assumption — by police, by the town, by the country — was the obvious one: another farm attack.

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Then the story starts to crack. The video walks through the inconsistencies that turned investigators’ attention toward the surviving son: the details of his account that didn’t add up, the forensic and ballistic evidence, and the months of patient police work that followed. Months after the murders, Don was arrested. In 2014 he was convicted of murdering his father Deon, his mother Christelle, and his sister Marthella — as well as raping his sister and defeating the ends of justice — and sentenced to an effective 20 years in prison, the sentences running concurrently.

The video also situates the case in its South African context: why the farm-attack explanation was so readily believed, how the case divided Griekwastad, and how journalist Jacques Steenkamp’s book The Griekwastad Murders later became the definitive account.

Strengths

The restraint. This is a case involving the murder of a child and sexual assault, and the video handles both with care — facts over lurid detail, victims centered. The channel’s video description even carries domestic-abuse and mental-health hotline resources, which tells you something about its house standards.

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The “how lies fall apart” structure. Rather than just retelling a tragedy, the video is built around the unraveling: each inconsistency in Don’s story, each forensic finding, stacking until the farm-attack narrative collapses. It is an investigation documentary, not a misery reel.

Tight and watchable. At under half an hour, it covers a complex, multi-year case without padding or repetition — a disciplined edit that respects the viewer’s time.

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Weaknesses

Compressed context. Twenty-seven minutes for a case this layered means some things move fast — the South African legal process, the farm-attack debate, and the community’s split over Don’s guilt could each fill their own video. Viewers new to the case may want a second source.

Familiar ground for deep readers. If you have already read Jacques Steenkamp’s book on the case, little here will surprise you. This is a strong introduction, not new reporting.

The subject matter is heavy. Handled responsibly, but handled nonetheless. A family of three murdered, a child victim, and sexual assault are central to the story — viewers should know what they are walking into.

Who Should Watch

• True crime documentary fans — this is the classic long-form case-file format, done well.
• Investigation-breakdown viewers — if you like watching a false story collapse under evidence, this is built for you.
• International case followers — a major South African case most American viewers have never heard of.
• this is MONSTERS newcomers — a tight, representative entry point to the channel’s catalog.

Source: this is MONSTERS on YouTube; case details via Jacques Steenkamp’s “The Griekwastad Murders” (2014) and contemporary court reporting.