DEADLY LOVE

They were proud she was making a new life for herself in the US - then this Cape Town family were told their beloved Kim had been murdered by her husband

-  MEGHAN LAWRENCE

HER daughter lived 13 000km away in the US, a world away from her family home in Cape Town, and she missed her terribly.

But at least she could comfort herself with the fact that her child was building a life for herself, that she had found a man who loved her, that she had become a mother, that she was happy.

Then the unthinkable happened. Beulah White will never forget the day her phone rang, a call that would shatter her world forever.

It was her sister, Sharon, and she had terrible news.

Kim, Beulah's beautiful 32-year-old daughter, had been found dead in her home in Fairfax, Virginia, in the US, and her husband, Alexander Towne, had been arrested. He had admitted to murdering her.

Now Beulah and her family are left asking themselves questions they might never get answers to: what life of fear and violence did their beloved Kim endure across the ocean, far from her loved ones, that they knew nothing about? In Parklands in Cape Town, Beulah and her son, Jason, sit side by side, devastation etched on their faces. Beulah leans forward and hands Jason a tissue while tears flow freely down her cheeks.

He dabs at his eyes as mother and son start to tell us their story.

Kim had gone to work as a childminder in the Middle Eastern country of Bahrain, which is where she met Alexander, who did desk work for the American military.

They fell in love and Kim followed him to the US, where they got married and had a son, Aiden, who's now two.

Everything seemed close to perfect. “We met Alexander when Kim was pregnant with Aiden,” Jason says.

“He was here for a while and then went back to work.