Slain Durban mother Catherine Krog had chosen to walk the straight and narrow after shaking off her dark past as a stripper and drug addict.
But on Thursday, the 27-year-old’s past caught up with her when her ex-husband, Clint Walley, shot and killed her in front of their two-year-old daughter Isabella, before turning the gun on himself, shooting himself in the cheek and then the forehead.
According to private investigator Brad Nathanson, who had become a confidante of Krog, Walley had, at 4.29am, just hours before the shooting, hand-written a note which he photographed and then e-mailed to several people.
In the note he said he was setting Isabella free from both her parents. He then scaled the electric fence at Kindlewood Estate in Mount Edgecombe, breaking his ankle in the process, before entering Catherine’s home at around 6am and committing the crime in front of his daughter. He also left a note at the scene reading “Isabella is free. Ti Amo (I love you). Papa.”
Walley, Krog and her mother Charmaine Wheatley had been embroiled in a custody battle for Isabella. Walley was supposed to appear in court yesterday to face charges for defying a court order when he disappeared with the child for ten days, and for an earlier incident in which he allegedly pointed a gun at Krog.
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In an earlier interview Krog joyfully told The Saturday Star’s sister newspaper The Independent on Saturday of her Damascus-road experience and how she had left behind her old life as a stripper who used to party and do drugs, to become a born-again Christian.
She said Walley was a “good dad” to Isabella and that she believed it was important for her to have a relationship with him despite their problems.
One of Isabella’s former teachers Yogie Semple described Krog as a “dedicated mother” who had transformed her life but who was always “terrified” of Walley and that he might kill her.
Semple said. “I question the psychiatric evaluation of Clint, why was he not evaluated? He was a psychopath,” Semple said.
When Krog met Walley he was running a successful gaming business called Golden Nugget that owned a string of slot-machines across Durban.
Nathanson said he believed the justice system had failed Krog and he hoped it would not fail her a second time when it came to awarding custody of Isabella: “It’s such a waste of a life. What hurts so much is that this woman cried out for help but our justice system failed her,” Nathanson said.
Semple said Krog would be remembered as a “very colourful” person and dedicated mother.
“She and Isabella had a very tight bond and when she used to fetch her, Isabella would leap into her arms and cover her face with kisses. I think she was changing her life around.
“After the kidnapping Catherine always fetched her herself and took her home and she had a lot more old-fashioned mothering moments. If it was raining they would go outside and jump in the puddles. She did not try and hide her colourful past and said she did not drink any more because she said she could not behave herself if she did,” Semple said.
A Facebook page, RIP Catherine (Cat) Krog, set up to remember her and to provide a memory box for Isabella, attracted 1 440 friends by last night with many posting messages of love and support, passages of scripture and photographs.
However, discussions turned ugly with some friends posting that Wheatley should not have custody of the child, which were deleted after the family complained. Rumours that surfaced on the page yesterday that Walley had been kept alive in hospital on life support for a few hours were false. ER 24 spokesman Derek Banks said both Krog and Walley were declared dead at the scene of the crime. Isabella is being kept in protective custody.
