Biehl Boyfriend Says Apartheid Led to Slaying

The boyfriend of Amy Elizabeth Biehl, the Newport Beach woman killed in a racist attack, blames apartheid for the slaying and says her killers should be given an education rather than the death penalty.

“They killed Amy, the single most important thing in my life, and I am very angry for that,” Scott Meinert of Salem, Ore., told the Associated Press on Wednesday while on a visit to Cape Town.

He said an education for the members of the mob who hit Biehl in the face with a brick and stabbed her to death Aug. 25 would help them understand and atone for what they did.

Meinert, 28, concedes he was angry with the black youths but “infuriated” with apartheid and its perpetrators, whom he ultimately blamed for the death of the woman he planned to marry.

“They are the people that really, ultimately fuel that kind of anger and hatred,” he said. “I’m infuriated and will always probably be until (apartheid) is completely stamped out.”

Seven black males, ranging in age from 15 to 23, are to stand trial Nov. 8 for Biehl’s slaying. At least four have admitted being members of the student wing of the Pan Africanist Congress, a militant black group that demands the ouster of whites from power in South Africa.

Witnesses say Biehl’s killers called her a “settler,” the Pan Africanist Congress’ term for whites.

Despite such tensions, Meinert and Biehl’s parents and siblings this week visited the Guguletu black township where the slaying occurred. About 300 black students welcomed the family at the University of the Western Cape, where Biehl had worked.

Meinert, a law student at Willamette University in Salem, does not believe the killers will get a fair trial in South Africa.

Murder convictions can bring the death sentence in South Africa, although no executions have been carried out for years.

Biehl, 26, a Fulbright scholar, was to return to the United States on Aug. 27. She was to study at Rutgers University in New Jersey, where Meinert planned to meet her Sept. 3 and propose marriage. Instead, Meinert delivered a eulogy that day for Biehl.

The couple met while studying at Stanford in 1987. Meinert, a varsity athlete, played basketball for the university and Biehl was captain of the swimming and diving team.