Johannesburg – Five years after Gary Smith and his sister Karen Buchanan were bound with rags and their mouths duct-taped before they were brutally assaulted, the police have made a breakthrough.

The siblings were bound, gagged, beaten, had their teeth pulled, and darts were thrown at Smith while Buchanan was stripped naked. Their four dogs had apparently tried to protect them, and two were killed and the other two were kicked.

And when their torturers had had enough, the 44-year-old man and his sister, 46, were both shot in the head.

When the crime was discovered, police found that their cellphones were smashed, a TV was missing and the safe was broken open.

For the past five years, no arrests were made.

And the motive for the attack was unknown.

However, just when the families of the victims – both Smith and Buchanan had been married and were survived by children – were to give up on the killers ever being found, police made a breakthrough.

Two men were due to appear in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Wednesday in connection with the murder in the upmarket suburb of Northcliff on March 14, 2008.

Unconfirmed information is that one of the men was arrested in Durban while a second was nabbed in Mbombela.

Provincial spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Lungelo Dlamini wouldn’t confirm where the arrests had taken place, but confirmed that two men had been taken into custody and that the arrests had happened two weeks ago.