Basson was born in 1880 in the Cape Colony. On February 13, 1903 he drowned his seventeen-year-old brother Jasper, on whose life he had taken out a policy. Over the following three years he killed at least seven more people, acquaintances and men he had drawn into his company, by drowning, shooting and strangling. Insurance policies were taken out on several of them, and others were robbed. He is recorded as the Insurance Killer, after the policies he took out on the people he killed.
He was traced in January 1906 and shot himself on January 22 to avoid arrest. He was convicted of murder posthumously later that year, in a proceeding of a kind that colonial law then allowed and that has no modern equivalent.
The sourcing is thin and consists of South African press reporting of the period and the summary entries that descend from it. The range of eight to nine reflects one death that was attributed to him and not established. Because he was never tried while alive, no evidence was ever tested by a defence, and the entry should be read with that in mind.