The identification of the alleged shooter is the breakthrough in a cold case that saw a procession of private investigators (PIs) come and go over a decade.

Now one investigator believes he has cracked the case after examining one of the clues left at the scene – the getaway car.

But the Fabris family and PI Christian Botha are concerned the case has stalled again, six months after the suspected killer was identified in a line-up at the Douglasdale police station.

Zlatko Fabris was shot dead on the night of May 9, 2005, at the Fabrz Hotel in Lonehill, Joburg, which he owned.

That night, according to Fabris, a couple had come to the hotel looking for a room.

“They wanted to be shown the room, went inside and locked the door. We told them they had to pay first. They then said they would have to go to the ATM in Fourways to get the money,” said Fabris.

They returned, accompanied by two men. “One of them said, ‘We are holding this place up, we want guns, jewellery and money’,” said Fabris.

It was then that her husband walked in. She believes he tried to draw a gun that he was carrying and was shot in the head.

The robbers then proceeded to pistol-whip and beat Fabris. She eventually was able to escape and run to neighbours for help.

But when the armed robbers tried to flee the scene, they discovered the gate would not open because they had pulled out all the cabling, believing it was a telephone line. They had to escape on foot, leaving their getaway car, a 1982 Toyota Corolla, behind.

“This event has broken up our family,” said Zlatko Fabris, the slain man’s son. “It was bad police work from the start, a cellphone was even stolen from the scene. All I want is to clear my mother and this balls-up.”

Some family members, said Fabris, have accused her of organising a hit on her husband. “The police investigated me. They looked at my credit cards. I came out clean.”

As the years went by, the family hired PIs. However, they always appeared to hit a brick wall in the investigation.

“My mother always said that she would be able to identify the shooter,” said Zlatko Fabris.

Two years ago Botha began working on the case; his mandate from the family was to identify the man who fired the fatal shot.

“Mrs Fabris told me every night when she went to bed, she would see her husband’s shooter,” he said.

She described the killer to Botha as an arrogant man who looked like EFF leader Julius Malema.

Botha decided to focus on the getaway car. Early in the probe it was discovered that the car had been hijacked near Alberton shortly before the robbery. Police had questioned the car owner and completed a background criminal check on him.

The police ruled him out as a suspect. But when Botha looked into the hijacking he noticed something odd. The hijacking was reported to the police the next day. Also the hijacking, explained Botha, was reported to have taken place on the R59 highway, half-an-hour before Zlatko Fabris was shot dead.

The case docket, said Botha, was missing from the Alberton police station.

Botha then discovered the suspect had been arrested for a business robbery in Joburg in 2013. He is out on bail.

“This was the trigger. I realised that this guy is not squeaky clean. I had to get a description of him.”

Botha tracked down his prime suspect’s former em- ployer. “You know what he tells me, the guy is very arrogant and looks like Julius Malema.”

It took Botha a year to organise an identity parade with the suspect included in the line-up. Fabris identified him as the shooter straight away, but now all has gone quiet. “I thought it was a massive breakthrough when we got him in an ID parade,” said Fabris.

Douglasdale police station spokesperson Sergeant Mpho More said after the ID parade the docket had been passed on to the senior state prosecutor. “It is at the courts now,” she said.

But for the Fabris family, it is more waiting. “This has fragmented our family. It is closure we want more than anything,” she said.

The post Widow sees haunting face of suspected killer again appeared first on Christian Botha.

The article by the reporter Carlo Petersen – headed ‘3 in dock for attempted murder of cleaner’ – stated that:

“Three young men – one a UCT student – have been charged with attempted murder after cleaner Delia Adonis was brutally assaulted in another “race-related” case in Cape Town.

Chad De Matos, 19, Aaron Mack, 20, and Mitchell Turner, 20, appeared in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court, where they were also charged with assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and crimen injuria on Tuesday.

De Matos and Turner, who are from East London, and Mack, from Knysna, were likened by State prosecutor Nathan Johnson to the Waterkloof Four, who were convicted of the murder of an unidentified vagrant in Pretoria’s Moreleta Park in 2001.

Johnson told the court were it not for Adonis’s son Tesh-Lee, who stopped the beating, she would surely be dead.”

Johnson claimed that the five men had viciously assaulted Adonis as punishment for earlier coming to the aid of a man, Duncan Hendry, 21, that they had been beating up earlier.

Despite the efforts of their lawyer, William Booth, De Matos and the others ended up spending two nights in Pollsmoor Prison, after Johnson insisted that bail not be granted. It took an urgent High Court application from Booth to get the three youths released.

The article, following as it did on a number of other reports (mostly by the same journalist) of an apparent epidemic of racist white on black violence in Cape Town, triggered outrage.

In the comments beneath the article, posted on IOL, one reader stated: “I hope that club gets closed down, and these idiots should have their faces shown so that they can get moered to death.” Another that: “It’s funny how these pink, racist bullies mostly pick on smaller, weaker and defenseless (sic) people – especially women.”

The DA national spokesperson Phumzile van Damme rushed out a statement welcoming the charging of these young men with attempted murder. She commented: “There is absolutely no place for racism and racially-motivated violence in our society. We trust that justice will be done in this matter and that the tough stance taken by prosecutors will act as a deterrent to racially-motivated violence in our society.”

In an opinion piece for the Daily Maverick Mariann Thamm wrote that, that five young white men, from ‘good’ homes, “could so easily resort to violence and racial insult points, once again, to the dangers of raising white children in an ahistorical void in this country.”

She suggested that an appropriate punishment for “these young white racists is to be sentenced to a year of cleaning up the porta loos our fellow residents in informal settlements have been forced to use.” This might, she added, “prompt an inward journey of self-discovery, respect and humility.

Doubts…

As someone who was a court and crime reporter for 38 years covering cases ranging from the Biko inquest to the Boesak trial, I was personally troubled by aspects of the initial reporting.

The headline lacked the word ‘alleged’ and the article sought to create the impression that the five accused had, beyond reasonable doubt and with intent, attempted to murder a middle aged women because she comes from a different ethnic group to themselves.

I also wondered why UCT was mentioned so prominently and why no reference was made to other educational institutions where the co-accused of Chad de Matos might be studying.

It also struck me as odd, given the ubiquity of cellphones with cameras, that the newspaper failed to publish any pictures of Adonis’ allegedly life threatening injuries.

… and contradictions

I gave this no further thought until another article appeared in early December 2014 headlined, ‘Infamous Tiger Tiger faces closure’. Again citing Nathan Johnson as its authority the article claimed: ‘In the light of two court cases linked to racial assaults, a Cape Town nightclub risks being shut down for failing to curb drunken and disorderly behaviour of its patrons.’

That night I was visiting a friend whose son had just graduated from UCT and I asked him if he had ever been there and, if so, what his opinion of the nightclub was. “Classy”, he said. “And safe”.

Puzzled, I sent an email the next morning to the Claremont ward councillor, Ian Iversen, and asked whether the nightclub was a renowned trouble spot and a hotbed of drunken, violent racism. Here is his reply:

“I know the Tiger Tiger night club quite well and have met with the owner recently. As night clubs go in the Claremont area, Tiger Tiger is well run and considered, I understand, as the top club. They have recently introduced more security outside the club and in the parking area as well to deal with possible negative activities. My daughter used to go there years ago with her friends of all colours and race was never an issue.”

Subsequent emails to JP Smith, Mayco member for Safety and Security in the Cape Town municipality and his colleague, Nathan Ladegourdie, a senior member of the municipality’s liquor and vice units, revealed that they had never received any complaints about this nightclub and that it complied in every respect with all legal requirements.

As this was completely at odds with the picture being painted by reporters Carlo Petersen and Kieran Legg of the Cape Argus I phoned Shaun Lewis, the manager of the nightclub who was cited in the above-mentioned article about the imminent ‘closure’ of this supposedly ‘infamous’ night spot.

Lewis said that the claim that the night cub was going to close was devoid of truth and invited me to visit its vibrant Facebook page.

He said there were almost three dozen CCTV cameras in the nightclub and on its precincts and so the fulltime security personnel employed by the nightclub swiftly observe and deal with the very occasional quarrels that break out.

On the night of 17 October last year, he told me, there was brief fracas outside the nightclub between two groups of youths. The bouncers swiftly separated the groups, ordering them to disperse in different directions.

Delia Adonis had chosen to involve herself in this fracas and, as a consequence of this decision had sustained a four centimetre long cut on her face.

She then walked, unassisted, into the club and complained to Lewis saying that she had been assaulted by patrons. Her gait was normal and she was bleeding slightly from the cut on her face. Security personnel offered to dress the cut.

This was verified by CCTV footage.

In fact, as the medical evidence indicates, the only injury she sustained during a fracas in which she chose to involve herself was that cut.

Lewis said that he had not been interviewed by the police but had been interviewed by Christian Botha, a private investigator hired by a relative of the accused Tiger Tiger Five, East London businessman Mark Povey, who had also brought in advocate William Booth as counsel for the five youths.

Upon being appointed by Povey, Botha immediately drove from East London to Cape Town. What his investigation revealed is frightening and raises worrying questions about the administration of justice by the NPA in the Western Cape.

What actually happened?

When Nathan Johnson walked into court at the beginning of this trial in November last year he had in his docket – which is now part of the court record and is thus in the public domain – several sworn statements which outlined a completely different series of events to that which he presented in court.

The statements detail how the five youths, all friends who had attended school together in East London, had gone to the Tiger Tiger nightclub after a game of social soccer.

As the designated driver who was to remain sober, De Matos left the nightclub before the others and fell asleep in their car in the nightclub’s parking lot. He was suddenly woken by the urgent shouts of his friends that a fight was in progress. They all bundled into the car and, as he hastily drove away, he saw a woman chasing the car swinging a mop.

That woman was Delia Adonis and Christian Botha told me that in a confused and fast-moving melee in a dark parking lot she had assumed that she had been struck by one of the Tiger Tiger Five.

It is worth emphasising that De Matos was asleep during the fracas. As the statements in Johnson’s docket stressed, De Matos did not touch or speak to Adonis.

Nonetheless, he was accused by Johnson and the Cape Times of attempted murder, of smashing Adonis to the ground with racist intent; of kicking her; of leaving her drenched in blood and so brutally assaulted that ‘she could not move’.

For an accused who has not spoken to the complainant to be charged with crimen injuria is surely without precedent in the history of South Africa’s jurisprudence.

Johnson’s suggestion that De Matos, and the others, deserved to be equated with the Waterkloof Four was equally bizarre. De Matos is slightly-built, wears spectacles, has no previous convictions, and is, according to Mark Povey, someone who “would not hurt a fly”. He has, friends at UCT tell me, consistently achieved amongst the highest marks in his group of first year students in the university’s science faculty.

The supposed motive for the attack – namely that the Tiger Tiger Five had attacked Adonis in retaliation for intervening to save Hendry – also proved to be baseless. In his police statement dated 18 October 2014 Hendry had clearly identified and named his alleged assailant, and it was not one of the Tiger Tiger Five.

Unsurprisingly, when Director of Public Prosecutions in the Western Cape, advocate Rodney de Kock was presented by Booth with the evidence collected by Christian Botha, he withdrew all charges against the accused.

On 26 June Die Burger reported that charges had been dropped, and the five youth effectively exonerated. This information was only communicated to readers of the Cape Times three days later in an article by Carlo Petersen which was so slanted that it subsequently earned the censure of the Press Ombudsman.

Conclusion

The Tiger Tiger Five case was a travesty of justice, a reprehensible combination of malicious prosecution and trial by media. Although charges were ultimately dropped De Matos and others were imprisoned for no reason, while being subjected to extraordinary vilification and racial abuse in the press and on social media.

This case was one of a number where the Cape Times (and Cape Argus) had given extraordinary prominence to alleged incidents of white on black assault being aggressively prosecuted by Johnson. In January 2015 Johnson claimed that “These incidents seem to be a growing problem” and from henceforth “the State’s stance will in future be to oppose bail in such matters.”

Yet, in at least three cases, over subsequent months, the evidence was so weak that the matter never actually made it to trial.

The first was on March 26 when Monique Fuller who allegedly racially abused and assaulted a policeman had the case against her struck from the roll. The second was on June 26 when the state withdrew charges against the Tiger Tiger Five. The third was on July 21 when charges against Talana Jo Huyshamer, who was alleged to have racially abused a person of colour in a parking altercation, were withdrawn. In each case the NPA conceded the lack of substantiating evidence.

Each of these stories had been given sensational, often front page, coverage by the Cape Times and the Argus. News of the collapse of the State case was, in each instance, given considerably less play.

All three stories, I suspect, were motivated by a desire to construct a narrative depicting white South Africans as intractably racist and Cape Town as an irredeemably racist city. The prominence given to De Matos’ UCT affiliation by the Cape Times probably stemmed too from similar motives.

What is going on here and why are no questions being asked by MPs, civil rights NGOs and the media (excluding, obviously, the Cape Times and the Argus)?

In particular, what does Sanef – which is supposedly ‘committed to encouraging ethically-driven media, and providing an environment for ethics discourse in the South African media’ – have to say about this pattern of misreporting?

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Original Newspaper Article

A private investigator travelling between King Williams Town and East London yesterday saved the life of a 21-year-old woman who tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge. The woman was allegedly about to throw herself off a bridge over the busy N2 near Nahoon Dam turn-off when Gonubie-based private investigator Christian Botha and his colleague Frans Molokome were driving past.

“We saw her preparing to jump off the bridge and we had to make a quick decision to save her,” said Botha.

He had to turn his vehicle around to try and find a road which would allow him to get close to the woman.  “I was racing against time because he was not going to wait for me.”  Once at the bridge, Botha and Molokome climbed out of their vehicle and approached the woman, who had not seem them.

“We noticed that there was a tow-truck driver who had stopped on the N2 below and was talking to her trying to stop her from jumping,” said Botha.  “I walked up behind her and grabbed her just as she threw herself forward.  How I did it, I don’t know.  I was there just at the right time.”

The woman, a mother of two, alleged told Botha and Molokome that she had wanted to kill herself  as she was being abused at home.  “She said the only answer was to kill herself.  You could see that she had given up hope on life,” said Botha.

Jan Bossert from Algoa Towing confirmed the incident and said he had seen the woman sitting on the edge of the bridge.  “I just stood underneath the bridge and begged her not to kill herself.  She was crying,” said Bossert.  “As I was talking to her, a man [Botha} came from behind her and grabbed her as she was about to jump.”

The woman was taken to Cecilia Makiwane Hospital, Mdantsane.  Police spokesman Captain Mluleki Mbi confirmed the incident.  Botha said it felt good to have saved a person’s life.  “This is something we will never forget.”

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The 20-year-old suspect, Siyabonga Menziwa, was arrested by police on Thursday night at a shack in Bardaton informal settlement in Duncan Village, said Captain Leon Fortune.

Fortune said the man confessed to the crime and appeared in court on Monday. His bail application is on February 4.

Assisting police in their investigation was private detective, Christian Botha, who said Mongameli Nase, a 24-year-old assistant branch manager at a bank in Gonubie, was murdered outside a pub in Amalinda in March last year. “He and a couple of friends were having drinks when his cellphone rang,” she Botha. “Nase went outside to take the call and that was the last time they saw him alive.”

About 15 minutes later a passerby walked into the pub and alerted patrons to the man lying injured outside. “His friends took him to Frere Hospital, where he was pronounced dead,” said Botha. “He had been stabbed.”

Shortly after the incident, Nase’s family contacted Botha and asked him to get involved in the case. “There was very little information to work with,” said Botha, speaking to the Dispatch yesterday. “there were no witnesses to the incident and his cellphone was all that was missing.”

Botha said he contacted the investigating officer and together the men set out to track the suspect down. “This was quite a complicated case and we had to do things by the book, which is why it took so long because when we eventually made an arrest, we didnt want the case thrown out on a technicality,” he explained.

Botha said he could not disclose how they tracked the suspect down except to say they traced a person who bought the stolen cellphone from the man. “He had apparently bought it off the suspect for just R150 shortly after the murder had been committed.

“It just goes to show, people should be wary of buying stolen goods because you have no idea how the thief got his hands on them in the first place.”

After learning the whereabouts of the suspect last Thursday, Botha accompanied the police to a shack in Duncan Village where the man was arrested. “This case is a good example of how private investigators and the police can work together successfully,” he said.

Nase’s mother, Nosipho, said the family welcomed the news of the suspect’s arrest. “I am really happy there has been a breakthrough,” she said. “It brings closure to us as a family because we were anxious to try and find out who had committed the crimes and why my son was killed.

The post Young man has confessed to crime appeared first on Christian Botha.

In a town that doesn’t see much in the way of violent crime, they came armed with R-4 and R-5 rifles – their tar- get: a prominent South African businesswoman. But the four men who had planned to rob former Billabong South Africa chief executive Cheron Kraak’s Jeffreys Bay house never got there, thanks to a joint operation that involved several police units and a private investiga- tor and his team.

The men, all from outside Jef- freys Bay, were arrested after a high-speed car chase during which they tried to kill the undercover operative who had led them into the trap.
The ordeal had begun days ear- lier, when Kraak received informa- tion that she could be the target of a house robbery. “I didn’t know what to do, so I turned to a private investigator,” she explained.

The private investigator was Christian Botha, who is based in East London. After arriving in Jef- freys Bay, Botha’s employee was able to make contact with the gang and infiltrate it.
The gang had shown interest in how much money Kraak had in her home, and the operative said he could help them. “What happened was that our informant arranged to meet them at 6pm and then take them to the house,” said Botha. But behind the scenes, Botha, together with the police, had arranged that they would intercept the heavily armed gang in an isolated part of Jeffreys Bay.

The spot was chosen so that if there was a shootout, there would be little chance of bystanders get- ting caught in the crossfire. Botha’s undercover operative, who he doesn’t want named, would be in a white Toyota Quantum with the robbers. Police spokeswoman Inspector Gerda Swart said: “The informa- tion we had was that they had firearms, but we did not know what they had. But it ended up being the right decision at the right time.”

Not far from Kraak’s house, police tried to force the Quantum to stop. A high-speed car chase ensued. As they drove, the robbers threw their firearms out of the vehicle. “They turned on my agent, and started saying ‘You cheat, you cheat’,” said Botha.

The operative was able to jump out of the car, just as police were bringing it to a stop. He wasn’t injured. Police stormed the vehicle, handcuffed the men and laid them out next to the van. What they found lying further down the road startled the local police force. There were R-4 and R-5 rifles with full magazines. Also collected was a Z88 automatic pistol and a handgun police have yet to identify. The serial numbers were filed off.

“This is a different kind of crime, I have never seen criminals here so heavily armed,” said Swart. All the firearms were stolen – the R-4 was traced to a security company in Joburg, and the R-5 was owned by the ex-Transkei military or police. The men were aged 23, 24, 28 and 40, said Swart. The four are scheduled to appear in the Humansdorp Magistrate’s Court tomorrow, facing charges of attempted robbery and illegal possession of un- licensed firearms and ammunition.

“I was staring out at the sea this morning, it was quite a surreal experi- ence, I could be dead. I really think they would have killed me,” Kraak said yesterday.

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Phumlani Sam

The first ting that Phumlani Sam asked warders for when he stepped into the West Bank Maximum Prison to begin his 15 year jail sentence for business robbery was to be put in a cell with churchgoers.

Sam had heard horror stories about how hardened criminals welcomed new inmates by assaulting them with padlocks and stabbing them with sharpened toothbrushes.

Fortunately warders listened to his plea and he was locked up with a group of reformed inmates for four months. It was July 13 last year and he had moments earlier been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to 15 years in jail for a crime he never committed. In November last year after new evidence emerged Sam was granted bail.

Last week his ordeal came to an end when Grahamstown High Court Judge Yusuf Ebrahim set aside the conviction and sentencing following an appeal.

Sam described his case as a travesty of justice and thanks his wife, Ntomboxolo, his attorney Andre Schoombee and private investigator Christian Botha for the freedom he enjoys today.

Recalling the day his life changed, Sam said he was arrested in July 2009 outside his house in Southernwood. An Organised Crime Unit police detective accosted him while he was on his way home from a shop in St. Peters Road.

The policeman had pulled out a firearm and ordered Sam to lie down.

It was alleged he had been involved in a business robbery that took place at an upmarket store in Cambridge. The police, he said, had based their investigation on footage taken from surveillance cameras in the store.

Sam said one of the three suspects caught on camera walked with a limp, as does he. During an identity parade that afternoon witnesses pointed him out as the main suspect.

That day I felt the sun had set on my life, he said.

He was charged with armed robbery by Cambridge police. During his trial Sam maintained his innocence until the end. But after two years he was found guilty of the crime, denied leave to appeal and sentenced to 15 years in prison.

“Can you imagine stepping into a maximum security prison for the first time, when all your life you have never seen the inside of a police station,” he said.

“When I got to jail that day, I begged the warders to place me in a cell where there were no incidents of violence, where people passed time by praying.

“Every day I prayed for the nightmare to end. My wife was outside pressuring the authorities to rehear my case,” he said, adding that he had contracted Botha to investigate the case.

Botha said it had been clear from the start that Sam was innocent.

“My informants told me the police had the wrong man,” he said. Botha then roped in the help of facial recognition experts from Johannesburg and Sam’s face was compared to that of the suspect caught on camera.

“Although there were similarities between the two like the limp and their height, by using facial recognition technology, experts were able to prove it was not him,” said Botha. He added that same also had an alibi from his wife and domestic servant that he had been at home at the time of the robbery.

Schoombee said he had to petition the Grahamstown High Court to allow the defence to lodge an appeal.

Police spokesman Lieutenant Nkosikho Mzuku confirmed that police had arrested Sam for the robbery, but was not aware that he had since been released.

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It was the scene of one of the most notorious massacres in the history of South Africa.  Here in the shadow of the Bhisho football stadium 28 ANC supporters were gunned down by police as they marched for freedom.  Nearly two decades on and the deserted spot is now significant for another horrific act of violence.

This week it became the latest focus of the investigation into British millionaire Shrien Dewani, 30 – accused of murdering his bride Anni, 28.  It was here, three years ago, that a popular anti-apartheid GP was murdered in an execution-style killing now being linked to Dewani.  South African police announced this week they want to talk to the care home boss about the carjacking and murder of father-of-three Dr Pox Raghavjee.

Dewani has family links to the doctor and was comforted by his widow Heather in Cape Town following Anni’s death. Yesterday the private detective investigating possible links between the two murders took the Daily Mirror to the scene of so much bloodshed.  Armed with a Smith and Wesson pistol, Christian Botha led us to the rubbish strewn track where the doctor pleaded for his life before being shot through the back of the head.

While a brown granite monument stands close by remembering the victims of the 1992 massacre, no such memorial exists to the popular doctor. Only mud and discarded plastic bags lie on the patch of scrub where his body was found at 10am on October 29, 2007.  Christian, a cold case specialist, said: “This place has a lot of meaning to the people here. Now it’s the home of more bad memories for another reason.”  The detective has been quietly investigating the murder since January on the instructions of the doctor’s widow. He is following in the footsteps of another investigator who spent two fruitless years on the job.

Dad-of-four Christian admits it’s one of his toughest challenges, with no apparent motive and no forensic evidence.  He said: “There were no fingerprints, ballistics evidence or weapon found. It was totally clean, a professional job.”  Christian says there are a number of hitmen available in the area for less than £1,000 a kill.

On the morning of October 27, 2007 Dr Pox set off on his usual 8am journey to work but failed to show up at his surgery.

Two hours later a goat herder found him in blood-soaked surgery whites, slumped near his green Mercedes.

Journalist Denver Donian, 42, saw the man he had known since the age of 12 moments after police arrived.

He said: “He had been dragged out of the passenger seat. It was horrific, there was Jblood all over the car but nothing had been taken, apart from the keys.

“We can’t understand why anyone would want to kill such a popular family man. The community was devastated.”

Robbery was ruled out as a motive after the doctor’s mobile phone, 500 Rand (£45) in cash and his watch were left at the scene. “Motive is the million dollar question. If we can find that we find the killer,” Christian said.

Both Anni and Dr Pox were killed by a single bullet to the head while the cars they were in were not stolen. Dewani, 30, is an old friend of Dr Pox’s daughter-in-law Alvita, who lives near him in Bristol.

Widow Heather visited Dewani in Cape Town after his wife’s murder and last week she flew to Bristol to be with her son and daughter-in-law.

She said last week: “We went through a lot when my husband was murdered. But I had support from family members. We came to Cape Town to give support to the widower and his parents.”

South African police have since linked the two murders for the first time. Dewani is now fighting extradition to South Africa after he was implicated in his wife’s murder by jailed taxi driver Zola Tongo.

Tongo told police Dewani had boasted about arranging another murder. Dewani denies any involvement in either.

It has also emerged that a second suspect in Anni’s killing could be a link between the two murders.

Hotel receptionist Monde Mbolombo told police he was asked by Dewani to hire two hitmen. He is from East London, close to where Dr Pox was killed.

Christian is looking at Mbolombo’s movements in King William’s Town and any possible links to Dr Pox’s murder.

Before we leave he says: “What really gets me is the fact Dr Pox was a prominent campaigner against apartheid and ended up dying close to where so many of his fellow strugglers fell.”

In a message to Dewani, Anni’s father Vinod Hindocha said: “Go to South Africa. Let the world know what happened. Give us justice. That’s what I ask for – justice for my innocent daughter.”

KEY TO CARJACK KILLING

October, 2010 Dewani and Anni are married in Mumbai, India.

Nov 7 The couple fly to South Africa for their honeymoon.

Nov 12 They arrive in Cape Town.

Nov 13 The couple’s taxi is ambushed in notorious township Gugulethu. Their driver is freed immediately and Dewani is let out later but Anni is kept captive.

Nov 14 Her body is found in the taxi in another township. She’d been shot dead.

Nov 16 Xolile Mngeni, 26, is arrested in connection with the killing.

Nov 17 Dewani returns to the UK. Nov 18 Mzwamadoda Qwabe, 26, is arrested. Mngeni appears in court charged with murder and robbery with aggravating circumstances.

Nov 20 The Dewanis’ driver on the night of the ambush, Zola Tongo, is arrested.

Nov 22 Tongo and Qwabe appear in court charged with murder and hijacking. Anni’s dad, Vinod Hindocha, says that he loves Dewani like a son. Dewani hires PR agent Max Clifford.

Nov 23 Dewani says that claims he was involved in the killing “defy logic”. Nov 24 Dewani’s brother says the widower is receiving medical assistance.

Dec 7 At a Cape Town court Tongo is jailed for 18 years and claims Dewani offered £1,300 to kill Anni. Dewani’s family dismiss allegation as “ludicrous”. Dewani is arrested in Bristol.

Dec 9 Police sources claim to have CCTV of Dewani handing cash to Tongo.

Dec 10 Dewani granted bail in London.

Dec 13 It emerges police are probing links with the carjacking murder of Dr Pox Raghavjee in South Africa in 2007.

THE VICTIM

Dr Pox Raghavjee, pictured here with his wife Heather. His killing has never been solved

THE LINKS

There are similarities between the murders of Anni and Dr Pox. Shrien Dewani is a friend of Dr Pox’s daughterin-law Alvita.

CRIME SCENE

The deserted rubbish-strewn wasteland close to the Bhishoo football stadium

PRIVATE DETECTIVE

Christian Botha, a cold case specialist, is investigating the links between the two murders

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The Mowbray police handled the case, but four successive investigating officers failed to track down the killer.

Worsley’s children hired a Cape Town security firm which also does criminal investigations, but they also made no headway. Then, seven months after their mom’s murder, the family contacted a private investigation firm from East London, Christian Botha Investigations (CBI).

Botha and his colleague, Frans Molokomme, arrived in Cape Town on March 16. Three days later a man was arrested for Worsley’s murder. Vusumzi Rini, 23, of Khayelitsha, is on trial in the Wynberg Regional Court on charges of murder, aggravated robbery and rape. He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.

On Thursday the case was postponed until February.

“Without CBI, we would never have known what probably happened,” said Sandra Kruger, one of Worsley’s three children. “The other investigators told us they had nothing to work with and the case was cold.”

The last policeman to investigate the murder, Warrant Officer Andre Kleynhans, was dealing with 132 case dockets at the time, which Kruger believes was one of the reasons he was unable to give Worsley’s murder the attention it deserved.

If Rini is convicted, the Worsley family will have spent about R200 000 to get justice.

“Even at this stage, we have to pay for the truth,” said Kruger, referring to the fact that the family has hired a legal firm from Cape Town, William Booth attorneys, to assist in prosecuting Rini.

Kruger said she, her sister Lynn Salzwedel and brother Russell Worsley decided that if they needed to pay to see justice done, they would.

“We had the feeling that the case was seen as nothing, as just another murder. But to us our mother was so special. I loved my mother and I couldn’t have wished for a better mom.”

In 2000, Kruger’s husband of 16 years, Johan, was murdered in a hijacking in Joburg. Four years later Kruger and her daughter, Nicola, moved to Cape Town for a better quality of life and to be closer to her mom.

“I can’t put it into words… everybody I loved seemed to be taken from me. People are murdered and they vanish.” Kruger said her mom was “kind and loyal. She contributed to life. She was fun. I spoke to her for at least 20 minutes every day. We also saw lots of her”.

Worsley had lived in her Rondebosch home for 30 years. She loved walking Purdy, gardening and sewing for the Red Cross Children’s Hospital.

The Sunday before she was murdered, Worsley accompanied Kruger and Nicola, then 11, to Fish Hoek, where they had lunch and a walk along the beach. “She loved spending time with Nicola, reading her books. She also liked cooking for her.”

The day before the murder, Worsley joined Kruger at a swim therapy session for Kruger’s dog in the morning. Later, she held Bible study with friends. It was her son’s birthday and she called to wish him well.

“Then she called me to remind me to call my brother. That was the last time I heard her voice,” said Kruger.

The next day Heather Mackie, Worsley’s best friend from the age of six, arrived to fetch her for tea and found her body on the floor. The murderer had fled with Worsley’s cellphone, two diamond rings and a few hundred rand.

Today, Kruger takes care of Purdy and still walks on the beach with the spaniel and Nicola, and wishes her mom was alive to share these moments. She said she wondered why the killer hadn’t covered his face “with a balaclava or something” when he attacked her mom. “Maybe then he wouldn’t have had to kill her because she wouldn’t have been able to identify him.”

At a restaurant outside the Wynberg Regional Court this week, Kruger hugged Botha, who drove down from East London to testify. She welcomed him to Cape Town before they sat down for tea and coffee. “He’s really passionate about his work. It (the arrest) happened so quickly after they started working on the case. We’re extremely grateful.”

Botha said the case was one of two murder cases in which CBI had made an arrest last year, and he hoped they had helped the family find a sense of closure. Botha thanked Kleynhans for his assistance. “He did his best under the circumstances and gave his full co-operation.”

The post The Norma Worsley Case appeared first on Christian Botha.

IT’S COME TO THIS: Murder victim Nicolene Hamann (LEFT) and her sister Nolene Hendricks shared a very close relationship.home Picture: STEPHANIE LLOYD

Botha’s gruesome discovery on September 4 brought an end to her Eastern Cape family’s hopes that the bubbly young woman they called “Koeksie” would be found alive.

Although there was little left of her body – just a few bones and teeth – Hamann’s four rings were identified by family members, who broke down when they realised this was all that was left of their beloved Nicolene.

Hamann’s family had spent a distressing month agonising about what had become of her after her husband, Ebrahim Hamann called her sister Nolene Hendricks, 30, to say she had disappeared from her bed on the morning of July 20.

“He called to say that the devil had come into the house and taken her,” said Hendricks, who lives in Buffalo Flats and enjoyed a very close relationship with her sister.

She said Nicolene’s 15-year marriage to Hamann began to crumble about a year ago when he learnt she was having an affair.

“She must have had a premonition, because shortly before she disappeared she grabbed me by the arm and said ‘if I die promise me you will take the children’.”

Fighting back tears Nicolene’s mother Theresa Langley, who lives in Stutterheim, said her daughter had feared for her life.

“A week before she died she said ‘you don’t believe me but you will find my body’.”

Langley and Hendricks visited Harding after the disappearance and found Nicolene’s clothes, watch and make-up intact.

“Only her bag was missing. Also we knew she would never leave her children and it was not like her not to contact us,” said Hendricks.

Her mother never gave up hope, and worried she was being held somewhere.

Calls from her husband that she had been seen around KZN were investigated, but all came to nothing.

A month after her disappearance family spokeswoman Laverne Jacobs hired Christian Botha.

“All the way we were hoping he would find her alive, but two weeks after we first spoke to him he phoned to say he had found her but she was not alive,” said Jacobs.

“When Laverne called me to come see her I had a very bad feeling about my daughter,” said Langley. “I fell down and cried and cried. Then I was told there is no body. I could not believe someone could just burn her. We immediately drove to Harding.”

“It was like someone tore a piece of my heart out,” said Hendricks.

Botha, who carried out preliminary investigations into the case before travelling to KZN, said he tracked down Nicolene’s cellphone, which had been picked up and sold by two women recycling waste at a rubbish tip in Harding.

“They showed me where they found the phone and I noticed that two or three metres away there was a whole lot of ash.

“I went through it and found a human tooth and then some finger bones, so I called the organised crime unit and we found four rings that were positively identified by Nicolene’s friends.

“It was a very hard call to make to let her family know because I knew how special she was to them,” he said, adding he had worked hand-in-hand with KZN police on the matter.

“Whoever did this should rot in jail for the rest of their lives,” said Langley.

Warrant Officer Abraham Sonnekus, the investigating officer in the matter, said police were waiting for DNA test results to come back from the forensic laboratory. “We expect to make two arrests once the results are back,” he said.

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