Police deliberately gave prosecutors in the 2007 Inge Lotz murder trial false information, and withheld facts that would have brought the prosecution to a halt; the Cape High Court was told on Thursday.
The claim was made at the start of a R46-million civil suit by Lotz’ boyfriend Fred van der Vyver, who was tried and acquitted of her murder.
Lotz, a University of Stellenbosch masters student, was found bludgeoned to death in her flat in the town in March 2005.
Van der Vyver, arrested after police claimed to have linked him to the killing through a fingerprint, a hammer and a bloody shoeprint, is suing the minister of police for “malicious prosecution”.
One of the three-man team of advocates representing Van der Vyver, Dup de Bruyn, told Judge Anton Veldhuizen that the police investigating the brutal killing had actively assisted and identified themselves with the prosecution.
They had made statements that were “wilfully false in material respects”, without which the prosecution would not have gone ahead.
They had dishonestly prejudiced the judgment of the prosecuting authority, and had deliberately made inadequate enquiries or none at all on issues that “cried out for investigation”.
De Bruyn said the investigators had contributed to the prosecution “by deliberately deceiving the prosecution by supplying false information in the absence of which the prosecution would not have proceeded; and by witholding information with the knowledge of which the prosecution would not have proceeded”.
According to papers filed before Thursday’s hearing, Van der Vyver’s case is that the police continued lying under oath when giving evidence in his criminal trial.
De Bruyn told the judge he wanted to put it on record that the Western Cape director of prosecutions, Rodney de Kock, had denied him permission to consult with prosecutors who had been involved in the case.
Earlier, the leader of Van der Vyver’s defence team, Henri Viljoen SC, told Veldhuizen that though there had certainly been incompetence among the investigators, the cause of the prosecution had been malice.
He said they intended to call as their first witness William Bodziak, a shoeprint expert from the United States who testified for the defence in the criminal trial.
Bodziak would take the stand on Monday, to be followed by University of Pretoria medical forensics expert Professor Gert Saayman and Dutch fingerprint expert Arie Zeelenberg.
Finally, he said, Van der Vyver himself would testify about his relationship with Lotz, his comings and goings on the day of the killing, and the effectiveness of the security system at Old Mutual’s head office in Cape Town, where he works. — Sapa