Cape Town | Friday
A SECURITY guard who worked at the home of Marike de Klerk, the 64-year-old ex-wife of former South African president FW de Klerk, has confessed to her murder, police said on Friday.
Investigating officer Mike Barkhuizen said: “The man we were holding has confessed to Mrs de Klerk’s murder.”
A post mortem late on Tuesday showed De Klerk, wife of South Africa’s last white president, had been strangled and had a small stab wound in her back.
Doctors concluded that she had been dead for 36 hours.
Police took the security guard into custody on Thursday, two days after De Klerk’s body was found at her Cape Town home.
Western Cape police commissioner Lennit Max said that the 21-year-old guard would appear in the Cape Town Magistrates Court on Monday.
Max said he made the confession before a Cape Town magistrate late on Thursday night, following an intensive investigation by experienced detectives.
“The suspect was identified through clues gathered by the investigators, of which one was a call made from the victim’s cellular phone,” he said.
The guard, employed at the beachfront apartment building where De Klerk lived, was described on Thursday by security company Securicor-Gray as one of its “reliable, longer-serving” employees.
FW de Klerk divorced Marike in 1998 after 39 years of marriage, and admitted to an affair with Elita Georgiades, the wife of a Greek shipping tycoon whom he subsequently married.
The former president flew into Cape Town on Thursday to attend a memorial service for his ex-wife in the city on Friday.
De Klerk (65) had cut short his trip to Nobel Prize centenary celebrations in Norway when he received news of her murder. – AFP