Lawyers on Wednesday lashed out at photographers sneaking pictures of killer Donovan Moodley in the dock of the Johannesburg High Court, where he is on trial for the murder last year of student Leigh Matthews.
His furious defence counsel, Johan Pretorius, threatened to lay criminal charges against them. He would go down to Moodley, take a statement, and lay charges, Pretorius warned.
Just as angry, state prosecutor Zaais van Zyl pleaded the trial not be turned into ”a circus”.
The photographers had been allowed to enter the court building with their equipment to take pictures of a gun which forms part of the evidence.
Meanwhile outside the court, Moodley’s fiancee, Yeshika Singh, flashed around a letter bearing the bright-red logo of YOU magazine, which she claimed was its offer of R5 000 for her exclusive story.
Moodley and Singh wore matching black pin-striped jackets for Wednesday’s court appearance — the third day of the trial in which Moodley has pleaded guilty to and been convicted of kidnapping, extortion and murder.
The state is trying to prove that Moodley froze Leigh’s body for 11 days after murdering her, and that he then staged the murder scene by placing four empty cartridges near her body.
A scientist testifying in the case on Wednesday described the version of events in Moodley’s confession as highly unlikely and impossible.
Dr Mervyn Mansell said that the absence of insects on Leigh Matthews’s body indicated that it could not have been at the scene for longer than 24-hours.
”The fact that no fly eggs or maggots were detected on the body indicates this was a very fresh crime scene,” he testified.
Asked under cross-examination whether there was any possibility the body had been at the scene longer than 24 hours, Mansell said: ”It is highly unlikely. In fact, it is impossible.”
He had returned to the crime scene on July 12 this year to determine whether flies were active in the area, the court heard. He set live chicken livers as bait at the exact location where the body was found.
”Within five minutes the first fly arrived, and between 10am and 3pm, we caught six different species of flies,” he told the court.
A police officer, specialising in the study of insects, and a spider expert also testified that the body could not have been at the scene for longer than a day.
South Africa’s leading authority on spiders, Professor Ansie Dippenaar, and two other witnesses, told the court they had discovered a black spider commonly found in the veld, spinning the first few strands of a web between Leigh’s thighs.
They contended that this would have happened within no more than several hours of the body disturbing the ground web the spider usually weaved to trap crawling insects.
”The body was placed on top of the web, and in self-defence the spider moved from the destroyed web to the side, but it had not settled to start a new one,” said Dippenaar.
The case continues. – Sapa