A teenager charged with the murder of baby Jordan Leigh Norton claimed he tried to comfort the distressed infant moments before she was stabbed in the neck, a Cape Town magistrate heard on Friday.
The macabre disclosure was made during a bail application by taxi driver and shebeen owner Sipho Mfazwe, one of five people arrested in connection with what the state claims was a contract killing.
The court heard that Mfazwe had detailed in a confession how he was hired by a white woman to recruit ”people who do crime” to rob the Norton home and kill the six-month-old girl child.
Prosecutor John Ryneveld also said cellphone records showed Mfazwe made a number of calls to Dina Rodrigues, the person allegedly behind the scheme, the day before and immediately after the killing on June 15 this year.
Mfazwe and Rodrigues have been charged along with Mongezi Bobotyane and Zanethemloa Gwada, who will also apply for bail, and a 16-year-old youth, who is not seeking bail because he was sentenced to five years in jail on an unrelated robbery charge last week.
Rodrigues has already been released on R20 000 bail.
Ryneveld told the court that the teenager confessed to a magistrate after his arrest that he, Bobotyane and Gwada were at Mfazwe’s shebeen when Mfazwe asked if they wanted money.
”We all answered with interest that we wanted money. Tao [a nickname for Mfazwe] said he had a deal with a certain white woman,” Ryneveld said, reading from the youth’s confession. ”He told us this white woman wants us to kill for her a baby and give us R10 000.”
They went to the Nortons’ home in Scout Road, Lansdowne, one morning the following week, with phone books that Gwada was to pretend to deliver in order to gain entry to the house.
However, the domestic worker said the family already had new books, and Mfazwe reported to the white woman by phone that they had been unsuccessful.
That afternoon they met the woman, who was driving a Corsa with a registration plate that began ”CA136”, in the parking lot of a Steers at Killarney in Cape Town’s northern suburbs, and she gave Mfazwe a cardboard box.
The next day they went back to the Norton home with the box, and this time he himself posed as a delivery man.
A woman opened the door, and the four of them entered.
In the house, they found a tall young white man — presumably Dylan Norton, the infant’s uncle — and a black woman — presumably the family’s domestic worker, who has not been named to protect her identity as a witness — as well as a baby on a bed.
‘Chop the baby’
The youth said in the confession his three companions instructed him to ”to remove the baby to another room and chop the baby”.
”I did remove the baby to another room and the baby was crying,” he said. ”I tried to console the baby and I couldn’t do what I was instructed to do.”
Bobotyane came in and asked why he had not killed the infant.
”I told him to do it himself,” the youth said. ”I left him there and never witnessed what happened.”
He took a safe from the house out to the taxi, and they left. In the taxi, Bobotyane told them he had stabbed the baby.
”He showed us the knife and it had blood,” the youth said.
Later that day, they went back to Killarney and met the white woman again. Mfazwe was given an envelope with money, but it was only R5 000.
They each took R1 100, put R300-worth of petrol in the taxi, and bought liquor with the remaining R300.
In his confession, also read out by prosecutor Ryneveld, Bobotyane also described how Mfazwe told him he had a contract to kill a child, and how they went to the Norton home.
”We took clothing and shoes. After that I killed the child,” he said.
At this point, the magistrate who was taking the statement from him noted: ”Deponent starts crying, he is given time to recover and handed tissues.”
Mfazwe said in his confession — which he told the court on Friday was not given under duress — that a woman approached him at the Killarney taxi rank, asking for someone who spoke English.
”She asked about the people who commit crime and whether [I] knew any such people and she gave me two phone books,” he said.
”They are going to take these two phone books as delivery people and deliver them to the house, and then when they open for them, they must take the goods and also kill the baby.
”And she said that she is going to give them money. The amount of money is R10 000.”
Mfazwe claimed he was only the driver on the day.
”I did not kill. I just took them there. The people that were having the baby were Nobura and Mora [Bobakwane]. The others were taking the goods and they were saying they had already killed the baby.”
Mfazwe declined on Friday to comment on any of the confessions as Ryneveld read them out to him.
”I don’t want to answer anything that’s on that,” he said at one point. ”I’ll answer during the trial.”
It emerged on Friday that Mfazwe, who was beaten and kicked during the Thursday lunch break in the Wynberg court holding cells by fellow prisoners yelling ”Here are the child murderers”, was assaulted again on Thursday evening when he was taken back to Pollsmoor.
He told magistrate Carmen Wyngaard that he was ”again klapped [hit]” by the same group that assaulted him earlier in the day.
His advocate, Charles Simon, threatened a high court interdict if Mfazwe and the others were not protected.
Western Cape department of correctional services spokesperson Eddie Johnson said the prison was not aware of the incident, which meant it was likely that it had not been reported.
”If at any time they feel at risk or feel that their safety is threatened, we will do everything in our power to safeguard them,” he said.
The bail hearing resumes on September 6. — Sapa