It was the police themselves who handed Brett Kebble’s blood-spattered car to the mining magnate’s security company shortly after his murder, the Star reported on Thursday.
The paper quoted private investigator Andre Burger as saying the Mercedes-Benz S600 was handed to him by investigating officer Captain Johan Diedericks.
Burger took Kebble’s car out of police custody and told the paper that reports that the car was cleaned — thus destroying forensic evidence — were ”vastly untrue”.
Burger is a former employee of Central National Security Guards, a company run by Kebble’s ex-security chief, Clint Nassif.
”I was on the scene [of the murder] at about 11.30pm,” Burger told the newspaper. ”[Investigating officer] Captain Johan Diedericks later asked me to take the car out of SAP13 [where all police evidence is kept] because he was worried that it would be stripped and damaged.”
Burger denied that the vehicle was washed and given a full valet. ”The car was covered in plastic sheets that had ‘Don’t touch, don’t clean’ written all over them,” he said.
Kebble died in a hail of bullets behind the steering wheel of his car in Melrose, Johannesburg, in September last year.
It has been claimed that the police lost forensic evidence when the vehicle was removed from the murder scene and cleaned hours after the killing.
National police spokesperson Director Sally de Beer declined to comment on Burger’s version of events. ”We are not speaking about any details concerning the investigation,” she said.
Disinformation
On Tuesday, media reports said ”rogue elements” within law enforcement were apparently spreading disinformation about the Kebble murder probe. ”It’s a total nightmare,” National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Makhosini Nkosi told the media.
”Certain people who consider themselves to be suspects are planting things in the media to force us to give a yes or no answer about certain issues … which they can hold the NPA to further down the line.”
Nkosi said the investigation was continuing and things were happening all the time. ”The situation does change and it is untenable for us to comment on every alleged development.”
Nkosi was responding to queries on a report that the Scorpions had subpoenaed police investigators working on the Kebble murder case, as well as weekend media reports that other suspects had been arrested. — Sapa