A Cape High Court judge on Monday criticised the police for their lack of professionalism at the scene of the murder of Stellenbosch student Inge Lotz.
”In my 22 years on the Bench, I have never seen anything so bad,” Judge Deon van Zyl remarked as it emerged that a key piece of evidence had been moved.
There had been a ”total lack of order and discipline” on the crime scene, he said.
Last week, former police forensics expert Bruce Bartholomew told the court that when he arrived on the scene to search for footprints, he made all the police officials he found on the scene stand outside Lotz’s flat and lift up their feet so he could identify their prints.
He told the court then that he realised the police officers had been ”terribly curious” and that some of their footprints were found near the couch on which Lotz had been bludgeoned and stabbed to death.
Partial print
Van Zyl’s remarks on Monday came as the leader of the defence team, advocate Dup de Bruyn, questioned Bartholomew about the position of a cloth lying on the bathroom floor next to a bloody shoeprint.
The state hopes to prove the partial print came from one of a pair of running shoes owned by Fred van der Vyver, Lotz’s former boyfriend, who is on trial for the 2005 killing.
Bartholomew suggested on Monday that the remainder of the footprint could have gone on to the cloth — which is shown in some police photos as being some distance from the print.
Earlier on Monday, the court was told that an internationally acclaimed footprint expert, Bill Bodziak, claimed the police lied in a report on the shoeprint.
Bodziak, who lives in Florida in the United States, made the claim in an email sent to the leader of the defence team, advocate Dup de Bruyn, last week.
De Bruyn introduced the email in proceedings after Bartholomew testified how he travelled to the US in June last year to consult Bodziak.
Report
After the consultation, the head of the Western Cape’s crime records centre, Director Attie Trollip, wrote a report saying that according to Bartholomew, sand granules lodged in the sole of the shoe should be used as ”additional points of identification”.
The report said Bodziak had ”emphasised” that a test print made with the same shoe would be of no value, as the crime-scene prints could never be repeated.
”Mr Bodziak emphasised that Superintendent Bartholomew would be the most suited person to give evidence in court due to his presence at the crime scene and the in-depth background knowledge of footwear impressions,” Trollip said.
However, in the email to De Bruyn, Bodziak said there was never any discussion on who was best suited to give evidence in court, nor had he recommended that the sand grains be used for identification.
”This is not true as the sand would not be able to be part of a two-dimensional impression on a hard surface,” Bodziak said.
He said the sand was lodged too deeply in a groove of the heel area to make contact with the floor.
Regarding the claim that a test print of the shoe would be of no value, Bodziak said: ”This is the opposite of what I said. I advised that a test impression must be made. In fact, I pointed out that, visually, it appeared that the sand grains were not even in the same location as Superintendent Bartholomew was surmising.”
He added: ”I am both shocked and amazed of [sic] how many lies are contained in that report.”
Bodziak also pointed out in correspondence with De Bruyn that he had only been able to see ”small photographs [of the bathroom print] not suitable for a proper examination”.
Bartholomew, who has been in the witness box since last Wednesday, told De Bruyn he had ”no comment” on the letter as a whole.
Bodziak is not on the list of witnesses in the case, but, under questioning from Van Zyl, De Bruyn said he would call Bodziak to testify ”if necessary”, or seek to have him give evidence on commission from the US.
He said he accepted that the email would not stand as evidence unless Bodziak testified. — Sapa