The murder case of baby Jordan resumed in its usual start-stop fashion on Monday with the court having to adjourn until noon to obtain two missing pre-sentencing reports.
The Cape High Court also heard that an unnamed, privately engaged probation officer had shown no interest in interviewing Dina Rodrigues at Pollsmoor Prison.
Rodrigues’s counsel, John van der Berg, told the court the probation officer had two weeks to interview Rodrigues and to compile a report about her. However, he had only gone to the prison last Friday, with the hearing set to resume on Monday.
Van der Berg said the probation officer’s performance had been unsatisfactory and that on Rodrigues’s behalf he had ended the officer’s mandate. For this reason, he would no longer hand a probation officer’s report to the court, as he had intended.
With Rodrigues in the dock are Sipho Mfazwe, Mongezi Bobotyane, Zanethemba Gwada and Bonginkosi Sigenu.
Mfazwe, Bobotyane, Gwada and Sigenu are all to be sentenced for murder and aggravated robbery. Mfazwe is to be sentenced for the illegal possession of a firearm as well, and Rodrigues is to be sentenced for murder only.
The hearing, before Judge Basheer Waglay, stems from an incident in June 2005 when the four men entered the infant’s home, posing as courier delivery men. Once inside, Bobotyane stabbed baby Jordan-Leigh Norton in the neck and left her on a bed to bleed to death.
They had been hired for R10 000 by Rodrigues to kill the baby in order to save the infant’s father, schoolteacher Neil Wilson, the burden of maintenance payments.
At the time, Wilson had broken off his intimate relationship with the baby’s mother, Natasha, and was dating Rodrigues, apparently with a view to marriage.
During Monday’s proceedings, Sigenu’s counsel, Caryl Verrier, said she was still waiting for two pre-sentencing reports, and hoped to have them by midday.
The hearing continued at noon. — Sapa