Dina Rodrigues, the mastermind in the June 2005 murder of baby Jordan-Leigh Norton, has been sentenced to life in prison.
The sentence was passed by Judge Basheer Waglay and two assessors in the Cape Town High Court on Thursday.
Two of her co-accused, Sipho Mongezi Mfazwe and Mongezi Bobotyane, also received life sentences. In addition they got 10 years’ jail each for armed robbery.
The two other youths involved in the murder, Zanethemba Gwada and Bonginkosi Sigenu, were each effectively sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for the murder and the robbery combined.
The four men, after being hired by Rodrigues, had entered the infant’s home, posing as courier delivery men, and stabbed her in the neck, leaving her to bleed to death.
The robbery charge related to items that the four took from the Norton home after the murder.
The packed public gallery applauded the sentences so loudly that the judge and two assessors were forced to leave the court immediately.
The prosecution team had last week called for life sentences for Rodrigues and three of her four co-accused. Prosecutor Nicollette Bell said there were no compelling and substantial factors to justify a sentence less than life in prison for the four. She said the community interests and the seriousness of the murder and robbery outweighed the personal circumstances of the four.
Of Rodrigues, Bell said: ”She is the principal offender.”
She added: ”She [Rodrigues] went to a taxi rank to seek out vulnerable people from a poor background to carry out this deed. She lured them with an offer of R10 000 to kill the baby [in a love triangle involving the child’s father, Neil Wilson].
”She took her time in planning the murder … She obtained a waybill with which her co-accused were to pose as couriers delivering a parcel, in order to get access to the house.”
Wilson had had a relationship with Jordan-Leigh’s mother, Natasha Norton, before dating Rodrigues.
Rodrigues’s advocate, Johan van der Berg, had called for a fair and balanced sentence for her for the premeditated murder, saying that the fact that Rodrigues was a first offender was crucial to sentencing. Together with other factors this constituted substantial and compelling circumstances that justified a sentence less severe than life imprisonment, he said.