A new set of photographs appeared to cast doubt on testimony by a senior police forensics expert in the Inge Lotz murder trial on Wednesday.
The photographs were produced by the defence when Superintendent Stef Koekemoer, manager of the national fingerprint laboratory in Pretoria, was recalled to the stand for more questioning.
He had testified earlier in the case that he tested a mark on the floor of Lotz’s bathroom — a mark which the state claims matches the sole of a shoe belonging to Lotz’s alleged killer, Fred van der Vyver — to check whether it was blood.
At issue on Wednesday was a small extra tongue of blood that appeared on the edge of the mark some time after the first police photographs were taken on the night of the March 2005 killing.
The defence claims the tongue was the result of deliberate manipulation to make the mark more closely match Van der Vyver’s shoe.
In his evidence-in-chief, Koekemoer testified that he made the tongue when he swabbed the mark for a blood test on April 28, just over a month after the killing.
However, defence advocate Dup de Bruyn on Wednesday produced a set of photographs taken by a private investigator hired by the Lotz family, which clearly showed the tongue.
He said the photographs were taken on April 1, and that the state had conceded that they were definitely taken before Koekemoer’s visit.
Questioned on the discrepancy, Koekemoer said his recollection was that the mark was undisturbed when he first saw it, but he could be wrong.
”Two years after the event, without notes, I feel I must have made the mark,” he said.
He said it was possible that the tongue was made before his arrival by a police DNA specialist, and if it was, he would have swabbed in the same place to avoid disturbing the mark any further.
De Bruyn said no evidence had been presented that any swab was taken before Koekemoer’s.
He put it to Koekemoer that he was not the person who made the tongue.
”If I did not make the mark, then what mark did I make, because I definitely made a mark,” Koekemoer said.
The trial continues on Thursday. — Sapa