No one deserved to die the way Kathy Odendaal was killed in her home in Lynnwood Manor, Pretoria, last year, the Pretoria High Court heard on Tuesday.
Captain Peet van der Spuy said Odendaal was subjected to humiliation, torture and indignity. ”One should not compare it to [an act of] animals, because animals are not like that,” he testified.
Van der Spuy, who was in charge of collecting forensic evidence in the case, testified in the trial of Mohlatsi Alfred Matlala (23) and Jacob Tshepo Dithung (29).
They have pleaded not guilty to a range of charges connected to an alleged crime spree in the Lynnwood area in October last year, including two counts of murder and several of robbery with aggravating circumstances.
They also face a charge of attempting to murder a three-year-old Malawian toddler, Alphiner Ndalana, by shooting her in the back during a robbery at a house in Lynnwood Manor.
Van der Spuy said he believed Odendaal had been chased through her garden before she was murdered in a washroom in her house. She was found naked in her house with her shirt around her throat.
Odendaal had been strangled and stabbed repeatedly, and died of a deeply penetrating stab wound to the chest.
Her husband, Gideon, a commander of a defence force unit, testified that he was in Cape Town on business on October 16 last year when he received a call from his security company that an alarm had been triggered in their house.
He asked the company to go to the house and tried to phone his wife, but there was no reply. He then phoned their domestic worker, Fransina Majadibodu, on her cellphone.
She sounded frightened and told him she was hiding under her bed and there were people with his wife and they were hurting her.
He immediately phoned the security company and police, and made arrangements to fly back home. He was, meanwhile, told that his wife had died.
When he finally arrived home that night, police did not want him to enter and only allowed this the next day.
Odendaal testified that his wife had worked from home, making beaded jewellery. Security at the house had been tight, with an alarm system and security gates at the doors.
The trial continues. — Sapa