Africa-Press – South-Africa. His too-big boots supposedly protected his feet from being mauled by a police dog, Jeremy Sias testified on Thursday about the lack of injuries he supposedly endured during his alleged three-day assault.
The accused, charged with the murder of Meghan Cremer, testified in a trial-within-a-trial in the Western Cape High Court, in a bid to have statements in which he admitted to killing her not be admitted as evidence.
He claims he made this admission to “benefit from promises” made to him to go on trial in a lower court, thereby facing a lesser sentence, and that bail would be granted to him.
Sias led police to her body, days after he was arrested for his involvement in the theft of her car in Philippi three years ago.
He denies causing her death, claiming to have found her body in the boot of the Toyota Auris after supposedly taking it for a joyride.
He testified that he had known Cremer for about five years.
She knew him as Jeremy, who worked on the Vaderlandsche Rietvlei farm, and he knew her as Meghan, who lived there, Sias said.
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They normally greeted each other, but never engaged in small talk, he testified. Their interaction was limited to her asking him to mow the grass in front of her cottage when it grew too long.
Cremer went missing on 3 August.
He claimed to be unsure whether he had seen her that day, but remembered seeing her earlier that week.
He said he had left work shortly before 17:00.
He went to a local shebeen, where he drank about four or five quarts of beer, and returned to the farm’s pigsty to collect food for his dog.
“That’s when I came across the car. I can’t remember the time, but it was dusk and it was misty,” he testified.
He claimed to not have known it was her car, until he had taken the vehicle for a drive. Sias testified that he only realised who the owner was when he found a brown handbag under the passenger’s seat.
“Her ID was in the wallet. I saw the name.”
He went to the ATM and tried to draw money. The prosecutor, Emily van Wyk, asked him how he knew her PIN.
“It was her [birth date],” he responded.
“When I have to choose a bank PIN, I use my birthdate. I reasoned … I tried different cards, but the one specific one worked. I think I withdrew R500 and then I went home with the car.
“I just wanted to take it for a drive.”
He and his friends had driven to a nightclub in Wynberg, where he was pulled over in a roadblock. When he was taken for a breathalyser, he ran off.
This, he said, was because he was under the influence and could be charged. He admitted he had shown disregard for his friends, who he left behind in the car.
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“I wasn’t thinking straight. The main thing was that I didn’t want to be arrested.”
He denied that he was assaulted during the chase that ensued. He said that, when he was caught, the officers pushed him against the vehicle to cuff him, but didn’t beat him.
“They only said, ‘Why are you running?’ They arrested me.”
The traffic officer, Donne Fernandez, testified that Sias had told her his ribs hurt when he was returned for his breathalyser.
“That is untrue,” he insisted.
He also denied that he had fallen and injured himself. He was released because he was under the legal limit. This, despite him not having a driver’s licence.
Before the police came to arrest him on the night of 5 August 2019, Sias said he had not had a good day at work.
“I was not normal. I was thinking a lot about her, that I had just left her like that.”
Van Wyk asked why he had not confided in the farmer, Geoffrey Mohr, who he said “was like a father to me”.
“There were a lot of things going through my head. I was thinking I would lose my job and they wouldn’t look at me the way they used to.”
When the police came to arrest him, he deduced it was related to the car he had stolen, which he had given to his friend, Charles Daniels, to sell.
Daniels had been caught by the K9 Unit because he had been driving the vehicle without number plates.
“I knew why they were looking for me, when I saw Charles Daniels.”
He chose not to disclose what he had done because he “knew if I told them, I would be in big trouble”.
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The officers from the unit testified they had not yet known that the car belonged to the then-missing Cremer. But, according to Sias, they had shown him a photo of her while they drove to the police station. This, however, had not been mentioned during any of his earlier versions.
Van Wyk asked why he had not mentioned this to his advocate, suggesting that Sias was “just adding as you go along”.
He insisted that he had told his legal representative, but later said he was unsure whether he had done so.
He claimed to have been assaulted by numerous officers.
Van Wyk, however, pointed out that no injuries were noted when he was examined by two doctors, besides a small abrasion on his back.
When asked why he hadn’t informed the staff of an injury to his wrist, after an officer ostensibly stepped on the cuffs while he was tied to Daniels, he said, at that stage, he “didn’t trust anyone”.
“You trusted them enough to tell them you were assaulted,” Van Wyk pointed out.
Sias said the torn skin he supposedly suffered “wasn’t so serious”.
The prosecutor said he had had numerous opportunities to tell the police where Cremer’s body had been dumped, questioning why he had initially only disclosed taking her car and nothing else.
“I just didn’t want to tell them. That’s the reason,” he replied.
He claimed that he could not tell which officers were “friendly” or who he could trust, following his assault.
He repeated the allegations that he had been hit with a pole, kicked, slapped, tripped and attacked by a police dog.
His explanation for not sustaining any visible injuries was that he had been wearing three tops and oversized boots. His footwear did have a number of holes from the dog attack, he testified.
Van Wyk asked why pertinent details were being mentioned for the first time, including Daniels being bitten by the dog on the stomach, and Sias being shown a photo by the investigating officer when the detective said he had only met him the following day.
Sias said he had forgotten.
“It’s human to forget,” he insisted, saying it had happened a long time ago.
According to Sias, the day after his arrest, he told the investigating officer, Sergeant Xolani Basso, that he had taken the car.
He, along with three officers, went to the scene. There, after pointing out where he had seen the vehicle, he claims to have helped the policemen look for her in the vicinity.
“Why did you do that when you knew she wasn’t there?” Van Wyk asked.
“They took me with them to go look,” he said.
He agreed with the prosecutor when she said that he had used the location of Cremer’s body as his trump card to hopefully get bail.
Sias denies killing Cremer.
The trial continues on Monday.
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