Africa-Press – South-Africa. Drugs, huge amounts of cash and strange visitors – this was among the startling revelations revealed surrounding Meghan Cremer by defence witness Linda Mohr in Jeremy Sias’ bid for acquittal for the horse rider’s murder.
Mohr, wife of Vaderlandsche Rietvlei Farm owner Geoffrey Mohr, was Cremer’s landlord since 2016.
Sias lived and worked for the Mohrs all his life, at one point living with the family after they “adopted” him.
Cremer had moved to one of their cottages six years ago, along with her horse, which she stabled at the Philippi smallholding.
Mohr said they had, over the years, become good friends, and Cremer was regularly invited to their family gatherings and dinners as she lived on her own.
Shortly before her disappearance, Mohr said Cremer – who she had deduced was not rich – had purchased a horse Mohr had been selling for a client. She wanted to pay the R75 000 asking price in cash, Mohr said, but she had insisted on an EFT as she felt uncomfortable carrying that much money.
Cremer further splurged on an “upmarket” saddle, which cost between R30 000 and R35 000, also in cash, Mohr testified.
She then started taking riding and dressage lessons with Mohr, which didn’t come cheap.
“Her account, including her rent, jumped from R10 000, which she would [normally] EFT, to anything between R24 000 and R30 000, which she wanted to pay in cash,” Mohr said.
During one of their Tuesday lessons, Mohr said, three men dressed in white robes had parked on the road adjacent to the farm and had watched Cremer practice.
“I asked Meghan if she knew those people. She gave me no reaction. She just looked at them and carried on riding,” she recalled.
The same thing happened two days later, Mohr said.
She sent her husband and the farm manager, Thomas Mbalula, to ask what they wanted. When they approached on the farm’s quad bikes, the men drove off, she said.
Prior to her disappearance, Mohr said Cremer had “lost a lot of weight”.
After her murder, her son had shown his mother messages between the two of them, in which Cremer asked him not to tell Mohr she was using cocaine.
“Her whole personality changed in those couple of months,” Mohr told Judge Elizabeth Baartman.
Mohr said Cremer was a “very good payer” of her bills, religiously settling her debt between the 25th and 27th of each month.
“Except in July 2019. She phoned me and said she was short of cash, and would pay me the following week.”
At the time of her murder, she had not yet settled with the Mohrs.
When Cremer’s loved ones became worried about her whereabouts on 3 August 2019, Mohr said she sent one of her friends to the Woodstock bakery where Cremer worked.
She said Cremer would often leave her cottage at 03:00, explaining that she worked an early shift.
But enquiries at her workplace as to her whereabouts revealed that Cremer always started work at 07:30.
Camera footage on the farm showed Cremer driving the car to the back entrance of the farm on the day of her murder, Mohr said.
She explained that the CCTV cameras had been operational for about just over a week and it was a “novelty” for them to watch the recordings.
She said:
The footage, according to Mohr, showed Sias leaving the farm at 17:00 that day. He wasn’t spotted, returning, on the recordings.
One of her clients had popped by at Cremer’s cottage at 17:45 that evening, finding her curled up on the couch, covered with a blanket and a streaming app open on her laptop.
Mohr said she chatted to Cremer the day she went missing, outside the cottage door, as her tenant smoked outside.
The grooms’ cottages were situated close by, Mohr said. They had braaied that evening and claimed to not have seen anyone in the vicinity of Cremer’s unit.
Mbalula, who was in a secret relationship with Cremer, had attempted to report her missing on 4 August 2019. He eventually phoned Mohr to intervene after he was asked at the police station, “why is a black man reporting a white woman missing”, Mohr said.
That same day, the burglar bars of Cremer’s cottage were removed and the unit was found to be undisturbed, Mohr testified.
She, herself, had not gone inside, as she felt “something was bad”.
She claimed that when she and her husband wanted to share their footage and information with the police, she was told that they “didn’t want any more information because they have the culprit”.
According to Mohr, Cremer had told her about two months before her murder that she had cancer, which would result in her undergoing surgery. When she offered to take Cremer to hospital on the day of the operation, she declined, saying her mother would fetch her as she would be going to Knysna to recuperate.
Upon her return, Cremer lifted her top and apparently showed Mohr a plaster which was supposedly covering the wound, telling her to “look at the blood”.
But, according to Mohr, it “looked like mercurochrome” to her. Cremer had never shown her the actual scar, she added.
She mentioned to police, when the missing person’s report was filed, that Cremer should have a scar as she had just undergone surgery.
Mohr said Cremer’s mother had flown to Cape Town two days after Cremer was last seen. They had used the farmhouse as a base for the search, while a PI was brought in to investigate.
According to Mohr, Cremer’s mother had removed a “pillowcase of things” from the cottage.
“I don’t know what was in it,” she testified.
Sias has pleaded not guilty to Cremer’s murder, claiming to have found her car deserted outside one of the farm gates and taking it for a joyride.
According to him, he later found her dead body in the boot, and disposed of it as he feared he would be blamed for her murder.
The trial continues on Tuesday.
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