Africa-Press – South-Africa. A lying drug addict – this is how the State says defence witness Linda Mohr painted murdered Meghan Cremer, who she said was her friend.
Mohr during cross-examination in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday vehemently denied this, saying the slain horserider who rented one of her cottages on Vaderlandsche Rietvlei Farm was “dear to us”.
“She called me her second mother, her stable mother,” Mohr, wife of farmer and State witness Geoffrey Mohr testified.
“I looked after her. I cared for her.”
Mohr has known murder accused Jeremy Sias all his life.
But contrary to the picture painted by him, Mohr said that in terms of their relationship, he was “a worker”.
She said Sias’ mother would desert him as a child and he would stay over in one of their rooms “a couple of times and sleep over for probably a month or so”.
She denied that they had “adopted” him, although he was the same age as one of her children and they would all play together.
The relationship soured when one of her “kind-hearted” sons gave Sias his sister’s watch, which had been a birthday gift.
“We asked Bompie to give it back. He never did,” she said.
Mohr testified that it was a lie that Sias had ever lived with them permanently.
She said she was aware that Sias had admitted to dumping Cremer’s body, saying she felt “absolutely awful” about it.
“I don’t think anyone needs to be murdered like that. Whatever happened is absolutely shocking,” she said.
Of Cremer, who had lived with them for four years up until her murder, she recalled somewhat strange behaviour and happenings in the weeks leading up to and following her disappearance.
Among them is the “huge amounts of cash” Cremer had come into, which she had wanted to use to buy a R75 000 horse, pay her rent and to cover lessons with Mohr herself.
“We don’t do huge amounts of cash on the farm. I would make her take it to my husband in the office because she would want to hand it over out in the open,” she said.
In the months leading up to her murder, Mohr claimed Cremer had displayed strange behaviour such as withdrawing from the horse club of which she had been secretary.
“That was not Meghan. Meghan’s passion was the horses,” she testified.
She reiterated her testimony of three men dressed in white robes who had come to watch Cremer from outside the farm fence as she had a practise session with Mohr. This had happened twice; the men had left before her husband and farm manager Thomas Mbalula could ask them about it.
She said when she had questioned Cremer and asked if she knew them, she had failed to respond.
Later, she said, a man had come to the farm gate and asked a driver whether Cremer lived there.
Her tenant had also lost a lot of weight, Mohr said.
“I even asked what diet she was on so I could try it too.”
Cremer had told her that she started work in the early hours of the morning, Mohr said, and would leave home between 03:00 and 03:30. However, when she went missing, enquiries to the bakery revealed Cremer only started work at 07:30, Mohr established.
Mohr testified that after Cremer’s murder her son had shown her messages Cremer had sent him in which she asked him not to tell his mother that she was using cocaine.
“Personally, I didn’t know she was on drugs,” she said.
Prosecutor Emily van Wyk said no evidence of drug use was detected by the pathologist and that had there been an indication of substance use, a toxicology report would have been requested.
She further questioned Mohr’s testimony that Cremer had had cancer and underwent surgery, later showing her a plaster stretching the length of her stomach with what she claimed was blood, but which Mohr was convinced was mercurochrome.
“This was a lighter red colour. Blood goes very dark brown when it dries,” Mohr said.
She further testified of the uphill they faced in reporting Cremer missing on 4 August 2019. Mbalula, who had been in a secret relationship with Cremer, had been asked at the police station why he, a black man, was reporting a white woman missing, Mohr said.
She had intervened, but it had taken “forever to get a case number”.
Mohr said she had roped in a reservist she knew to assist them as Philippi police had appeared uninterested in the matter and their family had gone to search for Cremer after someone had spotted her car in a neighbouring area that same day.
“I am here to get the truth, nothing else,” Mohr testified.
Van Wyk asked her why she had only attended Sias’ first court appearance following his arrest.
“We were devastated – it would just mean we would be reliving it every time.
“Those eight days, we hardly slept. We were looking for her, grasping at straws, hoping she would still be alive. I didn’t want to go through the whole thing unless I needed to.”
Mohr said she had tried to share the information she had with the police.
“They kept saying they have the culprit; they don’t want the other stuff because it could lead the case astray. If you have been dejected so many times, you think maybe it wasn’t such important information.”
According to her, police had also failed to collect all the video footage recorded at the farm, downloading only some of what they had.
The footage showed Sias leaving the farm that day and not returning, she pointed out.
Other clips showed a friend of Cremer’s popping in shortly before she went missing, and Mohr herself chatting to her that afternoon.
“It was offered to the detectives, but they weren’t interested,” she said.
Van Wyk questioned this, but Judge Elizabeth Baartman said the prosecutor was “trying to badger the witness with her frustration with her investigating team”.
“They withheld it from you. Your frustration is not with [Mohr], it’s with the people who didn’t hand it over to you. That is the indefensible part,” said the judge.
Mohr had attempted to reach out to Sias’ advocate Bashier Sibda but he had never responded to her message.
Sibda acknowledged receipt of her communication, but said it would have been inappropriate to approach her as she had been on the State’s witness list.
She was, however, never called.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
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