Africa-Press – South-Africa. The absconded parolee on trial for the murder of eight-year-old Elsie’s River schoolgirl Tazne van Wyk claimed she was killed for muti, but this was part of his lies, the State submitted in its final argument in the Western Cape High Court.
The man is being tried for 27 charges, including the alleged rape of relatives, incest, and severely beating children in his family.
“The initial version of the accused was that it was two African males and one female who were responsible for the death of the deceased,” said prosecutor Lenro Badenhorst.
Badenhorst is submitting the final argument for the State, and asked Judge Alan Maher to convict the man.
The accused’s lawyer’s final argument will follow that of the State’s on Thursday afternoon.
The man initially said a white woman and two black men had stopped them to ask for directions, and Tazne got into their taxi to help.
Cape Town girl Tazné van Wyk was taken to drug deal shortly before she was murdered, court hears
Then, he said there were three men and a woman with something white on her face.
The accused testified this group “kidnapped” them and took Tazne into a bush.
In one version, he said they came back with her body and put it into a drain on the N1, and in another, he testified he never saw Tazne again when they took her into the bush.
Badenhorst said the accused told his sister the “arm of the deceased was chopped by the Africans [for] muti”.
He added the accused lied in his testimony, presenting “fantasy” as explanations, and markedly did not report his and Tazne’s kidnapping to the police.
Badenhorst said it was implausible a group of mystery people in a taxi asked for directions to a drug deal, and that Tazne got into the taxi to help them, adding it is unlikely they would have taken them to witness a drug deal.
Final countdown to Tazne’s murder shows increasingly erratic behaviour of accused
He added the claim of the group leaving Cape Town with them, only dropping them off outside Worcester, and then coming back in a different car to force them inside it, was another of his fabrications.
“It was pure fantasy that the same kidnappers appeared again with a different vehicle and that the accused, a career bouncer, did nothing to resist them from being kidnapped again.”
Badenhorst said the accused did not tell anybody about the trauma he and Tazne had been through.
“It is submitted that if the accused was innocent, and was a victim of crime, it would have been the most natural thing to firstly report the first kidnapping, but also the second fatal kidnapping by the group of Africans. The version of the accused that he feared being falsely blamed had no ring of truth to it.”
He added the accused fled so that a scratch mark from Tazne would not be spotted.
While the frantic search for Tazne continued, his sister called him and begged him to say where he was and asked if he had taken her, but he denied everything and told her there was no point in her knowing where he was.
The accused was eventually lured to accommodation in Cradock booked by the police for his wife.
She set a trap for him, telling him said she had stolen R8 000 from her husband and wanted to meet up with him for a nice time.
He was cautious about revealing his whereabouts, but his cellphone records showed he rushed from Gqeberha to Cradock to meet her.
Tazne disappeared on 7 February 2020, metres from her parents’ gate. Her body was found on 17 February in a water pipe that ran under the N1 in Worcester.
She had been stuffed into the pipe, her left hand was missing, and maggots were found on her body.
The entrance to the pipe was concealed by vegetation.
No semen was found due to the state of decomposition, but the State said it had a clear DNA match to her from when Tazne scratched his hand.
A specialist testified the cartilage of her pubic bone was broken, and this was either through a young person giving birth, or rape.
Tazne was found to have died from trauma to the head, chest and neck, and is likely to have been hit on the head and chest and strangled.
According to the State, the accused skipped parole, and missed a court date related to the alleged assault of his daughter, and the day before Tazne disappeared, a warrant for his arrest had been issued.
The trial continues.
For More News And Analysis About South-Africa Follow Africa-Press
