A crucial new site has emerged in the murder mystery around Stellenbosch University Professor Louis Heyns.
|||Cape Town - A crucial new site has emerged in the murder mystery around Stellenbosch University Professor Louis Heyns: a busy road next to the massive shopping centre, Somerset Mall.
The 59-year-old’s body was found last Thursday morning in a shallow grave on the primary dunes lining Strand beachfront - covered by freshly dug sand.
Since then, it has remained unclear what Heyns may have been doing at the beach late last Wednesday night and has led to widespread speculation.
On Monday, in the Somerset West Magistrate’s Court, three men appeared in connection with his murder.
Marthinus van der Walt, 33, and his elder brother Sarel, 42, were charged with Heyns’s murder. And Juan Liedeman, 37, was charged with “robbery with aggravating circumstances”. The trio entered the dock shortly after 10.30am.
The younger brother was dressed in a dirty grey hooded tracksuit top, his older brother in a checkered jacket and the powerfully-built Liedeman in a black leather jacket.
In court, prosecutor Deidre Hindley applied for a seven-day remand for the trio - reporting to magistrate NB Magutywa that they had asked the provincial Director of Public Prosecutions to rule on what schedule of crimes the trio should formally face.
Different crimes are categorised by “schedule” in the Criminal Procedure Act and can dictate key determinants in bail hearings, such as whether the prosecution or defence should carry the onus of proving exceptional circumstances in favour of, or against, the granting of bail.
In court, the brothers were represented by a legal aid attorney, Ilza le Minnie, who raised no objection to the request for the remand and asked only that the pair not be taken to Polsmoor Prison - as they had received death threats from inmates there.
But the legal representative hired by Liedeman’s family, William Booth, objected strenuously to the request for the seven-day remand.
He argued that his client was correctly not being charged with murder, with the brothers, as his client had “nothing to do with the murder”.
Booth argued that his client had only been arrested because Heyns’s car had been found at his client’s business, in Malmesbury.
Booth argued that his client was “not a co-perpetrator” in Heyns’s death, that he did not act with “common purpose” and that he had not been at the crime scene.
Furthermore, his client owned more than one business in Malmesbury, where he had lived all his life, was married with children and was not a flight risk.
Booth said the application for the seven-day remand should not take priority over Liedeman’s “right to bail” and being treated as “innocent until proven guilty”. But Magutywa approved the prosecution’s request.
Booth then asked that Liedeman be allowed to apply for bail as soon as Tuesday. But the magistrate turned this down too and ordered the trio to be remanded until June 10 after the full seven days.
Magutywa also said he had no jurisdiction over where the Van der Walt brothers should be kept behind bars, and so all three were shunted off to Pollsmoor late on Monday afternoon.
In the trio’s charge sheets in court, two crucial pieces of evidence were discovered.
First, that Heyns had at some point been in De Beers Avenue, next to Somerset Mall. This road runs to the south of the mall, and leads to the R44, near the turn-off to Strand.
But, crucially, it is about 2km from the site where Heyns’s body was found.
Second, the charge sheet gives insight into how Heyns died - that he was choked, kicked with “shoed feet” and hit with “balled fists”.
The actual death site remains unproven, but more light on the matter is expected at bail proceedings on Monday.
Cape Argus