A policeman testified that he did not see a white bakkie outside murder accused Johannes Christiaan de Jager's workshop the day of his arrest.
|||Cape Town - A policeman did not see a white bakkie outside murder accused Johannes Christiaan de Jager's workshop the day of his arrest, the Western Cape High Court heard on Tuesday.
Captain Michael Volkwyn, one of four investigating officers, made the arrest on June 3, 2008, and was testifying in De Jager's trial.
De Jager has pleaded not guilty to raping and killing prostitute Hiltina Alexander, in May 2008, and the murder of 18-year-old Mpumalanga resident Charmaine Mare in January this year.
Acting Judge Chuma Cossie asked Volkwyn where De Jager's white bakkie was parked when he arrived on the scene, in Parow, Cape Town.
“The bakkie was parked inside the building where the accused was standing, behind a steel gate,” he testified.
He previously testified that the workshop's steel shutter was only open about 25cm off the ground.
Cossie asked if he could the bakkie through this opening.
Volkwyn replied: “I couldn't see the bakkie. It was only after the steel gate was opened that I went inside and could see the bakkie.”
This version contradicted the testimony of Alexander's friend Colin Jacobs, who last saw her get into a white bakkie with a “tall, white man”. Her body was found a day or two later, on May 19, 2008.
Jacobs testified last week that he was a suspect at that stage and the police told him to keep a lookout for the bakkie.
He said he was walking to gym one day when he spotted the white bakkie parked outside a workshop in Parow. He phoned the police detective, called his brother and friends for back-up, and confronted De Jager.
Jacobs testified that an earring was found under a mat in the bakkie that day, which he recognised as Alexander's.
Volkwyn testified on Monday that he picked up the mat on the spur of the moment and found the earring. He said he did not touch it and the forensic team confiscated it.
On Tuesday, Sakkie Maartens, for De Jager, said his client would disagree. He put it to Volkwyn that the officer stood at the bakkie, found the earring under the mat and picked it up.
“And you asked the accused about the earring, to which he took the earring from you and said something like 'that is nonsense' in Afrikaans, and threw it on the ground,” Maartens said.
Volkwyn denied this version.
“None of us, myself and the accused, touched that earring. The forensic people confiscated it. The forensic people confiscated the bakkie on the scene.”
Maartens said his client explained at the time that the earring belonged to a woman from a Voortrekker camp he attended that weekend.
“I don't know about that,” Volkwyn responded.
Sapa