WINDHOEK – The heavily congested High Court roll has claimed another scalp with the trial of 37-year-old Raynoldt (Jacky) Windstaan and 38-year-old Johannes Eichab being postponed for more than nine months.
On Wednesday last week Judge Naomi Shivute postponed the matter to July 20 next year as no other dates were available.
The trial started in November 2012. Windstaan and Eichab face two counts of murder and one count of defeating or obstructing or attempting to defeat the course of justice.
It is alleged that they murdered 42-year-old Klaas Titus and 39-year-old John McNab during the period of July 16 to 18 2005 in the Mariental district and threw the deceased’s bodies into a deep and isolated well from which it was impossible to escape without assistance, on Farm Good Hope.
The two men’s skeletal remains were discovered in the well after Windstaan allegedly pointed out the well to the police because he could no longer handle the nightmares in which his alleged victims haunted him.
Before the postponement Advocate Winnie Christians who is representing Eichab continued his onslaught on the state witnesses in the trial-within-a-trial to determine the admissibility of a warning statement, pointing out and alleged confession Eichab made.
In his firing line this time was Detective Inspector Kotungondo who was one of the investigators in the matter. Christians outrightly accused Kotungondo of dictating to Eichab what to say in the warning statement and confession. Christians based his accusations on the fact that Eichab’s statements are virtually the same as a confession made by Windstaan.
In the confession Windstaan allegedly made after his arrest in 2009, it is stated that he (Windstaan) killed the two deceased with the assistance of Wilma Majiedt. The said Wilma Majiedt was also a suspect in the matter and spent some time behind bars until she was cleared after the alleged confession of Eichab in which he replaced Majiedt with himself.
According to Christians, Kotungondo and his fellow investigator retired Warrant-Officer Jacobus Kruger intimidated Eichab to implicate himself after he repeatedly denied any involvement in the murders.
“I put it to you, Inspector, that you used accused No 1’s confession to unduly influence my client to make a confession which you dictated to him,” Christians told the police officer.
Kotungondo vehemently denied this and told the court that Eichab made the admissions freely and voluntarily. He told the court that at that stage it was not even known to them that the murders were committed at the house of Boeta and Wilma Majiedt at Farm Omamas. This version only came out later when Peter Kandetu and Albertina Swartbooi made statements to this effect, he said.
Kandetu and Swartbooi already testified and told the court that they witnessed the murders. According to their testimony, the deceased were killed in front of them at Farm Omamas and the bodies were then driven to Farm Good Hope in Boeta Majiedt’s Ford pick-up, where they were dumped in the unused well. This is what turned Christians’ grapes sour.
He said that the vast difference between the now accepted version of Kandetu and Swartbooi and the version that the two accused gave to the police stink of irregularities. Christians asked why on earth people who admit to killing would give the police a false picture of the events. Kotungondo agreed with Christians that the versions differ, but merely re-affirmed that he did not dictate to Eichab what to say and told the court that he cannot know what went on in the head of Eichab when he made his statement and confession.
Windstaan is represented by Titus Mbaeva while State Advocate Erich Moyo prosecutes.