WINDHOEK – One of the investigators in the well murder trial presently being heard in the High Court in Windhoek was yesterday accused of threatening an accused on what to say in a confession.
Advocate Winnie Christians, who represents 38-year-old Johannes Eichab, told retired Warrant-Officer Jacobus Kruger that his [Christians’] client claimed that Kruger told him what to say in a confession he made to Magistrate Suritha Savage at Mariental.
“You told him that if he does not say exactly what you told him, what happened in the room will be repeated, as you will have insight into the confession?” Christians put it to Kruger. He referred to statements he made earlier that Eichab claimed to have been taken to a secluded room at the Mariental police station and slapped around and beaten.
Kruger is testifying in the trial-within-a-trial on the admissibility of a confession Eichab made to the magistrate.
Eichab claims that the confession was made under duress.
According to Kruger, he was ordered by his superiors to take over the investigation in September 2009. He said on his arrival in Mariental he was informed that there was a person in custody with information on the matter. Kruger told Judge Naomi Shivute that when he arrived at the holding cells he was taken to Eichab who told him that he wanted the truth to come out.
“I want everybody to know, even the whole world,” Eichab purportedly told Kruger.
Eichab was then taken to a private room to spill his guts, Kruger narrated, and this had Christians in uproar as he questioned Kruger during cross-examination why it was necessary to take Eichab to a private room as he was willing to let the whole world know.
Christians told the Kruger that in two previous statements Eichab made he vigorously denied any involvement in the murders, and questioned why his client would make a sudden turnabout and confess.
Kruger merely denied any aggressive behaviour towards Eichab and told the judge, “I never touched him, he came to me out of his free will.” Eichab and 37-year-old Raynoldt (Jacky) Windstaan face charges of double murder and 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.
It is further alleged that they then unlawfully and with the intent to defeat or obstruct the course of justice threw the deceased’s bodies into a deep and isolated well from which it was impossible to escape without assistance, on Farm Good Hope.
They perpetrated this act while knowing or for-seeing the possibility that their actions may frustrate or interfere with police investigations into the disappearance and/or death of Titus and McNab. They were allegedly left in the well to die of thirst, hunger and exposure.
Four years passed before the two men’s skeletal remains were discovered in the well at the end of July 2009 – allegedly after Windstaan had pointed the scene out to the police.
Windstaan was arrested on double murder charges in early August 2009 after he allegedly complained that the two deceased were haunting him, while Eichab was arrested a year later. Both remain in custody.
Windstaan is represented by Titus Mbaeva while State Advocate Erich Moyo prosecutes.