WINDHOEK – The man accused of the brutal rape and murder of 13-year-old Rachel Vanessa Boois in the Omdel location of Henties Bay during the period May 2014 was convicted yesterday by Windhoek High Court Acting Judge Alfred Siboleka on one count of murder, one count of rape, one count of housebreaking with intent to rape and one count of violating a dead body.
The judge previously dismissed a Section 174 application for discharge that Jandre Jacques de Klerk launched after the state closed its case against him.
He was however acquitted on a second charge of rape as the judge found that the victim was dead when he violated her and thus convicted him of a charge of violating a dead body.
He faces one count of murder, three counts of rape, one count of violating a dead body in addition to a count of housebreaking with intent to rape and rape.
According to the state, De Klerk raped Boois in a half-built house twice before he broke her neck and stuck a stick in her private parts. De Klerk pleaded not guilty to all charges at the start of trial.
Judge Siboleka called it one of the most gruesome, horrendous and barbaric violations ever to be recorded in the country’s criminal court books. According to him, the uncontested forensic evidence adduced during the trial credibly points at the accused as the person who perpetrated all the crimes preferred against him.
“I am therefore satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt by both forensic and medical evidence that it the accused who sexually assaulted the deceased and murdered her by firmly closing her mouth and nose, inhibiting air flow, and continuously held on like that until she passed on,” the judge said, adding that De Klerk then posed the body to satisfy his sadistic desires and in the process dislocated her neck.
In a plea explanation De Klerk denied that he was with the deceased during the time she was raped and murdered, but admitted that he had consensual intercourse with the 13-year-old a few days prior to the incident in the house of a certain Gert Maasdorp although he could not remember exactly when.
He also denied that he broke the neck of the deceased or that he stuck a stick in her privates. He further said he did not know the deceased was a minor when he had intercourse with her as she appeared “grown-up” to him and also did not know it was a crime to have intercourse with a minor.
With regard to the charge that he raped another woman after he broke into her shack during the period 14 to 15 June, 2013, he said that he went to the shack with the complainant’s boyfriend to get some cigarettes and when he later returned he found the door of the shack wide open. According to De Klerk, he then undressed himself and asked the complainant who was totally naked for intercourse, but she refused saying her boyfriend was in the vicinity.
He further said that the complainant then got extremely mad at him and he dressed and left, in the process leaving his underpants behind.
He will return to court on 20 January next year for pre-sentencing procedures and remains in custody.
De Klerk is represented by Titus Mbaeva on instructions of legal aid and the state by Advocate Antonia Verhoef.