WINDHOEK - Double murder accused, Lukas Nepela Nikodemus, the man charged with the murder and burning of two young women at a rubbish dump in Pionierspark in Windhoek, informed the Windhoek High Court he wishes to call three witnesses to testify in his defence.

Nikodemus made the appeal yesterday to be allowed to summon three witnesses.
He named one of the witnesses as Ursula Masua, the mother of one of his children at whose house he parked his car after he fetched it where the man, he says framed him left it after killing the two ladies.

During his testimony in his own defence, Nikodemus repeated the claims he made during a failed bail application that it was a person called Bennie who was last in the company of the two deceased.

He however only mentioned ‘Bennie’ during the bail application, more than two years after his arrest on the murders, and Acting High Court Judge Petrus Unengu who presided over the bail application called it an “afterthought”.
Nikodemus maintains the last time he saw either of the two girls he called his “girlfriends” alive was during the evening of January 06, 2016 when they left together with “Bennie” in his car to buy more alcohol.

He vehemently denied assertions by police officers that was part of the team that arrested him that he admitted to them that one of the ladies killed the other one and that he then killed her.

Nikodemus is facing two counts of murder, one count of defeating or obstructing or attempting to defeat or obstruct the course of justice and one count of failing to lock away a firearm. 

He pleaded not guilty to all counts at the start of his trial in September last year, but did not provide a plea explanation and put the onus on the State to prove all the allegations against him.

The state alleges Nikodemus, 48, killed 29-year-old Johanie Naruses and 23-year-old Clementia de Wee by shooting them with his pistol where after he burned their bodies at a dumpsite near Pionierspark in Windhoek during the period January 6 - 7, 2016. 

Their partly burned bodies were found by a security guard the morning of January 7, 2016 and Nikodemus was arrested the same day after a SIM card that linked him to her was found in the back pocket of the jeans of one of the deceased. 
During his first appearance in the magistrate’s court, Nikodemus told the magistrate he did not know how to plead as he had no recollection of what had happened. 

He is represented by Mbanga Siyomunji on instructions of Legal Aid and the State by Advocate Cliff Lutibezi.
The trial is set to continue on Wednesday this week and Nikodemus remains in custody at the Windhoek Correctional Facility’s section for trial awaiting inmates.