Post-mortem reveals CEO’s wife strangled

SHOCKING details about the suspected murder of real estate mogul Jason Rohde’s wife have emerged, with a post-mortem suggesting she was strangled and smothered before injuries were inflicted to her neck postdeath.

A pathologist also believes Susan Rohde, 47, died at about 5.40am on July 24, it emerged in the Stellenbosch Magistrate’s Court yesterday.

These findings totally contradict what Rohde and his defence team insist happened – that Susan committed suicide by hanging herself after 7am that day.

Rohde, the now-suspended national chief executive of Lew Geffen Sotheby’s International Realty, is accused of murdering Susan at the Spier wine estate, where they were staying for a company function. He was arrested at his home in Joburg on Tuesday and made his first appearance on Thursday.

Yesterday, during fierce arguments in court, the State remained adamant it had a prima facie case against Rohde.

But his lawyer, Pete Mihalik, was equally firm that the State had failed to provide evidence to back up its murder theory.

Rohde was in court yesterday as the State asked for a postponement until next week for further investigations into information that surfaced dur- ing Thursday’s proceedings.

But Mihalik called the request a “luxury”, claiming his “traumatised” client should be freed. “Every day that my client is in custody he gets broken down more and more.”

Despite Mihalik’s argument, magistrate Greg Jacobs found in favour of the State, postponing the matter until Tuesday and declaring Rohde would remain in custody.

The affidavit of investigating officer Detective Sergeant Marlon Appollis took centre stage during proceedings yesterday; it revealed that two days after Susan was found dead, Appollis attended the post-mortem conducted by two doctors, a Dr Kahn and a Dr Abrahams, at the Paarl mortuary.

“I was informed at the time that Dr Kahn, with whom Dr Abrahams concurred, was of the opinion that the mechanism of death was manual strangulation,” Appollis’s affidavit said.

“He indicated that there was pathology consistent with smothering and asphyxia. He also noted the features of the ligature imprint abrasion mark were consistent with the post-mortem application to the neck.”

Appollis’s affidavit said Kahn had been at the crime scene and estimated that Susan died at about 5.40am.

The second post-mortem, conducted at the request of Rohde’s legal team, suggested Susan had committed suicide.