Jayde trial witness quizzed on phone data
Calls, SMS messages, internet info, and SIM swops logged, court hears
TECHNICAL evidence dominated the Panayiotou murder trial yesterday, with a forensic liaison manager from Vodacom explaining how a cellphone automatically connected to the closest base tower when being used.
Judge Dayalin Chetty had earlier ruled in favour of the state, finding that there was nothing unlawful in the way in which police obtained the cellphone data from the three men accused of the murder of Uitenhage school teacher Jayde Panayiotou.
Yesterday, the evidence led in the Port Elizabeth High Court shifted focus from Jayde’s husband, businessman Christopher Panayiotou, 30, to his coaccused, alleged hitman Sinethemba Nemembe and co-conspirator Zolani Sibeko.
Vodacom’s Johanna Heyneke testified that the data was released to the state following a court order served on them.
Jayde, 29, was kidnapped in front of her Port Elizabeth townhouse complex and shot dead on April 21 2015, allegedly at the behest of her husband.
Heyneke was asked by state advocate Marius Stander to plot the position of certain cellphone towers on a map.
She said she was confident her information supplied to the court was 99.9% correct and would only expect a glitch in the system should lightning strike a tower.
Her evidence precedes that of cellphone “sleuth” Thereza May Botha, who will later this week aim to tie the accused to the crime through cellphone plotting.
Heyneke said Vodacom received all its information from the base stations and that they allowed for a 20m variant between them. “I received a court order for each section of the data released to the state,” she said.
The data includes all outgoing and incoming calls made or received by the accused, as well as SMS messages and GPRS information, which referred to each time the cellphone user connected to the internet, be it Facebook or e-mail.
Heyneke said they could also tell each time the said SIM card was placed in another handset – something that happened frequently in this case.
Asked under cross-examination by defence advocate Terry Price if it was unusual for a SIM card to be placed in various handsets, Heyneke said it was “often seen in these types of [court] cases”.
Defence attorney Peter Daubermann, for Nemembe and Sibeko, questioned Heyneke’s credentials and the accuracy of her information.
Daubermann said Heyneke was not a scientist or a technician and her findings were merely based on her in-house training.
The trial continues today.