Conflicting reports on reasons for some of Rohde’s bruises, injuries

SUSAN Rohde sustained a large bruise on her right leg when she fell onto a dumbbell after attempting a handstand‚ according to her sister.

On the fifth day in the trial against Jason Rohde‚ the husband who stands accused of murdering her and staging her suicide at the Spier wine estate in Stellenbosch last year‚ this new information cast doubt on state pathologist Dr Akmal Khan’s postmortem analysis that Susan suffered from battered woman syndrome.

Khan testified in the Cape Town High Court last week that Susan had several bruises and injuries on her body‚ which indicated a history of abuse.

However‚ a statement by Susan’s mother Diane Holmes‚ presented to Khan by state prosecutor Louis van Niekerk‚ indicated that both she and her daughter had very thin skin and bruised easily. Van Niekerk also read out a statement made by her sister‚ Angela Norton‚ which said that Susan told her about the bruise on her upper right thigh – and that it was the result of her having fallen on a dumbbell days before she died.

These have led Khan to entertain the idea that she might not have been abused after all, but he has insisted that the cause of death was manual strangulation.

According to Rohde‚ she had committed suicide by hanging herself with a curling-iron cord‚ which was attached to a hook mounted on the door of their hotel-suite bathroom.

“There were also bruises on her lower legs – did he kick her? This also wouldn’t explain the haemorrhaging to her neck‚ and the broken thyroid cartilage,” Khan said.

“This does not explain the cause of death by manual strangulation.”