Murder plot: husband sides with wife .
Austin was shocked when police told him his beloved wife had been arrested for conspiring to kill him
WHEN his phone rang he was hoping it was his wife. He’d been missing her while she was out on her morning errands and had left her a message – so Austin Coetzee smiled as he picked up his phone and heard Petina’s familiar voice.
But what she said instantly chilled him to the bone. She told him she was at the police station and needed him to get her an attorney. Austin (66) asked her what was going on but there was just silence on the other end of the line.
A police official took the phone from Petina (44) and told Austin, “Sir, go and collect your son from school and we’ll be with you at about 12.30 pm to explain the situation.”
Later, seated around the dining room table at his home in Kenilworth, Cape Town, the police explained why they’d taken his wife into custody.
“They just said to me, ‘Mr Coetzee, your wife has just been arrested for conspiracy to murder.’ ”
Austin was dumbfounded. Who’d she conspired to murder? The policeman’s reply almost made him fall off his seat. “You,” he was told. “It was total shock. I just sat there. I didn’t know what to say,” Austin recalls.
They explained that Tina, as he affectionately calls her, was arrested at Lansdowne train station after police had set her up. News reports claim she allegedly wanted to pay hitmen R200 000 to have her husband killed.
Tina is now staying with family in Cape Town’s northern suburbs. According to her bail conditions she and Austin aren’t permitted to have any contact but their four-year-old son and her two sons from a previous marriage are By CHARLEA SIEBERHAGEN Pictures: JACQUES STANDER allowed to visit her.
“I miss her very much,” Austin says. “It’s extremely lonely without her because we were always together. We’re not the sort of people who have a big group of friends. It’s just Tina and me. Whatever we do we do together.
“People remark they always see us together and they say how good our marriage is and that we’re so close. That’s why people are so shocked about what they’ve heard.”
He vividly recalls his own shock and disbelief at the events that unfolded on that fateful day in October last year as the police arrived at his house.
He later read in news reports that Tina, who owns a photo booth and a business that makes leather handbags, allegedly approached one of her employees to help her have Austin killed.
The employee informed the police and they set up a sting operation. The cops swooped in after she paid a deposit of R5 000 to carry out her plan.
She reportedly explained that Austin
‘I go through terrible stages of loneliness and disappointment’
doesn’t have any life policies but that she’d pay the balance of what she owed the hitmen from the money she’d inherit after his death.
Yet despite all this Austin still steadfastly believes in her innocence.
“This can’t be true. This isn’t possible,” he says. Not his Tina. Not the laughing, cheerful woman he’s known for 12 years.
“What must people think of us? You know, I’m quite a senior businessman and I had friends phoning me from as far as Dubai [to find out what was going on].”
Austin maintains his wife is the victim of a scam – and this is why he’s sticking by her. He recently wrote a letter to the office of the director of public prosecutions in the Western Cape stating he and Tina wish to be reconciled. “I want her to come home,” he says. “And be with the children and me. So we can get on with our lives and plan for the future. And seek whatever counselling is necessary in terms of what’s happening.”
AUSTIN, a former manager of a petroleum company, met Tina at a horseracing club 12 years ago. They’re both interested in the sport so they “hit it off immediately”, he recalls with a fond smile.
“I just loved her smile and her laugh. She was just the sort of person whom you could have fun with and we could laugh together and talk about things.”
The couple married and a few years later Tina gave birth to their son. Austin says their 22-year age gap was never an issue.
“I just heard her say to somebody one day – she said it in Afrikaans but in English it basically means it’s better to be an old man’s lover than a young man’s slave.”
Behind the high walls of their home, which they lovingly renovated, a pool sparkles. The fridge is adorned with his son’s artwork – two small handprints dunked in red paint next to the words, “Best dad. Hands down.”
There are pictures of Tina’s other children and of Austin and Tina on their wedding day.
“The third of February was our 10-year anniversary but we couldn’t be together,” Austin says.
Tina’s eldest son is 20 and lives in Joburg. Austin is looking after her younger son from her first marriage, who’s 16, as well as their four-year-old child. The boys were able to visit her over Christmas and New Year’s but Austin had to get through the festive season alone.
He didn’t attend Tina’s first court appearance. “I think I was dreadfully scared of seeing her after she’d been in jail. I think that would have broken me down, even just to see her up in that stand,” he says.
Austin says news of her arrest took such a toll he could hardly walk. “My whole system just collapsed,” he says.
But now he’s in court whenever she appears. He says when he married her he swore to stand by her through thick and thin and that’s what he’s doing.
“We’re both Catholic and we take our vows seriously,” he stresses.
“My wife,” he adds firmly, “is innocent until proven guilty.”
But Austin admits that right now he’s struggling.
“I go through terrible stages of loneliness, disappointment and sadness because I miss her so much. And I know she’s going through the same process herself.
“So I try to keep myself busy. I cook. Maybe I don’t feel like cooking but I come in here and I cook a nice meal for the children. I keep myself involved with projects around the house and get our son involved.”
For Tina’s sake he’s trying to stay strong. He sighs and rests his head against the back of the couch.
“God says when you fall down, you pick yourself up and you carry on with your life. And that’s exactly what Tina and I will do.”