Hess murder accused in court soon
THE pre-trial hearing of the two men accused of murdering a UWC student and her grandfather last year will be held in the Western Cape High Court next month.
Jesse Hess, 18, and her 85-year-old grandfather Chris Lategan were found murdered in their Parow flat on August 30, 2019, in an alleged home invasion.
Lategan was found tied up and gagged in the bathroom and the theology student was found dead on her bed.
Their killings sparked an outcry as they came less than a week after Uyinene Mrwetyana, 19, a student at UCT, was killed at the Clareinch post office in Claremont and her body dumped in an open field in Lingelethu West in Khayelitsha.
According to the indictment in the Hess case, the accused, David van Boven and Tasliem Ambrose, each face two charges of murder and charges of rape and fraud – alternatively theft – and two counts of robbery with aggravating circumstances.
The State claims the accused robbed Lategan of his Nokia phone and flat-screen televisions, while Hess was robbed of her Samsung phone, jewellery (rings), her First National Bank (FNB) card and her laptop.
They are also accused of using Hess’s bank card to withdraw R100 from her account in the Bellville area on the same day.
According to the Daily Voice, hours before Hess’s murder, she had won R5 000 cash in a radio competition. |