‘Bully’ Volkwyn murdered baby Orderick

A CORROBORATED timeline of events by “credible State witnesses” was the nail in the coffin for murderer Melvin Volkwyn, as the Western Cape High Court yesterday found him guilty of the murder of toddler Orderick Lucas.

Volkwyn, who had maintained his innocence throughout the trial, listened with his head dropped, as he was convicted by Judge Nolundi Nyati.

In her judgment, Nyati said Volkwyn “was not telling the truth” and his version of events, in which he maintained that he handed Orderick back to his mother Davidene Lucas over a wall on the Monday morning after he took the toddler into his care the previous day, was “inconceivable”.

“All fingers point to (Volkwyn), and his actions were intentional.

“He took Orderick to his house after buying drugs and eventually murdered Orderick,” said Judge Nyati.

The judge further said the evidence by the defence was unreliable and fabricated as it contained various inconsistencies and contradictions.

Judge Nyati said after Lucas had gone to report Orderick missing at the police station, accompanied by Volkwyn, the mother asked Volkwyn again to be sure of who he had handed the child to, and “he kept crying”.

“It is my view that his conscience was bothering him. The evidence was overwhelming that Volkwyn was the last person to be seen with the deceased (while he was alive),” said Judge Nyati.

She said that between the time State witness Alexander Kammies, who had tried to sell a cellphone after midnight to Volkwyn and saw Orderick asleep on the bed in a room, and when Jurina Nel, another State witness and a domestic help who arrived at the salon where Volkwyn worked and had not seen the child, the court drew the inference that Volkwyn had murdered Orderick and disposed of his body in the stormwater drain where he was found days after being reported missing.

Judge Nyati labelled Volkwyn a “bully” who had used Lucas to buy drugs for him and who had an “unhealthy obsession with Orderick”.

Judge Nyati said while Lucas was an irresponsible mother, “in her own strange way she loved and protected her child and never took Orderick with her to a drug house” and had always left the toddler in the care of someone.

While the cause of death could not explicitly be determined, the evidence by the post mortem, with the body in an advanced stage of decomposition “showed suspicion of trauma to the neck” and it was “strongly suspected” that there was foul play.

An emotional Lucas said she was “devastated” and “did not expect it to be the outcome”.

Sentencing proceedings in mitigation and aggravation of sentence will be on September 14.