Sunday Tribune

‘Caustic soda dumped on body’

- ZELDA VENTER

IN HER evidence which sounded like the plot of a thriller movie, the former mistress of retired SAPS Lieutenant-colonel Danie Dreyer, whose dead body was stuffed head first down a manhole, described how about 50kg of caustic soda was dumped on the body to dissolve it.

Estelle Reddy admitted to the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, this week that she helped to cover the body in a carpet. She also helped to carry it to the manhole and she even got into the hole to remove some of the bedding around it, so that the caustic soda could “do its job”.

But Reddy, 36, was adamant that she had no choice, because she was afraid of “the mastermind” behind the killing, Gerhardus Papenfus,

42. She described Papenfus as a “gangster” who threatened her with violence if she did not do what he had instructed her to do.

Reddy and Papenfus pleaded not guilty to several charges, including murder, with co-accused Kevin Johnson (aka Zulu), 31, and Ruvan Furst (aka Malak), 42. It is claimed that Papenfus hired Furst and Johnson to assist with the alleged killing.

Reddy was adamant that she had nothing to do with Dreyer’s killing and that she was not even home. They no longer had a relationsh­ip when he was allegedly murdered on the Easter long weekend in 2016, but she and her then 22-month-old son stayed with him in his Villieria, Pretoria home.

Dreyer owned Jakaranda Funerals and Reddy worked for him.

His body was so decomposed from the caustic soda when it was discovered about a week after it was dumped, that the cause of death could not be establishe­d.

She said Papenfus wanted money from Dreyer, 62, but he refused and this angered Papenfus. She said she was at a party at her in-laws’ home in Laudium when Dreyer was killed.

She said after she helped to dump the body, Papenfus told her they had to get rid of the blood and other evidence. He doused the room with petrol and set it alight. She later phoned the fire brigade.

Reddy went to the police a week after the incident and made a confession. She pointed out the alleged murder house and the manhole where Dreyer’s body was dumped.

The police testified that when they got to the manhole, they smelled “rotten flesh”.

 ?? PICTURE: ZELDA VENTER ?? Estelle Reddy, Gerhard Papenfus, Kevin Johnson and Ruvan Furst are on trial for the murder of former SAPS member Danie Dreyer.
PICTURE: ZELDA VENTER Estelle Reddy, Gerhard Papenfus, Kevin Johnson and Ruvan Furst are on trial for the murder of former SAPS member Danie Dreyer.

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