Jayde’s family in emotional court scene
WITH emotions running high in court, the sister of slain Jayde Panayiotou yesterday stood staring at the man accused of masterminding her murder – as if daring him to look at her – but Christopher Panayiotou did not react.
Toni Inggs and her mother, Michelle, were in court for the first time since Panayiotou’s first court appearance on May 4. Sitting in the second row of the gallery, directly behind Panayiotou’s family, the Inggs’ were clearly overwhelmed with emotion when the man who first became a part of their lives over a decade ago, walked into the dock.
Sitting down after magistrate Abigail Beeton entered the court, Toni wiped tears from her eyes with trembling hands. Sitting next to her daughter, Michelle took out a tissue to wipe away tears of her own before reaching for Toni’s hand.
Jayde, a teacher at Riebeek College in Uitenhage, was abducted outside her Kabega Park townhouse complex at about 6.30am on April 27 while waiting for a lift to work. Her body was found on a farm in Rocklands near Uitenhage the next day.
Panayiotou, 28, is suspected of paying Luthando Siyoli, 31, a large sum of money to organise someone to murder his wife. Siyoli allegedly hired Sizwezakhe Vumazonke, 30, to carry out the hit.
It was after an adjournment, when Panayiotou was brought back into court, that Toni remained standing – long after everyone else in the court had taken their seats. She stared at the man she had known as a brotherin-law, seemingly trying to get his attention. In turn, Panayiotou stared forward, his back to the gallery.
There was also no interaction between the Inggs’ and members of the Panayiotou family.
State prosecutor Marius Stander fired the first salvo yesterday when he picked up where he left off the day be-
fore and claimed that a “pattern is forming” when it comes to Panayiotou “fiddling, interfering and departing with money to make evidence disappear”.
Stander challenged the defence’s claims that Panayiotou merely wanted to hide his extramarital affair with Chanelle Coutts, an employee at the OK Grocer he managed, by wiping their phones clean.
He said Panayiotou had arranged for both his and Coutts’s phones to undergo a “factory reset”, erasing all data, making it impossible for even the police’s cyber crime unit to extract any information from the phones.
This happened just a few days after Jayde’s body was found, and before Panayiotou was officially a suspect in his wife’s abduction and murder.
Stander said Panayiotou had created in his own mind that he was a suspect and took steps to destroy incriminating evidence.
“He was not concerned with his parents finding out about this relationship. Besides, his father already knew ... Should we just take the applicant’s word that his phone only contained evidence of his relationship with Coutts?” Stander asked.
Stander again referred to a recording where Panayiotou and Siyoli can allegedly be heard discussing further payments for a hit on Jayde.
He emphasised Panayiotou’s instructions for Siyoli to destroy his cellphone and sim card.
“The court does not have to speculate about the applicant’s ability to destroy evidence. He has done it before,” Stander said.
Defence advocate Terry Price said data erased from Panayiotou and Coutts’s phones was “potentially pornographic photographs” and was removed for fear that his family would discover it.
He again said the defence would challenge the admissibility of the recording between Panayiotou and Siyoli, saying this evidence would then be irrelevant.
Calling the state’s motive a “thumb suck”, Price said the state’s claims that Panayiotou was a pauper who could not afford the costs associated with having a wife and girlfriend was “not worth the carbon dioxide and oxygen used” to say it.
He also said the state’s claims about Tyron Tiervlei, who allegedly met Panayiotou about payment to make evidence disappear, was “hogwash”.
Beeton questioned Price about Panayiotou’s statement in which he said his Cypriot ID and passport were irrelevant to his bail application.
Price conceded the defence had advised Panayiotou to say this to which Beeton replied that it was shocking that counsel would give such advice.
Wrapping up the day’s proceedings, Beeton said she needed to apply her mind to all the evidence before she would be able to make a ruling.
The case was postponed to Thursday next week.