State asks court to strike out most of Terblanche’s bail affidavit
A stickler for detail, senior state advocate Marius Stander pulled no punches yesterday when he asked the Gqeberha magistrate’s court to disregard at least 72 points listed in alleged wife killer Arnold Terblanche’s affidavit in his bail application based on new facts.
Stander brought the notice to strike out the information from the record, arguing that most of the evidence presented by Terblanche in his latest bail bid was a “regurgitation” of information already before court.
According to Stander, Terblanche had failed to set out his case from the outset, , and that only 22 of the 94 points raised in his responding affidavit were relevant.
“Why doesn’t [Terblanche] want to tell the state what his case is?” Stander said.
“There are rules, or is this becoming a game of let’s see what the state says first?”
Terblanche, 55, has been in custody since his November 17 arrest and lost his first bid for freedom in January when magistrate Kriban Pillay found that he posed a flight risk and may interfere with state witnesses.
Last month, the city’s high court dismissed his appeal against Pillay’s decision, with judge Glenn Goosen finding similar grounds not to release him on bail.
Terblanche has been charged with the murder of his estranged wife, Vicki, whose body was discovered in a shallow grave on a plot in Greenbushes on October 23.
Vicki’s boyfriend, Reinhardt Leach, and his friend, Dylan Cullis, are also charged with conspiracy to commit murder, murder and defeating the ends of justice.
They both abandoned their bail applications.
Stander said evidence, including statements obtained from Terblanche’s brother, Marius, his ex-wife, Natasha Potgieter, and several others should have formed part of his founding affidavit as they had been available to him before he launched his latest bid for bail.
Digital evidence, including text messages and voice recordings, retrieved from Terblanche’s cellphone, were available to him and should also have been part of the founding affidavit.
Details regarding Terblanche’s financial standing, what he would have paid Vicki had their divorce gone through, and his alleged moving of assets were also known to him at the start of bail proceedings, Stander said.
He rubbished Terblanche’s allegation that investigating officer Colonel Kanna Swanepoel had withheld information, misled the court and lied about who the state witnesses were.
Defence attorney Alwyn Griebenow said the state had “released the cat among the pigeons” and had come up with all sorts of excuses to prevent the court from finding new facts.
After briefly addressing the court, Griebenow asked for the matter to be rolled over to today for him to prepare properly to argue against the notice to strike out.
It is alleged Vicki was killed on or about October 18 at her Mill Park home after she was first drugged with Percocet, a Schedule 6 opioid, and then suffocated with a pillow and possibly even strangled.
She was reported missing on October 21 by Leach.
A fourth person alleged to be part of the plot to murder Vicki, Mario de Ridder Jnr, has turned state witness and has given a statement where he allegedly points out the key role-players in Vicki’s murder.