Terblanche’s renewed bail application bogged down in legal technicalities

It has become a question of who knows the law best in the bail application of alleged wife killer Arnold Terblanche as the defence and state continue to argue the matter in the Gqeberha magistrate’s court.

Terblanche’s attorney, Alwyn Griebenow, asked the court yesterday to make a decision on whether to allow the application brought by the state before he would argue the matter any further.

This, after state advocate Marius Stander brought the application to strike out evidence tendered by Terblanche in his responding affidavit after the state submitted an opposing affidavit in Terblanche’s bail application based on new facts.

According to Griebenow, the law did not permit evidence to be struck from the record during a bail application and the state had no legal standing to bring such an application.

Stander argued that at least 72 of the 94 points raised in Terblanche’s responding affidavit should have been contained in his founding affidavit when he first brought the application for bail on new facts earlier this month. The matter was postponed to Friday to allow magistrate Kriban Pillay time to decide whether to allow the application for the strike-out.

Stander brought the application on Tuesday, stating that the evidence presented by Terblanche did not allow the state the opportunity to respond to the claims and was merely a mechanism to elaborate on evidence already before the court.

Stander argued at the time that Terblanche’s claim that he did not have access to evidence, including digital evidence contained on his cellphone and statements by witnesses, after his initial bail application was denied, was not true.

Terblanche was arrested on November 17 and charged with the murder of his estranged wife, Vicki, whose body was found buried in a shallow grave on a plot in Greenbushes on October 23.

She was reported missing two days earlier by her boyfriend, Reinhardt Leach.

Terblanche along with Leach and Dylan Cullis have been charged with conspiracy to commit murder, murder and defeating the end of justice.

Leach and Cullis have abandoned their bail applications.

A fourth person allegedly involved in the murder, Mario de Ridder Jnr, has since turned state witness and has given a statement in which he outlines the alleged key players in Vicki’s murder, including Terblanche.

Terblanche has denied knowing De Ridder and has asked the court to rule that his statement be made available to his defence team, which the state has opposed.

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.

The state has alleged the murder was planned for Terblanche to avoid forking out a large sum of money in a bitter divorce battle.