Witness testifies about shopping spree after murders
R20 000 spent using dead couple’s cards
A WITNESS told the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria that an accused in the gruesome Mooinooi double murders went on a shopping spree using bank cards that belonged to murdered couple Anisha and Joey van Niekerk.
Collin Modau, the nephew of accused Alex Modau, said his uncle took him shopping a day after the alleged murders.
“We spent about R20 000, using the bank cards,” he told Judge Bert Bam at the trial on Thursday.
Asked whether he knew to whom the cards belonged, Modau said he had no idea. He was also asked if he had not become suspicious when his uncle suddenly started spending large amounts of money.
But Modau said his uncle worked for the mines in the Mooinooi area, and he thought he was merely spending his earnings.
Modau’s uncle, Koos Strydom, the alleged mastermind behind the killings, Strydom’s wife Mercia, and co-accused Aaron and Jack Sithole, are all facing 13 charges, including two of murder and several rape charges. The State claims Strydom orchestrated the cruel deaths, which were meted out to the Van Niekerks in December 2017.
The couple were last seen on Sunday, December 10, and their burnt remains found some days later.
The women were allegedly tortured and gang-raped before being hanged by their necks. Their bodies were later set alight.
The accused pleaded not guilty and said they had no idea what had happened to the women.
A witness who was on their smallholding that Sunday, however, testified that he saw two women in a vehicle that belonged to Anisha stopping at Strydom’s panel-beating shop, which he ran from the Van Niekerks’ plot.
The court was told that Anisha’s vehicle stopped outside the shop and she sounded her hooter.
Two of the accused then got into the car with the women and they drove off.
According to the witness, Koos followed them in another car.
This was the last time the women were seen.
Modau testified how he fetched his uncle in Mooinooi on Monday, after which they went grocery and meat shopping, using the bank cards.
He said every time a card had to be swiped at a shop, his uncle had an excuse that he couldn’t swipe the card, but that he (Modau) had to.
The pin numbers were written on a piece of cardboard.
Modau said that when the time came to swipe the cards, his uncle either said that he had to go to the toilet, or he pretended he had to attend to a call on his phone, or he had the sudden urge to use his snuff outside.
Yet Modau said he did not suspect anything was wrong.