Killer describes mother’s last gasp
Case won’t go to trial after guilty plea
KYLE Maspero has detailed how he strangled 39-yearold Rosemary Theron with a rope, while his girlfriend urged him not to look at the victim, but to “count off four minutes with her”, which he then did.
When the Cape Town mother “emitted a huge sigh” after Maspero released the rope, he recoiled, but his girlfriend reassured him that the sound was merely “trapped air”.
The Western Cape High Court earlier yesterday accepted Maspero’s plea of guilty, which means the case will not proceed to trial.
He details in his plea agreement how he and his girlfriend, Phoenix Racing Cloud Theron, hatched a plan to kill her mother on March 7, 2013.
At the time of the murder, Maspero was 18 years old and was living with Phoenix, her eight-year-old half sister Shariel and their mother, performance artist Rosemary Theron.
Maspero painted a picture of a dysfunctional home in which the former couple smoked dagga together and often fought with the 39-year-old Theron.
On the morning of the killing, the teenage couple had smoked dagga, and he had smoked crystal methamphetamine on his own several times.
Phoenix had confronted her mother about her half sister’s schooling as the little girl had not been attending school.
“Phoenix greeted the deceased, who acknowledged her without looking up from her computer, whereupon the former raised the issue of Shariel’s enrolment and that she had expressed a keenness to go.”
Maspero described how Theron “burst out laughing, telling us that Shariel would run away from school, as she had done the year before”.
In the plea agreement, he detailed the fight that followed, saying his former girlfriend challenged her mother and accused her of displaying a negative attitude towards schooling “as the deceased had scarred her with tales of violent teachers and wayward children”.
Maspero said he tried to intervene, but Theron told him not to “butt in”, and so he returned to the bathroom to continue smoking crystal meth.
The fight between mother and daughter turned into a screaming match as Theron, according to Maspero’s version, told Phoenix “it was her (Rosemary’s) input that contributed to Phoenix’s academic achievements and that she should not worry about Shariel”.
Maspero said: “Phoenix screamed back at the deceased that the only reason she finished her schooling was due to her biological father’s efforts.”
The teen couple went outside to smoke more dagga and agreed that “the deceased was deranged, and that with her attitude, Shariel would be a drug addict by the age of 16”.
The two then hatched a plan to kill Theron. Maspero said Shariel had fallen asleep by that time and “Phoenix suggested I kill the deceased by hitting her over the head with a spade”.
But according to Maspero’s plea statement, he said “it would be more humane to strangle her as she would lose consciousness relatively quickly and not suffer for very long”.
The two agreed that when Theron returned (she had left after the earlier argument), “Phoenix would distract her at the garden gate, give her a hug and point out a star” in the sky.
Five minutes after Theron arrived home, Maspero said Phoenix called her outside and showed her the star as planned.
Maspero placed a rope “around the deceased’s neck and pulled it tight”. Theron tried to struggle, but was held tight, according to Maspero’s version.
Two days later, he said, they buried her body in a shallow grave.
Four months later, the teen couple moved to a flatlet in Gordon’s Bay where an acquaintance, Godfrey Scheepers, was living on the same property.
Fearing Theron’s body would be discovered, Maspero “enlisted Scheepers’s assistance to move the deceased’s body”, which they did, digging it up from the original burial site and moving it to open veld.
Scheepers later confessed to police, which led to the arrests of the pair. Charges against Scheepers were withdrawn, while Phoenix entered her own plea agreement with the State and is serving 15 years behind bars.
Western Cape High Court Judge President John Hlophe postponed the case to November 16 when a further five or six witnesses are expected to testify in mitigation and aggravation of sentence. The judge told the court he would hand down sentence on the same day. – ANA
It would be more humane to strangle her