DINA RODRIGUES: LOVE TRIANGLE, SOUTH AFRICAN STYLE
[Cross reference with Hate Crime]
Cape Town (May 7, 2007) - The 25-year-old, Dina Rodrigues, captured the attention of South Africa with the combination of racism, aristocracy and cold-hearted brutality. The witnesses were tainted with the hotly acrimonious opinions added to their testimony.
THE LOVE TRIANGLE
Dina, a pretty, petite brunette had set her sights on the handsome Neil Wilson, who was the center of the love triangle. Dina was infuriated that Neil had fathered a child with a black woman, Natasha Norton.
Apparently, Dina expressed outrage and embarrassment that her boyfriend had a mixed race child that she arranged to have the four-month-old baby murdered. Prosecutors claim that Dina, an ex-pupil of Wynberg High School for Girls, a boarding school for privileged girls, was furious that Wilson had fathered a child by a black woman (Natasha Norton) and wanted to spare him the shame of having a child out of wedlock.
Neil loved Dina and tried to protect her in the beginning of the trial by not testifying immediately, and only appearing in court once in February 2006.
But in the last days of the trial, Neil wore pink and black in solidarity with the Norton family, sat with them in court and, more importantly, delivered damning evidence against Dina.
Wilson testified that on the day of the murder, Rodrigues told him in a phone conversation that Jordan was dead "and she had paid R10,000 (One South African Rand = US$0.13435) for it to go away."
Later, Wilson testified, Dina broke down outside the police office of the investigating officer and said: "Oh my God, what have I done: I'm going to jail."
THE FACT OF THE CASE
According to the evidence presented at trial, the Nortons received a call from a "white woman" the night before the murder telling them they would receive a package.
Judge Basheer Waglay told a packed courtroom on Thursday that he accepted expert evidence that Dina's thumbprints and handwriting were found on the waybill left at the scene.
Telkom records used as evidence in court reveal that seven calls were made to the Norton house from Dina's workplace, a novelty-toy company in Milnerton, where she obtained the blank waybill.
The prosecutors also told the court that Dina had hired four men: Sipho Mfazwe, Mongezi Bobotyane, Zanethemba Gwada and Bonginkosi Sigenu and conspired with them to murder baby her boyfriend fathered.
THE GRUESOME DETAILS
Bonginkosi Sigenu testified in court to the gruesome details of the murder of an innocent baby.
The four twice cased the Norton house at Scout Road where the murder took place, before going there on June 15, 2005 (the third time), in Mfazwe's minibus taxi, to deliver "a parcel and a paper that the white woman (Dina) gave us."
Everyone except Sigenu, now 18, had knives the day of the murder. They entered the Norton home when the child's 19-year-old uncle, Dylan Norton opened the door to sign the waybill for the package. The men then bound and gagged Dylan, as well as the child's nanny, Thobeka.
Sigenu told the court that fellow accused, Mongezi Bobotyane, 25, "had put his finger in the playful four-month-old's mouth and then cut her throat."
"I was told to take the child away from the domestic and go and strangle it in a room. The child started playing on the bed and reminded me of my little brother."
"I couldn't do it. Bobotyane walked in and asked why I hadn't done it. I told him to do it, but only when I was out of the house."
"In the taxi, Bobotyane showed us a bloodied knife that he had used to kill the child." The baby had been stabbed in the neck and left to die with the nanny and uncle bound and gagged. The men left with a safe containing a firearm disguise the murder as an armed robbery.
As the trial came to a finish the courtroom was packed and highly animated; many of the gallery cheered support for the Norton family. Upon the conclusion of the testimony, the packed courtroom flowed out into the street and were eager to voice their opinions. One woman, who claimed to know Dina, stated, "She's an evil bitch. She's spoilt and she did it."
[SOURCE: South Africa News24.com]
CAVEAT: I have modified and condensed the original report to make it more understandable. Direct testimony is in italics and quotation marks.
This case is a template for this type of crime, how evidence is gathered, presented in court. It is hoped that it will be an exemplar for similar crimes. It will be interesting to compare and contrast other crimes of this genre.
