STAFF REPORTERS and SAPA

TOP SLEUTH Piet Byleveld, the investigating officer in the Donovan Moodley murder case, has rubbished his latest claims in court.

In four hours of testimony Moodley gave yet another version of events leading to the cold-blooded murder of Bond University student Leigh Matthews.

In Moodley’s view, the only person who lied was Byleveld, the man he said not only tortured him into confessing but changed statements to implicate Moodley and ignored vital information that could have led to the arrest of three drug peddlers who had masterminded the murder.

He asked the Johannesburg High Court, where he is representing himself, to accept that his confession was a lie, that his conviction should be overturned and that he should be given a retrial.

Four rows behind him, Matthews’s mother Sharon and father Rob struggled to contain their emotions as the man – who is serving a life sentence for the murder – described how she was shot and her body left in the veld in Walkerville, south of Joburg, in July 2004.

Donovan Moodley

INLSA

“He’s a very convincing individual and it’s very frightening,” Rob said outside court.

Sharon fought back tears, before leaving the court to compose herself, as Moodley read details of how Leigh “fell like a brick” when she was shot dead. She described his latest bid for freedom as bizarre.

“He’s a psychopath! If you do a case study on a psychopath… clearly that’s him. I have to say it has been an extremely bizarre day. It was all about him… it was me, me, me,” she said.

In a letter Byleveld spelled out what had happened when he arrested Moodley, who now claims Byleveld forced him to admit to the murder of Matthews.

“He went on his knees in front of his parents and, in my presence, apologised to them for what he did, referring to Leigh Matthews,” said Byleveld.

“Part of my evidence consisted of letters written by Moodley to his fiancée at that stage, parents and sister, where he asked them for forgiveness for what he did.”

He described Moodley’s application for a retrial as “absurd… a total load of cr*p”, and said he was making a mockery of the justice system.

“I think he is finding that prison is not a very nice place, and he is doing everything in his power to get out,” Byleveld said.

State advocate Zaais Van Zyl SC said the application was “based on a figment of (Moodley’s) the applicant’s imagination”.

“After years of careful thought, the applicant sees where the shoe pinches. It is submitted that it took the applicant some seven years to perfect his story. It is aptly called a story as it indeed is an imaginary account of past events.”

Both he and Byleveld questioned why one would plead guilty if one was not.

Moodley now blames Matthews’s kidnapping and murder on drug dealers named Frank, Allie, and Jemba.

He said they had coerced him into helping them with the crime, although another rich student had been the original target. He said he had been too afraid that the dealers would harm his family if he implicated them, so he took the blame himself.

In an SMS Matthews was forced to send her parents she had referred to her captors as “they”, proving he had not acted alone, Moodley said.

He repeatedly told the court that the way in which the crime was committed was “haphazard” and “quite stupid”.

“That’s not like me.”

Moodley went into the details of the kidnapping, extortion, murder, and disposal of the body, and frequently said there were more efficient ways these could have been achieved.

But Van Zyl said Moodley’s constant argument that he was too clever to have committed the crime indicated a familiarity with the events that heavily implied he was behind the crime.

“He is, with respect, too clever to have pleaded guilty if he didn’t do it.”

He said that when Moodley pleaded guilty, it was not up to the prosecution to disagree with him and try to prove him innocent.

Van Zyl said Moodley’s claims against Byleveld should have been raised during the trial.

He said it appeared Moodley had nothing new to tell the court and that, as such, the court was unlikely to arrive at a different conclusion to that of his original trial.

It was also telling that Moodley had been through three attorneys before deciding to represent himself, indicating that perhaps “nobody was prepared to go ahead with this preposterous story”.

The prosecution resumes its arguments today.

Moodley was found guilty in 2005 of murdering and kidnapping Matthews and of extorting money from her father. He was sentenced to life for the murder, 15 years for the kidnapping, and 10 years for the extortion.