FATIMA SCHROEDER
High Court Writer
MORE than four years after being acquitted of the murder of his girlfriend, actuarial assistant Fred van der Vyver has won the civil action he had instituted against the Minister of Police.
This morning the Western Cape High Court found that there was no evidence to indicate that Van der Vyver had killed Stellenbosch University student Inge Lotz in 2005.
In his judgment, Judge Anton Veldhuizen virtually tore apart every ground investigators had provided the prosecution.
The court decided only on the merits of the case and was not asked to decide the amount of damages the minister would have to pay Van der Vyver, who has claimed R46 million.
Unless a settlement is reached, the matter will have to return to court for a decision on the amount. The minister could also appeal the High Court’s decision on the merits.
Lotz was beaten to death with a hammer and stabbed in her Stellenbosch flat in March 2005.
Van der Vyver was tried for the murder and in 2007, Judge Deon van Zyl acquitted him, criticising the police investigation.
Van der Vyver later lodged the civil claim and in it he said the police had acted maliciously and deliberately deceived the prosecution by feeding it false information.
Much of the criminal trial focused on a fingerprint said to be found on a DVD cover in Lotz’s flat which police linked to Van der Vyver. Lotz had rented the DVD at about 3pm on the day she was killed.
The defence, however, claimed that the fingerprint had been fabricated, and consulted experts to prove that it had been lifted from a glass, and not a DVD cover.
During the civil action, Van der Vyver’s legal team called Dutch fingerprint expert Arrie Zeelenberg as a witness.
He took the court through the fingerprint to prove his firm belief that it had been lifted from a glass and not a DVD cover.
This morning Judge Veldhuizen said Zeelenberg’s opinion was founded and that the court chose his over that of the witnesses who testified on behalf of the minister.
“In my opinion, it is clear that the fingerprint on (the folien) was lifted from a drinking glass and not a DVD holder,” he said.
Regarding the evidence of Constable Elton Swartz, the officer who had lifted the fingerprint in the flat, he |said there was no doubt that Swart had been negligent and |reckless.
However, it would not be fair to say that he had lied or that he had acted with a desire to offend.
One of the crucial pieces of evidence the State had used against Van der Vyver was a bloodied shoe print found near the basin in the bathroom in Lotz’s flat.
Then-police superintendent Bruce Bartholomew linked it to a squash shoe police had confiscated from Van der Vyver on the basis of sand grains in the grooves of the heel of the shoe.
However, no one in the police agreed with his opinion.
Bartholomew then travelled to America to consult with top shoeprint identification expert William Bodziak.
Bodziak, however, also did not agree with him, saying that the grains of sand had been pushed too deep into the grooves of the shoe’s sole to make an impression if the person wearing the shoe had stepped in blood.
However, Bartholomew returned to South Africa and told his colleagues and the director of public prosecutions that Bodziak had supported his opinion.
This led to a statement being compiled.