If Judge Ishmael Hussein convicts Rudolph van der Westhuizen on Tuesday for murdering his wife, Van der Westhuizen may well regret his decision not to appear in his own defence.
Judge Hussein's irritation at Van der Westhuizen's consistent refusal to take the stand in support of his version that he assaulted his wife and did not kill her, as the state claims, was evident in the Delmas circuit court on Tuesday.
His wife, Conceiçao Maria "Susi" van der Westhuizen, was found hanged in the couple's garage on the night of March 31 last year.
The state claims Van der Westhuizen throttled her and then masked this by making it appear that she had committed suicide.
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Van der Westhuizen has denied this, admitting only that he struck her twice in the throat with his elbow before taking a sleeping pill and waking up the next day to find her dead, swinging from the rafters in the garage.
Van der Westhuizen's sister, Inspector Maria Rossouw, was acquitted earlier this year on charges of defeating the ends of justice.
The state claimed that Rossouw, a serving police officer, had helped her brother to stage the suicide.
Judge Hussein said Van der Westhuizen should have taken the stand to substantiate his plea that he had assaulted his wife. The judge noted that Van der Westhuizen had failed to support his version under oath.
"He chose not to give me the facts," Judge Hussein said as Van der Westhuizen's defence counsel, advocate JP Myburgh, argued for Van der Westhuizen's acquittal on the murder charge.
Myburgh anchored his argument on evidence on Tuesday by forensic pathologist Dr Leon Wagner that Susi van der Westhuizen had committed suicide.
Wagner, who also gave evidence for the defence in the lion-murder trial of Mark Scott-Crossley and Simon Mathebula, made his findings on the basis of several post-mortem results and pictures of the crime scene as well as evidence led in court earlier this year.
He said the diagonal ligature mark above Susi van der Westhuizen's thoracic area proved she had committed suicide. Had it been a staged suicide to mask a murder, the ligature mark would have been horizontal.
Wagner said it was "virtually impossible" for a person weighing 80kg (referring to Van der Westhuizen) to pick up a person weighing about 50kg and stage a suicide.
Had Van der Westhuizen staged a suicide, Susi van der Westhuizen would have had abrasions to her neck from being dragged and hanged.
The judge was expected to rule on Wednesday on whether he will accept Dr Patricia Klepp's version, for the state, that Susi van der Westhuizen's cause of death was strangulation.
- This article was originally published on page 3 of The Star on June 01, 2005
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