Pretoria - “I don’t hate him, but I want him to sit in jail for a long time and reflect on what he did,” said a tearful Johanna Motshwane of the man who killed her daughter a month before her grandson was due to be born.
Johannes Tshepo Nkomo, 34, was convicted in the North Gauteng High Court on Thursday of murder of Baleseng Onicca Motshwane on February 2 last year, robbery with aggravating circumstances and theft.
Judge George Webster described Nkomo’s killing of the woman who bore his child as cold-blooded and gruesome, and said he then, knowing she was dead, stole R6 000 from her bank account.
Motshwane’s body was only discovered three days after she was killed when her mother and concerned colleagues missed her at work, and could not raise her.
Her body was in bed with a pillow over her head. She had been stabbed in the chest and the mattress, walls and floor were covered in blood.
Nkomo maintained he was not the killer and that his girlfriend was alive when he left her after visiting her for the weekend. He claimed she gave him her bank card and told him to withdraw money, as she had borrowed R6 000 from him.
Nkomo withdrew money from the account a day after the killing and again withdrew money five days later. He claimed it was his money and he needed to pay for spares for his car.
But Judge Webster rejected this, saying that it was odd, that he claimed to have lent her the money two years before her death, and then soon after the killing decide to take it back.
Motshwane’s mother said her daughter told her she was going to spend the weekend with Nkomo and that she was very excited about it. She phoned her daughter after the weekend, but got no reply. She became increasingly worried and phoned her workplace, only to hear that she had not turned up.
Colleagues of the dead woman testified how they went to her home and found her door unlocked. When they walked in, they detected a foul smell. They discovered her partially decomposed body in the bed.
The caretaker of the block of flats in Brakpan where Motshwane lived said he saw her and Nkomo on the Saturday. He also noticed Nkomo leaving the flat the next day.
The caretaker said he knew exactly who visited and left the flats. Visitors had to be signed in by the occupants. He was adamant that after Nkomo left, nobody else entered the woman’s flat.
Judge Webster said it was so that there was no evidence linking Nkomo directly to the murder, but that all the fingers pointed at him. He was placed at the scene of the murder at the exact date which the pathologist said she had died.
Pretoria News