Cape Town - Preben Povlsen’s body was kept stuffed in the boot of his car for a whole day before his body was dumped in a field.
The Danish millionaire was assaulted at his home in Gordon’s Bay in the early hours of January 14, 2008. His body was found six days later near Otto du Plessis Drive in Table View.
He had almost 50 stab wounds and a broken neck and his body was partially burnt.
The three siblings accused of murdering him - Francis Kimeze, Stella Ssengendo and Maria Povlsen, his widow - are on trial before Judge Rosheni Allie in the Western Cape High Court.
Kimeze has admitted to killing Povlsen, 71, but maintains that it took place during a scuffle and that it hadn’t been premeditated.
He told the court that on the morning of the killing, he put the body in the boot of one of Povlsen’s cars.
“I had the body in the car that whole day,” said Kimeze, a former Ugandan child soldier who is representing himself, as he took the stand for a third day on Wednesday.
He had dumped the body the next morning, on January 15.
According to Kimeze’s version, a friend - identified only as a Nigerian named “Frank” - had been with him on the morning of the killing and had helped him dump Povlsen’s body.
It is not yet clear what has become of his friend, whom he described as someone he bought drugs from.
He hadn’t introduced Frank to Povlsen, saying he wouldn’t normally introduce “a friend like that” to his family.
At the time, Kimeze had been doing renovations around the Povlsens’ home.
Kimeze said there had been a problem with one of the home’s sliding doors. He had often used this sliding door and didn’t need a key to open it.
When prosecutor Mmatlhapi Tsheole asked whether Povlsen knew that one could gain entry to the house through this sliding door without a key, Kimeze replied, “No.”
Tsheole asked whether he had permission to use the door.
Kimeze said he was not given permission, but “used it anyway because I never took things serious”.
Tsheole asked whether anyone in the house had been expecting him at that time (it had been “after midnight”) - to which he replied, “No” - as well as whether they would’ve expected him to gain entry through that sliding door.
He acknowledged that they wouldn’t have expected it.
“Would it be correct to say you broke into the house?” the prosecutor asked.
Kimeze, who described the Povlsen house as his “second home”, said he had done it “many times”.
The State’s cross-examination of Kimeze is expected to continue on Thursday.
Cape Times