Johannesburg - The husband of a woman who has been missing for more than a year has been arrested and charged with kidnapping.
Nicolette Albertyn disappeared in March last year.
Police conducted searches in different parts of the city, including the mine dumps around the south of Joburg, but to no avail.
Albertyn’s family said forensic detectives had found splatters of blood in the bedroom she shared with her husband, which were later taken for tests and found to match hers.
Although it’s not known where Albertyn is and whether she’s alive or dead, police arrested her husband on Wednesday and charged him with kidnapping.
Police spokesperson Captain Lorraine van Emmerick, of Booysens police station, confirmed that the man had been arrested.
She said he was to appear in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Monday and that it would be decided whether he would face more charges.
One person who is not surprised by the husband’s arrest is Albertyn’s mother, Janet Abrahams.
She has always maintained that her son-in-law knew what had happened to her daughter and if police wanted answers, they needed to speak to him.
“I was not surprised by the news that he had been arrested. I had been awaiting this news,” Abrahams said.
“He should not get bail until he talks. I know he knows (what happened to Albertyn).”
Despite the breakthrough, Abrahams said she was far from getting closure.
The only thing she wanted was her daughter back, she said.
“This is not the closure that I want. The closure I want is my child,” she added.
“He (the husband) is the only one who knows what happened to her.”
In April, The Star reported how Albertyn had allegedly said something to her mother on February 12 last year that was so chilling that her mother had diarised her words.
“Mom, *Ridwaan (Albertyn’s husband) said he will chop me up and put me in a Pikitup (dustbin) and you will never find me. Then he will come for you, because I am dependant (sic) on you,” Abrahams wrote in her diary.
A month later, Albertyn went missing.
Albertyn’s brother-in-law, Donivon Esterhuizen, said the 37-year-old woman had been in an abusive relationship and her neighbours had also told the family that they used to hear her scream.
Esterhuizen also said the neighbours told him that on Friday, March 13, the day Albertyn was last seen, they had heard her screams followed by silence and then the husband had started screaming.
Abrahams said she knew of the abuse and she had tried to get her daughter out of her marriage.
But she always went back to her husband because “she loved him too much”.
Van Emmerick also confirmed that Albertyn had in the past opened cases of domestic abuse against her husband.