Johannesburg - A movie was behind the idea that led to the death of Kirsty Theologo after a “soul-selling ritual”, the High Court in Johannesburg, sitting in Palm Ridge, heard on Thursday.
Linden Wagner, the alleged mastermind of the ritual, said the participants needed some way to alert the devil that they wanted to sell their souls.
“The idea came from a video called 'The Anti-Christ',” said Wagner.
He said the movie was about six-hours long, and that he had seen only parts of it on a cellphone.
In previous testimony, Wagner told the court he repeatedly hit Theologo, 18, on the head with a rock, doused her with petrol and set her alight as part of the ritual, on a hill in Linmeyer in October 2011.
She died in hospital a week later. Her 14-year-old friend survived the attack.
Wagner said some of his co-accused believed Theologo was the prostitute spoken of in the book of Revelations in the Bible.
In order to raise the beast spoken of in the Bible, a prostitute needed to be burnt.
A game involving toilet paper and three match sticks, and which was played by the three alleged killers days before the ritual, had confirmed that Theologo was a prostitute, said Wagner.
He said that while they took the game seriously, he did not want to believe Theologo was a prostitute.
“She was sweet, kind, loving, soft-hearted, and a little bit shy,” he said.
Later on the day they had played the game, Theologo had said she wanted to be sacrificed.
“Kirsty came in with a big smile on her face and said she wanted to be burnt with fire and her flesh could be eaten,” said Wagner.
He also told the court he had wanted to gain power from selling his soul, while his co-accused Lester Moody had wanted to gain wisdom.
“I wanted power to be able to lift you up with my eyes and then throw you on the other side of the room if you didn't want to accept it.
“The wisdom was for Lester to be able to invent a chip and install it into people (so that we could control the world).
“When I heard of American artists selling their souls, it was something I wanted to be part of... Like Tupac, Bone Thugs and Snoop Dogg.”
He said these singers claimed to have died and come back to life under the power of Satan.
Wagner and his three co-accused, Courtney Daniels, Harvey Isha and Robin Harwood, have pleaded not guilty to killing Theologo and attempting to murder her friend.
Moody and Jeremy King confessed to the crime and were each sentenced to 17 years' imprisonment, five of them suspended.
Sapa