Cordelia Prinsloo, the air hostess killed by a gardener after her former husband allegedly promised to pay him to get rid of her, instituted two criminal cases against her husband, but both dockets disappeared.
This was testimony in the murder trial of prominent geologist Cobus Prinsloo in the Pretoria High Court on Monday.
Prinsloo has denied that he promised gardener Lucas Moloi money to kill his former wife.
Two State witnesses testified earlier that the attractive mother of two had told them just before her death that she feared that her husband - to whom she was married for 25 years before they got divorced - planned to kill her.
One of them said Cordelia had not wanted to go to the police. She had said it was no use because the accused had many friends in the SAPS.
A policeman who investigated the murder told the court that after Moloi implicated Prinsloo in the murder and when he saw all the protection orders, he realised that Cordelia might have been abused.
Judge Moses Mavundla was told that a warrant had been issued as Prinsloo had allegedly violated one of these protection orders.
After her death, Prinsloo’s ID number was punched into the police system. It was found that, apart from the family violence orders, Cordelia had opened a case of theft of her firearms and an assault case against him.
These two dockets could not be found in the SAPS system as they somehow went missing and are still nowhere to be found.
It later appeared that Cordelia had dropped the assault charge against her former husband, as one of her sons threatened to commit suicide.
The theft of Cordelia’s firearms case was also withdrawn, “due to a lack of evidence”. But the court was told that the policeman who investigated the theft charge had done a shoddy job, as a witness claimed he he had seen Prinsloo taking the firearms and placing them in a hole.
A duplicate docket was constructed and handed over to the Director of Public Prosecutions, who had not yet indicated the way forward.
Soon after his wife’s death, Prinsloo obtained the services of a private investigator to find her killer. Moloi, however, confessed to hitting her twice behind the head with a garden spade in October 2009, while she was watering the garden.
Moloi claimed Prinsloo had promised him R50 000 and a house if he killed her. He was sentenced to 18 years for the murder.
Cordelia’s body was later found in a flower bed on the smallholding, north of Pretoria, where the couple lived in separate homes.
- Pretoria News