"If you want money you are going to have to deal with our lawyers. Just keep your baby away from our family. Is that clear? We want nothing to do with you or your child."
These were the words Neil Wilson's mother, Sandra, allegedly snapped at Natasha Norton during their first meeting to discuss the future of Baby Jordan-Leigh Norton, according to a soon-to-be-released book about the infant's life and brutal murder.
"I'm not here for the money. I don't want your money," Norton had earlier told a "hostile", "aggressive" and "malicious" Sandra Wilson. "I'm here to see whether you as Jordan's grandparents are going to be part of her life."
The response she got was an absolute and final no.
Wilson - who fathered Jordan during a brief relationship with Norton in 2004 - even changed his phone number to avoid calls from his child's mother, according to In Cold Blood: The Murder of Baby Jordan, written by Norton's aunt, Renee Otmar.
The book also claims that Wilson's offers of maintenance were "embarrassingly low" and "would not even buy Jordan's milk formula".
Wilson's attorney, Milton de la Harpe, yesterday said he had not read the book, but expressed disquiet over some of its allegations.
"Neil was approached ... and asked for his input into the book, but refused because he felt it was disgusting to use Jordan's murder to make money," he said.
While disparaging towards Wilson's ex-girlfriend, Dina Rodrigues - who, with four men, was convicted and jailed for orchestrating Baby Jordan's stabbing in June 2005 - In Cold Blood also lends support to her claims that the baby's death was motivated by a maintenance dispute.
Rodrigues claims, in her latest bid in the supreme court of appeal to appeal against her murder conviction and life sentence, that Wilson was "distressed over the turn which negotiations for maintenance of Jordon had taken".
She said: "A plan was devised to pressurise the mother, Natasha Norton, by 'making the baby disappear for a few hours'."
She further claimed that Wilson had also tried to pretend that he was closer to the baby than he really was "to dispel any notion that he himself may have been involved in any conduct which ultimately - though admittedly, unintentionally - might have resulted in her death".
Otmar's book makes devastating claims about Wilson and his family's apparent reluctance to acknowledge Baby Jordan and reveals that "clearing up Jordan's paternity" was anything but easy for the Nortons, primarily because of Wilson's reluctance to undergo a blood test.
After waiting two weeks to return Natasha's phone call asking that he be tested, Wilson informed her that it would be another two weeks before he would available to have his blood taken.
"It takes a few phone calls to convince Neil that this is important. He insists that the test be done on a Saturday so that he doesn't have to take time off work or explain anything to anyone. Pathology labs in Cape Town are usually open to the public only during business hours, Monday to Friday, which makes it a little difficult.
"But in the days that follow, after countless phone calls ... to several pathology clinics around Cape Town, pleading for a Saturday appointment, eventually Natasha is able to secure a date that suits Neil."
The appointment would be the first and only time Wilson would touch his daughter.
"As (Natasha, her mother and Neil) wait to be called, Neil reaches over and gently slips his index finger into Jordan's little fist as it rests on her grandmother's back. Jordan lights up and throws him a bright, toothless smile as she tightens her grip around his finger.
"When the nurse calls them in, Neil struggles to get Jordan to release her grip. It is as though she wants to hold him close."
But the snatched moment of closeness between father and daughter was soon lost in an increasingly ugly battle over the baby's maintenance, with Natasha again having to repeatedly phone Wilson to persuade him to agree to a meeting to discuss Jordan's future.
"When (Natasha) does talk to him, it's clear that Neil is having great difficulty coming to terms with the fact that he is a father, as is, apparently, his girlfriend.
"Days later, Neil's mother, Sandra, calls to summon Natasha to a meeting at the Wilson home. The Wilsons refuse Natasha's request to bring her own parents, or Jordan."
Hoping that photographs of Jordan will persuade the Wilsons to accept the little girl, Norton took a photo album with her to the meeting.
But the encounter was anything but friendly and she returned home, "the photo album still unopened".