Baby killer’s confession rejected

Cape Town, 28.06.2007: Dina Rodrigues waiting in the Cape Town High Court to hear her sentence for the murder of baby Jordan Leigh Norton. Picture: Leon Lestrade

Cape Town, 28.06.2007: Dina Rodrigues waiting in the Cape Town High Court to hear her sentence for the murder of baby Jordan Leigh Norton. Picture: Leon Lestrade

Published Aug 18, 2013

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“She can rot in hell for all I care.”

These were the words yesterday of Vernon Norton, grandfather of murdered baby Jordan, responding to an explosive confession by Dina Rodrigues, behind bars for the killing.

The confession, in which Rodrigues said she planned the murder because she believed the child was an obstacle to her happiness with the father, Neil Wilson, formed part of an affidavit filed at the Supreme Court of Appeal in support of an application she lodged for special leave to appeal her life sentence.

The application was dismissed last month, but the contents of the affidavit offer the first insight into what was going on in Rodrigues’s mind when she recruited the hitmen to carry out the June 2005 murder.

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune in reaction to the application, grandfather Norton said Rodrigues had already done the damage to his family and was now trying to escape the consequences.

“Every day we live with the reality that a very new life was taken away by a selfish woman for her own self-indulgence. I’m not interested in what Dina has to say. The focus for me is on me and my family. She can rot in hell for all I care,” he said.

The Norton family attended each day of the trial, which took place before Judge Basheer Waglay in 2006 and 2007, listening carefully to every piece of evidence presented. But throughout, not a shred of information was produced to explain what drove Rodrigues to plan the infant’s murder.

Now, eight years later, Rodrigues has blamed the tragedy on her immaturity and her obsession with what she regarded as an obstacle to her happiness with Wilson.

She is currently serving her sentence in Worcester.

Explaining why she wasn’t frank with the trial court, Rodrigues claimed that she had been prepared to testify, but after consulting with her legal representative, consensus was reached that she should not.

She claimed her lawyers were unaware of the extent of the emotional turmoil she had been going through before the murder, because she did not confide in them as much as she should have.

In addition, she did not provide Judge Waglay with a pre-sentencing report because she feared she would then have to make the truth known.

“I placed no evidence at all before the trial court so that, when sentence was passed, the learned judge had virtually nothing before him which emanated from or concerned me… Although I am as much to blame as anyone for the consequences of my self-imposed silence, I am of the belief that the failure to explain the consequences of not taking the court into my confidence during sentencing contributed towards the sentence of life imprisonment imposed on me,” she added.

She had now had a change of heart because, she said, she had matured, received counselling in prison, and understood the enormity of the crime she committed – and the consequences for those she hired.

According to Rodrigues, she lived a sheltered lifestyle, had little experience of life and little experience with men.

She believed she was destined to marry Wilson, and her dreams of doing so were shattered when she heard of the existence of Wilson's child.

“I immaturely came to the conclusion that the birth of the child had condemned me to a life of continuing emotional turmoil and unhappiness.

“Looking back now, with the wisdom of hindsight and with the advantage of more experience of life, I realise that I was simply experiencing the unsophisticated emotions of an immature and inexperienced woman, adult in body but not in mind.”

She started plotting the murder, going to a taxi rank to hire a killer. There she met her co-accused, Sipho Mfazwe. Mfazwe recruited the other three accused – Mongezi Bobotyane, Zanethemba Gwada and Bonginkosi Sigenu.

Baby Jordan was killed on June 15, 2005.

Rodrigues contended that she should be sentenced afresh because “I did not receive the legal assistance and advice which a person in my position should have received”.

“I respectfully submit that the Honourable Supreme Court of Appeal is consequently entitled to intervene in the matter, should intervene, should set aside the sentence that was imposed, and should order that sentence be passed afresh by a judicial officer who has been informed of all the relevant facts,” she argued.

The application was dismissed last month. - The Sunday Tribune.

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