Johannesburg - The two accused in the so-called Montecasino murder trial drove around for hours with their alleged victim’s body in the boot of his car, buying crystal meth from drug dealers.
This was according to former stripper Maruschka Robinson, who took the stand in the High Court in Palm Ridge on Thursday to testify in her trial.
She said she and her co-accused and former boyfriend, JP Malan had disposed of the body only 24 hours later.
Robinson and Malan stand accused of defrauding, murdering and dumping the body of Dustan Blom in the Montecasino parking area in 2013.
The pair have admitted to defrauding Blom but have blamed each other for his death.
On Thursday, Robinson gave a more detailed account of her initial plea explanation of how Blom was killed.
She said she and Malan had been shooting up drugs in the room she was staying in at Blom’s residence on the night he was killed, and had formulated a plan to steal his bank card, which they had done on numerous occasions.
Robinson claimed they had previously spiked a box of wine in Blom’s fridge with the drug GHB (gamma hydroxybutyrate, which is a central nervous system depressant) so that he would pass out for about an hour, and then stole his debit card to withdraw big amounts of cash.
She testified that Blom was asleep in the early hours of September 18, when Malan insisted on using a choke hold to ensure that Blom remained unconscious while they defrauded him, but killed him accidentally.
Robinson said she was unaware of this for hours, as she had waited in her bedroom for Malan to return from Montecasino to withdraw money from Blom’s account.
It was only after he returned with a friend at about 10am that she found Blom dead downstairs, and wanted to call the police.
She claimed that Malan had threatened her, saying he would flee and that she would be left to deal with the police, who were likely to arrest her.
“I was confused and scared. I didn’t know what to do,” she told the court.
Robinson said she and Malan had put Blom’s body into the boot of his Nissan Qashqai, cleaned up the blood and drove around, picking up drugs.
Malan dropped off the body in the Montecasino parking area the following day, she said.
But Robinson could not explain how footage from the Montecasino CCTV cameras showed the pair arriving not in the Nissan, but in Malan’s Volvo at midnight on September 19, before the body was dumped about 13 hours afterwards.
The Montecasino footage showed the pair flirting, giggling and chatting to the cashiers in the casino.
Malan’s lawyer, JP Marais, was the first to cross-examine Robinson.
He put it to her that because they were using Blom as a “bank”, it was neither in Malan nor her interest to kill him.
He then implied that Robinson had given a sleeping tablet to Blom to make him pass out on the night of the murder, and that he was still alive when Malan left with his debit card.
Asked why, according to her version, she had helped Malan move the body, Robinson responded that she had done it out of love for him.
She also battled to explain text messages apparently sent by Malan to her on the morning of the alleged crime that indicated he believed Blom was still unconscious in his house.
The Star