Johannesburg - “F*** you” shouted Diepsloot child rapist and killer Ntokozo Radebe at the judge who sentenced him to a life behind bars.
Sentencing Radebe to nine life sentences and 15 years on Wednesday morning, Judge Nico Coetzee said Radebe acted worse than an animal and the punishment must fit the crime.
“F*** you” shouted the 29-year-old Radebe at a shocked Judge Coetzee.
Radebe heard his fate on Wednesday morning in the Gauteng Provincial Division of the High Court sitting in Pretoria .
He was earlier convicted on 12 charges and received a life sentence on each of the six rape charges and a life sentence for each of the three murder charges.
The judge this week said Radebe is without a doubt the man who last year abducted and killed Anelisa Mkhonto, 5, Zandile Mali, 3 and her cousin Yonelisa, 2.
Anelisa first went missing in September last year. Her body was found several days later next to a dumping site.
The Mali cousins went missing about a month later and their bodies were in a public toilet several days later.
The killings caused outraged among the Diepsloot community.
Radebe was linked to the rape and killings via DNA evidence taken from the children. Both Anelisa and Zandile’s blood was found in a suitcase in his shack and the blood of Yonelisa was found on a shoe in the room.
He, however, still insists that he is not the killer.
On Wednesday morning Judge Coetzee remarked that Radebe had shown no remorse for what he had done.
Throughout the trial Radebe appeared relaxed, stretching out in the dock and even smiling from time to time.
Asked earlier why he should not be send to jail for life, Radebe suddenly “revealed” that he was mad and insane. He questioned how the court could not see this from the start. But Judge Coetzee rejected this.
He found that there were no mitigating circumstances warranting a lesser sentence than the nine life sentences.
Radebe's counsel could also forward no reason as to why the court should deviate from the maximum prescribed sentence, other than to say that Radebe grew up without a father figure in his life.
Radebe this week testified that his father, even before he was born, questioned paternity. “This hurt me terribly,” he told the court.
Pretoria News