Cape Town - Kyle Maspero has detailed how he strangled 39-year-old Rosemary Theron with a rope, while his girlfriend urged him not to look at the victim, but rather to “count off four minutes with her” which he then did.
When the Clovelly mother “emitted a huge sigh” after Maspero released the rope, he recoiled, but his girlfriend reassured him “that the sound was merely “trapped air”.
The Western Cape High Court earlier on Wednesday accepted Maspero’s plea of guilty which means the case will not proceed to trial.
He details in his plea agreement how he and his girlfriend, Phoenix Racing Cloud Theron hatched a plan to kill her mother on March 7, 2013.
At the time of the murder, Maspero was 17 years old, and was living with Phoenix, her eight-year-old half sister, and their mother, performance artist Rosemary Theron.
Maspero painted a picture of a dysfunctional home in which the former couple smoked dagga together and often fought with the 39-year-old Theron.
On the morning of the killing, the teenage couple had smoked dagga, and he had smoked crystal methamphetamine on his own several times.
Phoenix had confronted her mother about her half sister’s schooling as the little girl had not been attending school.
“Phoenix greeted the deceased, who acknowledged her without looking up from her computer, whereupon the former raised the issue of her half-sister’s enrolment and that she had expressed a great keenness to go.”
Maspero described how Theron “burst out laughing, telling us that she would run away from school, as she had done the year before”.
In the plea agreement, he detailed the fight that followed, saying his former girlfriend challenged her mother and accused her of displaying a negative attitude towards schooling “as the deceased had scarred her with tales of violent teachers and wayward children”.
Maspero said he tried to intervene, but Theron told him not to “butt in” and so he returned to the bathroom to continue smoking crystal methamphetamine.
The fight between mother and daughter turned into a screaming match as Theron, according to Maspero’s version, told Phoenix “that it was her (Rosemary) input that contributed to Phoenix’s academic achievements and that she should not worry about her (half-sister)”.
Maspero said: “Phoenix screamed back at the deceased that the only reason she finished her schooling was due to her biological father’s efforts.”
He said he again tried to intervene and went to Theron’s bedroom but was “crudely told to ‘f**k off'”.
The teen couple went outside to smoke more dagga and agreed that “the deceased was deranged and that with her attitude the half-sister would be a drug addict by the age of 16”.
The two then hatched a plan on how to kill Theron. Maspero said the half-sister had fallen asleep by that time and “Phoenix suggested that I kill the deceased by hitting her over the head with a spade”.
But according to Maspero’s plea statement he said “it would be more humane to strangle her as she would lose consciousness relatively quickly and not suffer for long”.
The two agreed that when Theron returned (she had left after the earlier argument), “Phoenix would distract her at the garden gate, give her a hug and point out a star in the firmament, when I would approach the deceased from the rear, slip a rope around her neck and strangle her while Phoenix held her still”.
Five minutes after Theron arrived home, Maspero said Phoenix called her outside and showed her the stars as planned.
Maspero claimed he at first couldn’t go through with the plan, but Phoenix shot him “a questioning glance, stopped and gave the deceased another hug”.
This time Maspero placed a rope, found in a pot plant, “around the deceased’s neck and pulled it tight”.
Theron tried to struggle, but was held tight according to Maspero’s version.
They then “managed to walk the deceased into her bedroom through the open door and the two of them fell onto the deceased’s bed”.
“I held onto the rope all the while, whilst Phoenix told me to avoid looking at the deceased’s face and count off four minutes with her which I did.”
Maspero describes how he was “horrified” by what they had just done.
Two days later, he said they buried her body in a shallow grave.
Four months later, the teen couple moved to a flatlet in Gordon’s Bay where an acquaintance, Godfrey Scheepers, was living on the same property.
Fearing Theron’s body would be discovered, Maspero “enlisted Scheepers’s assistance to move the deceased’s body” which they did, digging it up from the original burial site and moving it to an open veld “near the intersection of Baden Powell Drive and Strandfontein Road”.
Scheepers later confessed to police which led to the arrests of the former couple. Charges against Scheepers were later withdrawn, while Phoenix Racing Cloud Theron entered in her own plea agreement with the state and is currently serving an effective 15 years behind bars.
Western Cape High Court Judge President John Hlophe postponed the case to November 16 when a further 5 or 6 witnesses are expected to testifiy in mitigation and aggravation of sentence.
Hlophe told the court he will hand down sentence on the same day.
ANA