Johannesburg - Text messages between the two accused in the so-called Montecasino murder case appear to show the pair were stealing from their alleged victim and drugging him in the days leading up to his death.
Former stripper Maruschka Robinson and her former boyfriend, JP Malan, have been charged with the murder, robbery and defrauding of Dustan Blom, who was allegedly choked to death at his home and abandoned in the boot of his car at the Montecasino parking lot in September 2013.
They have pleaded not guilty to the murder and robbery charges, but have admitted to defrauding him.
On Monday, State witness Lucy Langeveldt, a member of the SAPS cyber crime operational support unit, provided the high court with thousands of pages of text messages between the accused.
Langeveldt had downloaded all the contents of Robinson’s phone, showing messages she had sent to Malan. The accused express their love for each other while plotting against Blom, with who Robinson was living at the time.
“You think he is awake? Did you give him the g?” Malan wrote to Robinson less than a day before Blom’s death.
The pair allegedly often spiked Blom’s drinks with a drug called GHB to knock him out before raiding his bank account using his debit card.
A few minutes later, Robinson replied: “He is going to get cops here. Come here so we can g him up.”
Malan then responded, telling Robinson to get Blom’s phone at all costs, presumably to delete evidence of their bank transactions. “Babe just make sure we get the $$ please! Love u… xx,” Robinson replied.
Another State witness, forensic pathologist Dr Shirley Moeng, told the court on Tuesday that she believed Blom had been strangled, as evidenced by a fractured hyoid bone in his neck. Also, his tongue was up against his teeth, which was common in death by asphyxia.
Robinson and Malan’s respective lawyers appeared to shift the blame for the killing onto each other’s client.
Robinson’s lawyer, Jesse Penton, determined through Moeng that moderate to heavy force would have been required to fracture Blom’s hyoid bone.
He then implied a woman of Robinson’s size would not have been able to break the bone.
Malan’s lawyer, JP Marais, said that when his client had first seen Blom’s body, he had seen a pool of blood, suggesting something other than strangulation must have caused the bleeding.
He also argued, citing a Harvard professor, that drug tests by local and foreign pathologists were unlikely to pick up traces of GHB in the blood samples taken by police.
He said this meant that if Blom had been drugged unconscious, excessive force would not have been required to subdue him, as Penton had suggested.