Cape Town - Details of how an unregistered sim card led police to a granny-killer, which emerged in a recent Western Cape High Court judgment, have demonstrated that criminals can’t escape the clutches of a determined detective, even if they use unregistered sim cards containing no Rica information.
In the case, limited data on a sim card used in a device stolen from a murder scene was the police’s first clue.
The data led them to two people in Gugulethu, who led them to the accused.
At the accused’s home, police found a DVD player, the training shoes he wore when he committed the crime, and grains of sand.
The judgment was handed down in an appeal which Thulani Mtoto lodged against his conviction and sentence.
Last year, the Parow Regional Court found Mtoto guilty of charges of housebreaking and murder for strangling 70-year-old Goodwood grandmother, Hester Roberts. He was sentenced to an effective 25 years in jail. Roberts was strangled in August 2010.
The front door of the house and a window were open. Roberts’s cellphone and DVD player were missing. Police also noticed shoe prints in a flowerbed.
Service provider Vodacom found that two sim cards were used in her handset. One belonged to Roberts and the second an unknown number, which did not have any Rica information stored on it.
The sim card was in regular communication with a number belonging to Mtoto’s cousin’s girlfriend.
But the girlfriend and cousin told police that Mtoto had taken her cellphone, and took the detectives to his shack, where they found a DVD player similar to the one stolen from Roberts’s house.
They also took possession of his Adidas training shoes and grains of sand, which experts linked to Roberts’s flower bed.
The accused claimed he bought the cellphone and DVD player from unknown people at Nyanga Junction, and that he later sold the cellphone.
In her judgment Judge Nolwazi Boqwana said Mtoto’s version of how he came to be in possession of the cellphone and DVD player was “less than convincing”.
She said he changed his version when cornered, and that this showed he was untruthful.
Judge Boqwana also referred to evidence that the footwear analyst could not conclude with 100 percent certainty that the prints matched the soles of Mtoto’s shoes.
However, she added: “It is important to note that the footprint, or shoeprint evidence was not the only evidence against the appellant.”
She said her own observations were that the resemblance of the characteristics in the shoeprints was “extraordinary”.
“In particular, a star-like characteristic (an Adidas emblem) and wear and tear on the training shoes on both prints are observed.”
The evidence about the sand grains also completed the picture, she said.
“
I am satisfied that the magistrate was correct in coming to the conclusion that (Mtoto) broke into the deceased’s house, murdered her and robbed her of her belongings.” Judge Boqwana also rejected the appeal against the sentence.
“In my view the magistrate showed a measure of mercy by imposing a lesser sentence, taking into account that the deceased was killed in a cruel manner, in the privacy of her home and robbed of her belongings,” she said.
The appeal was dismissed.
Judge Pat Gamble agreed.
Weekend Argus