Pretoria - Diepsloot child rapist and killer Ntokozo Hadebe will hear on Wednesday if he is to be sentenced to nine life terms.
Pretoria High Court Judge Nico Coetzee on Tuesday convicted Hadebe on three charges of murder, six of rape and three of kidnapping.
In September 2013 he murdered Anelisa Mkhonto, aged five. The next month he murdered Yonelisa Mali, aged two, and her cousin Zandile, aged three, in Diepsloot.
The court found Hadebe lured the little girls from the safety of their homes and took them to his shack, where he raped them vaginally and anally before suffocating or strangling them.
He took Anelisa's body to a nearby dumping site. He left the bodies of the cousins in a public toilet.
Coetzee ruled that Hadebe's confession to a magistrate was admissible as evidence against him. In it Hadebe told in detail how he first raped and killed the three-year-old girl by twisting a wire coat hanger around her neck before he raped the two-year-old.
He said he killed her because the public was searching for the children and she was “out of control” and did not want to go to sleep.
Two medical professionals testified that both children had sustained such serious genital injuries that they would have needed extensive surgery if they had survived.
Hadebe denied any involvement in the murders, but Coetzee said the evidence against him was overwhelming.
The DNA test results conclusively proved that he had raped all three children. Their blood was found on a suitcase and other exhibits in his shack. There was no reason to doubt a neighbour's identification of the shack as Hadebe's
Two witnesses saw Hadebe with two little girls at a spaza shop the day Yonelisa and Zandile disappeared.
His confession to a magistrate emphasised his guilt, Coetzee added.
Asked if he had anything to say in mitigation, Hadebe at first said he did not know what his advocate wanted him to say. Then he suddenly told the court he could not remember anything of the case, which “came in through one ear and exited the other”.
Hadebe claimed his head “was not functioning that well” and that he “started to become insane” in 2005 because he started drinking heavily.
“I thought it's apparent to everyone that I'm not well in my head,” he said.
The State asked the court to sentence Hadebe to nine life terms for the three murders and six rapes.
The prosecutor said Hadebe used his supposed “madness” as an excuse to avoid the consequences of his actions, and had no remorse for the suffering he put the children through.
Sapa