Pretoria - The Mali cousins, aged two and three, were raped and then strangled, before a wire coat hanger was placed around their necks and the ends pulled tight to ensure that they were dead.
Their bodies were stuffed under the bed of their alleged killer, who went on a drinking spree.
When they started to emit an unbearable smell, he placed the three-year-old in a suitcase and the two-year-old in a bucket. He then dumped them in a nearby toilet in Diepsloot.
This is according to a confession made to a magistrate by their alleged killer, Ntokozo Radebe.
Radebe claimed the confession was made after the police tortured him and told him what to tell the magistrate. A trial-within-a-trial was held in the Gauteng Provincial Division of the High Court in Pretoria, during which the police denied these allegations. On Friday, the statement was allowed to be submitted as evidence.
The State questioned Radebe about how he was able to cite five-and-a-half pages of minute details regarding the killings to the magistrate, if he had not been there.
But the accused was adamant that he was told what to say and said the interpreter filled in the rest. While insisting that he knew nothing about the killings and although blood found in his shack linked him to the children, Radebe said the police knew exactly how the children were killed.
But Judge Nico Coetzee rejected this version and found that Radebe voluntarily made the confession regarding the killing of Yonelisa and Zandile Mali.
Radebe’s confession said that after 5pm on a Saturday he came across the cousins in Diepsloot. The older one asked him to buy them chips, which he did.
“I walked back to my shack and when I looked over my shoulder, they were following me.”
Radebe said the children fell asleep on his bed. He locked the door and went to a tavern where he drank until late. When he returned he raped the three-year-old and strangled her with his bare hands. He then wound a coat hanger around her neck, pulled it tight and dumped her body under his bed.
He said the two-year-old would not sleep, and he heard the police and members of the community outside his shack, looking for the missing children. He strangled her until she fainted.
“I told myself she was as good as dead, but still alive. I then raped and strangled her.”
Yonelisa’s body was also dumped under the bed before Radebe went on a drinking spree. When he returned he slept with the bodies under his bed until the smell became unbearable and he placed one in the suitcase and the other in a bucket.
“I took them to the toilet where I tilted the bucket and the suitcase and left them there.”
The trial proceeds on Monday.
Pretoria News Weekend