Cape Town - The mother of 5-year-old Kaithlyn Wilson, who was smothered to death on July 30, 2017, said convicted murderer Jonathan Heyns killed the child to spite her.
Yvonne Wilson, 26, spoke shortly after Judge Babalwa Mantane on Friday found Heyns guilty of premeditated murder, and his co-accused August Pedro-Lee Swarts guilty of being an accessory to murder. The court concluded that Swarts pushed the wheelbarrow with the child’s lifeless body, and assisted in hiding the body under a bush near a railway station in Riebeeck West in the winter of 2017.
Her body was wrapped in a white blanket with a pink facecloth stuffed in her mouth, and black insulation tape wrapped around her nose and mouth. The post-mortem showed she suffocated, while reddish marks around her throat showed signs of strangulation.
Wilson said: “I’m glad that the court has found Heyns guilty. Now I want the judge to hand him a life sentence. He killed my child to spite me. He was obsessed with me.
“The day before the murder, he asked me who I loved the most. When I told him I loved my child more, he said he was going to kill my child.
“On the same day he also threatened me with a knife at a local pub. He couldn’t accept the fact that I broke off our relationship. He followed me everywhere I went, and harassed me at work,” said Wilson.
In a 90-page judgment read out over two days, Judge Mantane said when Swarts initially pushed the wheelbarrow filled with refuse, he didn’t believe it when Heyns told him there was a body underneath the rubbish.
It was only when Swarts picked up a white blanket wrapped around something, that he felt it was a body.
At the time the Kaithlyn had been reported missing. On their way back the two told a search party they did not know where the child was.
@TheCapeArgus