Howard Oliver confessed to raping and murdering 16-year-old Franziska Blöchliger after she went jogging in Tokai forest in March last year.
Oliver faces two charges of rape and one of robbery and murder.
Read out by his new Legal Aid representative Henk Carstens at the Western Cape High Court yesterday, Oliver admitted choking Blöchliger with such force that it fractured the hyoid bone in her neck, after which she lost consciousness. He then dragged her through the fynbos, explaining the scratches and bruises on her body.
He took Blöchliger’s cellphone and other items before tying her wrists and proceeding to rape her anally, which he said he had done accidentally before raping her vaginally.
He then discovered she was still breathing, before he left. But the forensic evidence points to suffocation. Oliver admits he did press Blöchliger’s face into the sand.
In video footage from a visit to the crime scene earlier this month, Oliver described the events and stated he saw her phone and grabbed her from behind.
He said they fell to ground, she tried to loosen his arms from her neck and they “struggled”.
The State’s forensic expert Sipho Molozi later testified and said he was both at the scene last year following the crime and involved with the post-mortem.
“There was significant evidence found which shows blunt force trauma was used; injuries to the head and back of the victim. The evidence also indicates that the victim was still alive and breathing as soil and blood (were) found along her air canal all the way to her lungs,” said Molozi.
State prosecutor Lenro Badenhorst said: “The accused has contradictory recollections of the day and had previously had a change of mind. On that day he (was) single-mindedly ready to commit a crime which resulted in these aggravated circumstances.”
Badenhorst said the crime was a premeditated act and Judge Kate Savage must consider no less than the 16 years’ sentence the law prescribes.
Judge Savage postponed proceedings until today for the State to submit to the defence its final evidence before both sides present closing arguments.