Home care nurse denies stabbing guest house owner

Published Sep 18, 2018

Share

Guest-house owner Marie Verwey sustained 62 stab wounds in her Paradyskloof home, but her home-care nurse denies she had anything to do with it.

Nicolize Geldenhuys, one of the four co-accused, started to cry in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday, blaming one of her co-accused for the brutal knife attack, News24 reported.

She is on trial for armed robbery as well as the murder of the woman she affectionately called "Ma". Geldenhuys testified that killing Verwey was never part of the plan.

Verwey, 80, was killed at the Villa Merwe guesthouse in February last year. Her safe had been ransacked. Geldenhuys and her now ex-boyfriend Romeo Hendricks pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Co-accused Enrico "Darkie" Malherbe pleaded guilty to both charges and Andre "Zibby" Coetzee only admitted to the robbery. Both their pleas were rejected. Geldenhuys' co-accused are all alleged members of the 26s gang.

Geldenhuys had worked for the Verwey family since 2015, caring for the guesthouse owner's husband. After his death, the family re-employed her to take care of Verwey a week before the murder.

She confessed to planning the robbery after seeing Verwey's son Francois storing his mother's jewellery, worth R750 000, in their safe.

Geldenhuys claimed Malherbe had diverted from their original plan to hold up Verwey and the domestic worker and escape with the valuables. According to her, he was the only one who stabbed Verwey. 

But prosecutor Jacomiena Swart said the pathologist's findings were that Verwey had been stabbed on both the left and right side of her body, pointing to the possibility of two attackers.

"I didn't stab her," Geldenhuys maintained, despite Malherbe's claims that she had.

She claimed to have been shocked and upset by the change in plan, but Swart countered that she had not behaved in an appropriate manner.

"You didn't scream or cry for help," she pointed out. "You didn't want help. It was the part of the plan that there be no witnesses to identify you." 

Swart also rubbished Geldenhuys' claim that she was afraid of Malherbe and the alleged gang boss (who hasn't been arrested yet), referring to video footage of a laughing Geldenhuys and her co-accused selling Verwey's jewellery at a pawn shop.

The trial continues on Thursday.

Related Topics: