Durban — The Durban High Court will this year be dealing with separate cases of three women all alleged to have conspired with others to have their husbands killed.
Today (Friday) primary school teacher Gugu Mchunu, 50, and her co-accused Lindani Phungula, 30, are appearing in the Pinetown Magistrate’s Court charged with the murder of Richard Jabulani Mchunu. Their matter will be indicted to the high court.
It is alleged that in April last year on Mango Grove in Mariannhill the two unlawfully and intentionally caused the death of Richard by shooting him.
The State alleges that the two acted for a common purpose and should they be convicted of the murder they face a minimum sentence of life imprisonment.
Following their arrest in June last year, the two made their formal bail applications in July, where Mchunu, laying out her personal circumstances, told the court through an affidavit that she was a teacher at Bruyns Hill Primary School.
The court refused both Mchunu and Phungula bail.
• Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Durban High Court was expected to hear the pretrial for the murder case against the wife of a Newlands East man, her lesbian lover, and another woman.
Charmaine Margaret Khumalo, Teagan Allison Brown and Analidia Dias Bella Dosantos are alleged to have hatched and executed a plan to kill Dosantos’s husband, Mark Buttle, five years ago.
An insurance policy is alleged to be the motive behind the murder, coupled with information that Dosantos, 41, was alleged to have been having an affair with Brown, 25.
Buttle was stabbed multiple times in the neck, allegedly by the three women, while in his car.
This was after he had allegedly been lured to the scene by Dosantos under the pretext of working through marital issues.
The State alleges that Buttle, who had been gainfully employed during the course of the marriage, had acquired life insurance policies of which Dosantos was the beneficiary, adding that she had allegedly been aware of at least one.
The two lovers are alleged to have plotted to kill Buttle so that Dosantos could collect his life insurance policy.
All three women alleged to have killed Buttle on the evening of February 25, 2018, in his parked vehicle in an open area in Ferndale are out on bail.
• Later this year in July the trial against a Pinetown nurse alleged to have hired her brother and another to kill her husband, a Transnet employee, is set to continue.
Nomphumelelo Patricia Goncalves, out on bail, is alleged to have hired Nkosinathi Steven Zungu, who remains behind bars, to kidnap her husband, Nkosi Timmy Langa, from their Pinetown home and kill him.
A previous State witness and hit man in the matter, James Mashudu “Ramaphosa” Mthimkhulu, had testified before the court how Langa was killed with an electric cord cut from an iron in his home.
It was placed around his neck and Zungu pulled one end while Mthimkhulu allegedly pulled the other.
It is alleged that Goncalves had hired the men to murder Langa because she had allegedly endured physical abuse at his hands.
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