Durban — The investigating officer who arrested a woman who hatched and executed a plan with her lesbian lover to kill her husband of 10 years was hailed by the court when the convicted mother of two was handed a life sentence.
On Thursday, Analidia Dias Bella Dosantos was handed a life sentence by Acting Judge Murray Pitman in the Durban High Court for the murder of her husband and father of her child, Mark Buttle, who was found in his car with 53 stab wounds to his upper body.
Dosantos plotted with her lover Teagan Allison Brown to kill her husband and the plan was executed with the help of Brown’s neighbour, Charmaine Margaret Khumalo, in 2018.
Brown died in July, ahead of the trial starting.
An insurance policy was the motive behind the murder, coupled with the fact that Dosantos, who was 41 at the time of the murder in 2018, was alleged to have been having an affair with Brown, who was 25.
Following the murder, Dosantos, while on Napdale Road, allegedly parted ways with the other women, going to a nearby house where she reported that she had been with her husband and they had been hijacked.
She reported the false hijacking and kidnapping case to the police. Even though she had moved out of the marital home, she had lured Buttle to the murder scene under the pretext of rekindling their marriage.
Judge Pitman sentenced Khumalo to 18 years for her part in the murder, while Dosantos was handed a further five years for defeating the ends of justice.
“The accused might have got away with this had it not been for investigating officer Andre Darren Moses. When he was contacted by lawyers for accused three (Dosantos) trying to access the insurance money, he went back and got the docket and he continued the investigation. Moses deserves commendation for that,” said Judge Pitman.
At the time, Moses had left the Newlands SAPS and was with the Provincial Investigating Task Team, leaving his case dockets behind to be investigated by his colleagues.
A year after leaving Newlands SAPS, Moses was contacted by Dosantos’s attorneys to sign off on documents in relation to insurance, more than once. With the permission of his commanders, after raising the alarm, he went back to Newlands and requested the docket, continuing with the investigation that led to the arrest of Khumalo.
“The deceased was stabbed 53 times in the upper body. In all my 40 years working in the courts, including magistrate’s courts, I can’t recall seeing a deceased with so many stab wounds. As seen in the photos, the attack was excessively violent, brutal, and deadly,” said Judge Pitman.
He said he had considered the Victim Impact Statement by Buttle’s father, Andrew Buttle, which Senior State Advocate Khatija Essack submitted in aggravation of sentence.
“The family lost a son and can’t get him back, the latter years of their lives as pensioners have been wrenched away from them. They are now bending over backward-looking after a grandchild because their son was killed by the ringleader who is their daughter-in-law.”
Speaking to the Daily News Andrew Buttle aligned himself with Pitman when it came to Moses.
“I’m relieved at the conclusion of a six-year-old case, this case has only been finalised as a result of the efforts of Andre Moses, he was instrumental in bringing this to court. My wife and I are heartbroken for his two daughters who had to live through the ordeal of the death of their father and now to see their mother imprisoned.”
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