Durban — The State has accused the nurse on trial with her brother for the kidnapping and murder of her husband of lying while under oath and changing versions.
Widow Nomphumelelo Patricia Goncalves and Nkosinathi Steve Zungu are on trial for the 2020 murder of Nkosi Timmy Langa, a Transnet engineer.
On Tuesday senior State prosecutor Krishen Shah continued with the cross-examination of Goncalves, which had started in September before the matter was adjourned in the Durban High Court.
She is alleged to have hired Zungu along with James Mashudu “Ramaphosa” Mthimkhulu, who is now a State witness and already serving time for his part in the crime.
On September 29, 2020, Langa was allegedly forced into his Isuzu X-Rider at his home near Hampshire Place in Pinetown and taken to a forest in Ozwathini by Zungu and Mthimkhulu.
There he was killed with an electric cord cut from an iron in his home.
It was put around his neck and Zungu allegedly pulled one end while Mthimkhulu pulled the other. The body was left in the forest.
Previously, the nurse testified that on September 27 she and her husband had a quarrel. He got angry and she left the house.
Upon her arrival back at their home, she said, she found the gate locked after his having left to prepare for an audit at work.
Goncalves had said she then phoned Zungu for assistance. After having gone to the police station, she fetched him from McDonald’s in Pinetown.
She said Zungu spent the night at their home and the following day he left when she also made her way to work.
However, Shah during her cross-examination put it to her that she was fabricating this, as her car Tracker’s record – which is part of the evidence in the trial – was contrary to what she had told the court.
“It shows you arrived home at 4.55pm when the ignition was switched off. The next time your car started is the following morning.
“This does not show any movement from your home to McDonald’s … The vehicle tracking movement report does not accord with your evidence,” he said.
Shah also said that Zungu’s cellphone record did not place him in Pinetown but in fact in two areas in the south of Durban.
“The call data places accused one (Zungu) in an area not at your house; in other words he was not at your house. He was never in Pinetown on the 27th.
“Accused one said he never came to your house and I am suggesting to you, objectively, that when one looks at the cellphone records of accused one, it does not accord with your version of him being at your house on the 27th and 28th at all …
“Maybe you have told so many lies you can’t remember what the truth is,” said Shah.
The court has heard evidence from Ramaphosa that the day Langa was kidnapped, Goncalves had picked up him, Zungu, and another man from the Durban CBD.
She dropped them off near a bridge and later came back and picked them up, dropping them off closer to her house.
This is while Zungu testified that he had phoned his sister asking for a lift. She dropped them off near a BP garage in Pinetown from where Langa later transported them to their destination in Ndwedwe, he said.
Goncalves’ evidence-in-chief was that she dropped them off near a Caltex garage in Pinetown and went home, where before cooking supper she asked her husband to accompany her to deposit money.
“I want to suggest to you that your husband never left your house with you. You’re lying when saying he left with you,” said Shah.
The prosecutor substantiated this with the evidence of a cellphone expert who testified that Langa’s phone never changed the cellphone tower it was pinging from.
He said Langa’s cellphone records show he was on a call at around the same time that Goncalves alleges they had left together -- and the tower where it was pinging from had not changed.
“This evidence was led (by the cellphone expert) before you in the presence of your counsel.”
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Daily News