Cape Town - The Ocean View man accused of killing his 14-year-old cousin claims DNA evidence was “planted” at the crime scene to incriminate him.
However, the Western Cape High Court on Monday heard “irrefutable” evidence that DNA found at the scene and on the body of Camron Britz, 14, matched those of her alleged killer, Yagyah Robyn, 20.
A stone-faced Robyn listened attentively as pathologist Dr Itumeleng Molefe and Warrant Officer Lauren Alberts, a forensic science analyst, testified that all three DNA samples taken from him matched foreign DNA found on Camron’s body.
Dr Molefe had removed samples from Camron’s body on 2 July 2017, while she lay in the bush along Slangkop Street, Ocean View.
She also conducted a post-mortem on 3 July and said Camron was a virgin when she was brutally raped and sodomised.
The killer then shoved reeds and grass in the teen’s mouth, before strangling her with a pink string taken from the pink hooded jacket she was wearing.
Reeds, grass and twigs were shoved into her mouth. Picture: Daily Voice
The string had been wrapped around the teen’s slender neck three times.
She told the court Camron had been raped and murdered at the place where her half-naked body was discovered hours later by her younger brother.
Blood which ran from the girl’s genitals had soaked into the grass and soil around her.
The blood vessels in her eyes had burst from the strangulation, while rats had gnawed some of her fingers.
“The presence of blood showed rats had eaten of the body recently,” Dr Molefe said.
Robyn leaned forward and craned his neck as he tried to look over his defence lawyer’s shoulder at photos of the crime scene.
Molefe ended her presentation by stating that Camron had died of strangulation and that the reeds, grass and twigs inside her mouth were to stop her from screaming.
Robyn’s lawyer, Emile de Villiers then put it to the court, on the instruction of his client and his family, that his DNA had been planted at the crime scene.
Judge Yasmin Shenaz Meer asked De Villiers: “You are saying someone planted the DNA on the deceased?”
De Villiers answered: “That is my instruction.”
Semen samples on murdered Camron’s fingers, vagina and buttocks matched Yagyah Robyn, 20. Picture: Daily Voice
Warrant Officer Alberts took the stand and told the court she had received three DNA buccal (mouth) swabs from Robyn and that it had matched the semen samples found on Camron’s fingers, vagina, buttocks, and a bed sheet at the crime scene.
She said the only way DNA could have been planted was by someone using a syringe and with the consent of the person giving it.
Robyn has pleaded not guilty to two counts of rape and one of murder.
It is alleged that he lured Camron away from a galley fire in Ocean View on the night of 1 July 2017 under the pretence that her father was calling her.