Durban - Nuns of the Sacred Heart Convent in Ixopo clutched each other in grief as they listened to the extent of the injuries suffered by their sister nun, Gertrud Tiefenbacher.
Dr Yusuf Bhana, the district surgeon at Ixopo, who performed the post-mortem on the 86-year-old nun, testified in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on Tuesday.
Bhana was called to give evidence in the case of Mondli Michael Shozi, 26, and Sbongiseni Phungula, 25, who both pleaded guilty to murder, rape and theft.
While prosecutor Sandesh Sankar accepted the pair’s version of events relating to the rape charge, he told the court he did not accept the facts on the murder count because it did not match the evidence in the docket.
Bhana told a shocked courtroom that, in his opinion, Tiefenbacher’s cause of death was strangulation.
He said when he examined Tiefenbacher, he found a towel wrapped around her neck. A shoelace was tied over and around the towel, to hold it in place.
“The presence of the towel wrapped around the neck indicates strangulation. I very much doubt that she (Tiefenbacher) would still have been alive when the accused left her room,” Bhana said.
He said his findings also included bruising and abrasions on either side of Tiefenbacher’s neck, below her right nostril and lips.
In their plea explanations, the pair said they had tied the nun’s hands with an electric cord and gagged her with a scarf. No mention was made of a towel or shoelace in their plea statements.
They said in their statements that after consuming alcohol at a tavern on April 18, they went to a forest for wood to build a shelter.
They passed the Sacred Heart Home and decided to go inside to steal food from the kitchen. When they entered the convent, they were confronted by Tiefenbacher.
They pushed her into the bedroom where Phungula tied her hands and gagged her.
Shozi raped her before going to the kitchen to steal groceries, a vacuum cleaner and a watch.
Phungula joined him in the kitchen after raping the nun.
The pair maintain that Tiefenbacher was alive when they left her.
The case continues on Wednesday.
Daily News