A prayer allegedly written by double murder accused Mathew Naidoo said: “JL (Johannes Lotter) has to be dead soon.”
It went on:”Please, let everything work out as planned.”
Three days later, Lotter, 53, was murdered along with his wife, Maria Magdalena “Riekie”, 52, at their Westville home outside Durban.
Naidoo, 25, who had denied murdering the couple told Durban High Court on Friday he did not write the prayer or any others which appeared in a jotter entitled “Mathew's 2008 prayers”
He claims someone had framed him.
The prayer looked like it was in his handwriting but it was not, he said.
He agreed in order to get Mr Lotter dead, there had to be a plan and that God was being asked to allow a murder.
Two of the Lotter's children - Nicolette, 29 and Hardus, 23 - are also pleading not guilty, to murdering their parents.
They say they were under the influence of Naidoo, who told them he was the third son of God and it was God's will that their parents die.
They allege that Naidoo was the mastermind behind the plan.
Naidoo told Judge Shyam Gyanda he was prepared to take a chance in having the prayers examined by a handwriting expert. He denied he had said he was the third son of God.
Referring to a prayer in the jotter which said: “James the angel of justice will handle Mr and Mrs Lotter”, Roland Parsotham, for Hardus, commented: “The man who made that statement certainly has divine connections.”
There was laughter from the packed press bench and public gallery.
Another prayer, hand-written a month before the murder, said:
“Dear Lord, it's so hard, I fear going to jail for taking the R6000.”
The court has heard during the two-week trial that money was stolen from Mr Lotter's account and that police had video footage of Naidoo withdrawing the cash from an ATM machine.
Naidoo also denied writing another prayer asking God to “help me do it again for a bigger amount”.
The prayer said the Lotter family needed a wakeup call.
“Dear Lord, let me take a big amount to hurt them,” it said.
The court heard Mrs Lotter, who had banned Naidoo from the house, had called him a “dark horse” after an argument.
However, Naidoo said she had not called him that and told the court that he and Mrs Lotter had a “mother-son” relationship.
At one stage, when Naidoo appeared emotional, Parsotham told him to “get rid of the performance”.
At the end of Friday's proceedings, Hardus' aunt, Antoinette Lotter, walked to the dock and hugged her nephew.
The trial will resume on Monday. - Sapa