Pretoria - A witness on Thursday told the Gauteng High Court in Pretoria that an accused in the gruesome Mooinooi double murders went on a shopping spree using bank cards that belonged to murdered couple Anisha and Joey van Niekerk.
Collin Modau, the nephew of accused Alex Modau, said his uncle took him on the shopping spree a day after the alleged murders.
“We spent about R20000, using the bank cards,” he told Judge
Bert Bam.
Asked whether he knew to whom the cards belonged, Modau said he had no idea. He was also asked if he had not become suspicious when his uncle suddenly started spending large amounts of money.
But Modau said his uncle worked for the mines in the Mooinooi area, and he thought he was merely spending his earnings.
Modau’s uncle, Koos Strydom, the alleged mastermind behind the killings, Strydom’s wife Mercia, and co-accused Aaron Sithole and Jack Sithole, are all facing 13 charges, including two of murder and several rape charges. The State claims Strydom orchestrated the cruel deaths, which were meted out to the Van Niekerks in December 2017.
The couple was last seen on Sunday, December10, and their burnt remains found some days later.
The women were allegedly tortured and gang raped, before being hanged by their necks. Their bodies were later set alight.
The accused pleaded not guilty and said they had no idea what had happened to the women.
A witness who was on their smallholding that Sunday, however, testified that he saw two women in a vehicle that belonged to Anisha stopping at Strydom’s panel-beating shop, which he ran from the Van Niekerk’s plot.
The court was told that Anisha’s vehicle stopped outside the shop and that she sounded her hooter. Two of the accused then got inside the car with the women and they drove off.
According to the witness, Koos then followed them in another car.
This was the last time the women were seen.
Modau, meanwhile, testified how he fetched his uncle in Mooinooi on Monday, after which they went grocery and meat shopping, using the bank cards.
He said every time a card had to be swiped at a shop, his uncle had an excuse that he could not swipe the card, but that he (Modau) had to.
The pin numbers were written on a piece of cardboard.
Modau said that when the time came to swipe the cards, his uncle either said that he had to go to the toilet, or he pretended he had to attend to a call on his phone, or he had the sudden urge to use his snuff outside.
Yet Modau said he did not suspect anything was wrong.