Cape Town - Rob Packham claims he was not trying to cook up an alibi when he asked a work colleague to lie about his whereabouts on February 22 when he allegedly murdered his wife Gill.
This emerged during his Friday high court hearing into his bail contraventions which led to his arrest last week. Packham’s repeated contact with State witnesses, including Twizza colleagues and his ex-mistress, resulted in the court placing him under severe house arrest rather than continued incarceration at Pollsmoor.
In an affidavit presented in court on Friday, Packham claims his deviousness was to prevent Gill from finding out that he was shopping for a car for her March birthday.
This was why he arrived late “sometime after 9am” at Twizza on February 22. “I had been attending to some personal business on my way in.”
Alarmed by a 9.30am call from Gill’s school that she had not arrived for work, Packham says he left Twizza to look for her.
“I suddenly had a thought that she might have tried to follow me that morning, something she had done before to check up on me. As I had gone past quite a few car dealers it is unlikely that she would have kept pace with me. I really wanted the new car to be a surprise so did not want her knowing where I had been.
“Not wanting to alarm her in any way if she was to check on me, I rang Lodewyk van Rensburg at the plant and asked him to cover for me if by chance she was to call to check where I was. I asked him to tell her I was around in the plant from about 8.30am. He agreed to this request.
“There was no intention on my part to commit an act of gross misconduct as has being alleged by Twizza.”
Packham has since been dismissed.
“It was a harmless personal request for him to cover for me He had to do this once before when my wife found naughty pics and joke he had sent me on my phone.”