Murder accused Rob Packham takes a second crack at securing bail

Murder accused Rob Packham Picture: David Ritchie/African News Agency/ANA

Murder accused Rob Packham Picture: David Ritchie/African News Agency/ANA

Published Jan 19, 2019

Share

Cape Town - Wife killer accused Rob Packham has made an application for leave to appeal against a judge's refusal to grant him bail.

According to papers filed in the Western Cape High Court this week, he has made an application for leave to appeal his December 21 bail cancellation which sent him to Pollsmoor days before he was due to walk his daughter down the aisle.

Packham is contesting the whole of Judge Elizabeth Baartman’s judgment that he breached his bail conditions by continuing to harass his ex-mistress who dumped him after he was charged for the murder of his wife Gill.

The father of two is prepared to approach the Supreme Court if she doesn’t revoke her decision.

Judge Baartman, who is in recess, is yet to consider the appeal application.

Putting Packham behind bars just before Christmas for breaching his bail conditions for the second time in three months, she said his ex-mistress “is a State witness who finds the respondent’s continued contact harassing”.

Packham’s former lover of three years cannot be named according to an earlier court order.

She’s a 43-year-old human resources manager and divorced Table View mother of two who, according to Packham’s lawyer Ben Mathewson, was from the BDSM community.

BDSM stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism and masochism.

Judge Baartman bail hearing judgment noted that Packham’s badgering could not be halted by warnings from his ex-lover’s attorney.

Not even increasing his bail to R75 000 and placing him under house arrest could rein him in. Despite all these measures, she said, Packham showed “a flagrant disregard for the orders of this court”.

The judge did not buy Packham’s denials that he had breached his bail conditions by sending messages with an electronic device. Or that the letters were a conspiracy set-up by BDSM members who had it in for him or, as Mathewson suggested, hate-mail authors or “maybe from one of Gill’s sisters or anyone in this court”

Instead she ruled it was not in the interest of justice to allow Packham “to abuse his bail conditions with no consequences” and ordered he remain in jail until the finalisation of his trial.

Judge Baartman’s ruling stunned Packham.

Approached for comment, Mathewson did not reply to calls or WhatsApp messages.

Weekend Argus

Related Topics: