Steeped in Blood (31 page)

The police investigators decided to compare the wounds on Inge’s skull to the wounds that would be made by such a hammer. They bought an identical hammer, and on the first blow to a pig’s head,
the hammer bent. That should have been the end of the experiment, as that hammer could not have been responsible for a blow of that nature.

Not so in this case. The police went out and obtained a similar hammer, but one that was substantially thicker in the places where the original hammer had bent. They repeated the experiment, ignoring the basic scientific principle that you cannot alter the test to get the results you want. The police presented the results of the second test in court, and Frans Maritz, the police ballistics expert, concealed from the court the fact that he had replaced the original hammer with a second, stronger hammer.

The defence enlarged a photograph that appeared in Maritz’s report, and noticed that the hammer, buried in the pig’s skull, was not like Fred’s hammer. Only in cross-examination was the swapping of the hammer revealed, and Maritz then admitted in court that he had replaced the first, ornamental hammer because it had bent during the experiment – this after having stated under oath that he had used an identical hammer.

At one point, Fred’s father, who had employed me to act in his son’s defence, wanted me to write a report to the prosecution to get them to drop the case. I refused, trying to explain to him that they would never drop it, as the prosecution was under pressure to find someone guilty. I was not prepared to write a report that would put me under huge pressure were I to be placed in the witness box – there was no obligation for the defence team to produce a report, and my report would just have provided the state with ammunition in court. We parted ways over this, but because of my mounting horror at the police’s conduct and their determination to prosecute a man who appeared to be innocent, I remained involved in the case in an advisory and consultative capacity.

Judge Deon van Zyl was on the bench, and we were all astounded when he did not grant us an acquittal at the end of the state case. The defence team proceeded to fly in experts from all over the
world, including Holland and America. This international team eventually annihilated the state case. The costs were enormous, finally amounting to around R9 million.

The Lotz family decided to file a civil suit against Fred van der Vyver à la O.J. Simpson, who had been acquitted of murder in a state case but found guilty in a civil case. In a criminal case, a person needs to be proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt, so there is a much higher onus on the state to prove its case than there is for a plaintiff in a civil case to prove theirs. In civil cases, a person has to be found guilty on a balance of probabilities.

At the end of the day, there was no evidence to find Fred guilty of the murder. O.J. had been acquitted in the state case on a technicality, but there was no such similarity here – it would have been a complete waste of money to pursue the civil case against Fred van der Vyver. Fortunately, the Lotz family dropped the case. The police had also probably encouraged the Lotz family to go ahead with the civil case in an effort to vindicate themselves somehow. They were so convinced that Fred had committed the crime and had managed to wangle his way out of it that they did not even investigate the murder further, despite the fact that he was acquitted in a court of law.

I feel immensely sorry for the Lotzes, in that they have been let down by the whole criminal justice system, ranging from the police investigation to the entire legal system. What do you say to people in their position? They have no answers to their daughter’s death and no closure; one cannot even begin to understand their pain.

This case illustrates so clearly that you cannot set off on a scientific quest with preconceived ideas. My quest is to find the truth: if a client of mine is innocent, I will do my utmost to make certain that the evidence is put to the ultimate test. By the same token, if my client is guilty, they may be hanged, so to speak, by their own witness if they make use of my services.

The investigators’ zeal to convict Fred backfired horribly on the police, resulting in a massive civil trial the Van der Vyvers instituted against the SAPS to recover damages from them as a result of their dishonesty. Blinded by their own preconceived ideas, the police had been completely distracted by the ‘noise’ around them. Forensic science is about searching for that elusive creature called the truth, to which we try to get as close as possible through experimentation and understanding. A skilled forensic scientist has the ability to tell the difference, metaphorically speaking, between diamonds and pieces of glass. In the investigation into the murder of Inge Lotz, the little glass chips on which the entire case was built translated into an utter waste of time and money, yielding no answers or closure for anyone.

Sadly, the killer of Inge Lotz is still walking free today, a happy person with their guilty secret intact.

‘[Lawyers are a] passive and enervate race, ready to swallow any thing, and to acquiesce in any thing … obsequious only to the whisper of interest, and to the beck of power.’

– JEREMY BENTHAM,

English jurist, philosopher and social reformer

Brett Kebble, mining magnate, philanthropist and illustrious South African businessman, reached the end of his road on 27 September 2005, when he was shot and killed at the age of forty-one. His life was steeped in controversy, and his death was no different. It was the hot topic of conversation at dinner tables for many months, and the debate around the exact circumstances of his mysterious death still rages today.

Initially, the Kebble family stated that they were satisfied with the police investigation into the death, but later they expressed dissatisfaction: there seemed to be mixed messages emerging from the Kebble stable. A few days after the shooting, I was approached by Judge Willem Heath, who had been a judge in one of the home
lands and had led the Heath Commission of Inquiry into maladministration and corruption under Nelson Mandela. Heath asked me if I would investigate the matter.

I flew up to Johannesburg and met him at a hotel, where he briefed me. According to him, he was acting on behalf of Roger Kebble, Brett’s father. The next morning, on 30 September, I was collected at the hotel and we proceeded to the scene of the shooting in Melrose.

Kebble was shot on a deserted stretch of road that leads out of Rosebank and follows a long downhill path, passing the old Melrose Bird Sanctuary. At one point, the road crosses a river, and at the bottom is a gate and waste-disposal yard, where people dump their garden refuse. It is a lonely place and, as it is badly lit, it would be dark and deserted at night.

Something seemed out of place in this investigation. At the scene of the shooting, I was met by Major Leonie Ras from the forensics laboratory of the South African Police. As fellow forensic investigators, Leonie and I knew each other and I regarded her highly. As we chatted, we were joined by a man called Botha, a forensic pathologist from Bloemfontein. He refused to speak to me.

A crime scene is always reconstructed, using all the evidence at hand. When key evidence is tampered with, as in this case, all one can do is to reconstruct a reconstruction in an effort to figure out vaguely what happened. This compromises the effective pursuit of justice and is unacceptable in an official forensic investigation.

The investigating officer who had first arrived on the scene had picked up all the cartridge cases – a major blunder. Cartridge cases are a crucial component of a crime scene: when a firearm discharges a cartridge case, you can trace the position of the shooter based on where the cartridge case lands. The cases will discharge in a similar direction, most often to the right of the shooter. While some weapons will discharge at short range, others will do so at a longer range, but knowing the weapon and seeing where the
cartridge case falls provides a good start in reconstructing the scene of the crime. This particular policeman had simply picked up the cartridges and put them in his pocket. He had even failed to mark where they had fallen.

In addition, cartridge cases are vital pieces of evidence for the fingerprints they can provide. When a firearm is loaded, the cartridge is pushed into the magazine with the thumb, which means that there will often be a partial thumbprint on the cartridge case. The moment people start picking up the cases, that kind of evidence is lost.

As I stood there that morning talking to Leonie Ras, I asked her what she had found in the car. She replied that she hadn’t seen the car yet. The alarm bells started ringing – it was dismaying to me that, three days after Kebble’s death, the state forensic department had not yet examined the car, a prime piece of evidence that ought to have been checked for fingerprints and any other clues immediately. I then heard via a contact that the car had been released to Clinton Nassif, Kebble’s former security boss, with orders that it be cleaned.

I suggested to Leonie that we immediately leave to see the car, and we raced off to Danmar Autobody, where the car was being kept – it had been released from the police yard and was waiting to be cleaned. On examining the car, it was interesting to note that it was completely empty. Kebble was known to have carried two or three phones with him at all times, yet there was not even a cellphone in the car. Even more worrying was that the mark resembling a bloodstain on the bonnet of the car, which I had noticed on TV footage, appeared to no longer be present. Other bloodstains were visible, but the evidence had already been compromised. The car could not render us as much information as it might have had it been left untouched, so I turned my investigation in another direction.

Kebble had been shot by a total of seven bullets, but only one of
these had exited his body – the bullet that had entered through the thick piece of muscle between the fleshy part above his shoulder and neck. On exit, it had broken a back window of the car. This was the only window that was broken, so Kebble had to have been shot with the driver’s window wound down. This was an unusual situation: a businessman in an expensive car drives into an exceptionally dangerous, lonely part of town at night, with his window open, and stops there.

I also realised that, most unusually, Kebble had been shot in an almost straight line along the right-hand side of his body. One shot was lodged in his neck. The bullet had entered the right side of his neck, just below his ear, travelled until it had hit his vertebral column, and slammed against the first and second vertebrae, cracking them. It had done no further damage. We knew that the bullets had been fired by a 9-mm Parabellum, which is a substantial weapon. A bullet from such a weapon should have gone right through the vertebrae – it would have slowed down slightly, but would certainly have travelled right out the other side. I then examined the car: none of the other bullets had exited.

This became of particular interest. Since a 9-mm Parabellum bullet will generally go straight through a person, particularly when it hits a fairly slender structure like the neck, there should have been extensive damage to the vertebrae. I realised that this was an unusual weapon – a weapon that fired 9-mm Parabellum bullets, but firing a reduced-power round. The workings of the weapon are simple: when a shot is fired, the recoil pushes the slide back with the force of the bullet and then reloads it. If you were to load this weapon with reduced-power bullets, it would fire one shot and jam, because the force of the bullet slamming back against the slide would not be sufficient to cycle the weapon – the gun is designed for full-power bullets.

There are certain circumstances where the full power of the weapon is not desired, such as in cases of anti-hijacking, dealing
with a person in a crowd, and so on. It is bad practice to fire a shot that goes through your victim and proceeds to hit an innocent person. Because these kinds of weapons have to be modified – the tension of the springs has to be reduced – ordinary people do not usually have access to them. Generally, only those in the security industry could have their weapons modified to fire like this one.

Kebble did not die after the first shots were fired. Using eyewitness reports and my knowledge of anatomy and physiology, as well as the forensic detail regarding the shots, I could reconstruct the last minutes of Kebble’s life. He left home and drove down a deserted road. He stopped the car in the dip of the road and was shot whilst stationary, probably with six shots. The theory at the time was that he was hijacked. Kebble drove the short way up a hill and around a slight bend (about 400 metres) after having been shot. His car then left the road and gently rammed its nose into the balustrade where the bridge crosses the M1 motorway. There was very little damage to the front of his vehicle and to the railing into which the car had bumped.

A bullet that slams into your spinal column will generally result in immediate flaccid paralysis. This means that Kebble would not have been able to drive or steer the car after the shot into his neck was fired, as all the nerves that controlled his arm and leg muscles would have been paralysed by the force of the bullet hitting the spinal column. So this shot couldn’t have been one of the first shots fired in the dip of the road: it must have been the final shot. A dying Kebble had driven up the hill and someone had followed him there, where he had finished him off – a kind of coup de grâce.