Applause as Fred is acquitted
2007-11-29 13:45
Cape Town - Fred van der Vyver, the former Old Mutual actuary accused of the murder of his girlfriend Inge Lotz was on Thursday found not guilty in the Cape High Court.
A packed public gallery loudly applauded the verdict, pronounced by Judge Deon van Zyl as the court adjourned for lunch.
Van der Vyver, who had been seated throughout the three hour judgment was ordered to stand before the judge pronounced the verdict.
As he heard the words, "you are found not guilty," he took a deep breath and turned his head upwards as if saying a silent prayer and then forced back tears.
His senior counsel, Doep de Bruin, of Port Elizabeth, jumped from the defence bench into the dock to embrace the weeping man.
The judge said Van der Vyver had had no motive to murder his girlfriend, and that his alibi - that he had been at his workplace at the time of the murder - had to be accepted as reasonably true.
The judge said it would have been impossible for Van der Vyver to have left his workplace on the afternoon of the murder, to have gone to Lotz's Stellenbosch home, to have attacked her and then to have returned to his office in the space of two hours.
- SAPA