House smelt of death - witness
14/02/2008 16:08  - (SA)  

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Cape Town - The divorced father of slain child Annestacia Wiese "smelled death" in the girl's home, moments before her body was found hidden in the ceiling of the house, the Cape High Court heard on Thursday.

Waleed Jones, who controls the Neighbourhood Watch in the Mitchell's Plain suburb of Woolridge, where the 11-year-old girl lived with her mother, told the court he organised a search party after being notified that she had gone missing.

Jones said he was first shown the girl's home on the Friday that she went missing.

The search party then searched the streets as well as surrounding bushes for three hours, without success.

Before acting Judge Richard Brusser and assessors Robert Mickelsfield and Marian Hoffman de Kock is security guard Richard Engelbrecht, who is charged with the rape and murder of the Wiese girl in March last year.

He is also accused of the rape two years earlier of a three-year-old girl, now five, also in her home.

Went back to girl's home

The search continued the following day, from 10:00 to late at night, and resumed again that Sunday.

That Sunday, soon after the searched had resumed, Jones received a call to return to the girl's home.

He said he entered the house, where the girl's father, standing in a passage, remarked that the home smelled of death.

Jones said he noticed that a ceiling panel had been tampered with, and he then removed the ceiling trap door to climb into the ceiling.

He said he lifted himself up and sat on the edge of the trap door, and shone a torch into the ceiling.

He told the court: "I saw the stomach, and thought it was a doll.

"I saw there was a coffee table, with a cloth, and when I pulled the cloth off I saw the face.

"The coffee table and cloth were over the girl's face. The body was near naked."

Jones said he climbed down from the ceiling and had the police called.

Didn't seem surprised

Questioned by prosecutor Mornay Julius, Jones said he had not known Engelbrecht before, but that he had been informed at the start of the search that the missing girl's mother, Jeanine, had had a "boyfriend".

Questioned by defence counsel Patrick Loots, Jones said when he eventually met Engelbrecht in the Wiese home, Engelbrecht was clad in a pair of shorts with no top on.

Jones added: "When I met him, he did not even seem surprised or worried."

The case continues.