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'Baby snatcher' took leave
14/03/2007 08:51 - (SA)
Amanda Roestoff, Beeld
Pretoria - The teacher suspected of kidnapping a baby from Krugersdorp allegedly took maternity leave from a school in Reitz in the Free State to "give birth" in March.
According to a friend, she said the baby would be born by Caesarean section on March 1.
When she received a photograph of the baby on her cellphone at 20:30 on the night of March 2, the day on which Cornelius Roets was kidnapped, she assumed it was the teacher's baby.
The woman said the child's father was a wealthy 39-year-old farmer from the area with whom she had an affair.
Pretended to be a social worker
The arrest of the 43-year-old teacher on Monday sent shockwaves through the small community of Reitz.
The woman apparently taught English at the school. She was arrested in Bela-Bela in Limpopo on Monday in connection with the kidnapping of the three-month-old Cornelius in Krugersdorp.
The baby boy was in the care of his grandmother when he was kidnapped by a woman pretending to be a social worker. She sent the baby's grandmother, Anna Putter, 49, to the shop at the Engen filling station in Paardekraal Road to buy cooldrink. When Putter returned, the woman had disappeared with the baby. The woman had convinced Putter earlier that they should take the baby to a clinic at Dr Yusuf Dadoo Hospital.
The teacher has three children and her former husband lives overseas.
She was arrested when she arrived in Bela-Bela for a holiday with the man whom she alleged was the baby's father. According to residents from Reitz, the teacher said she was going on holiday with the farmer so that the "baby and father could bond".
"I can't believe it. I'm dumbfounded. It cannot be, I even gave her a present for the baby," a colleague said on Tuesday.
Another friend showed photographs the suspect had sent her. One of the photographs of the baby was nicely framed and had the name "Pieta" and "3.5kg" written on it.
Another friend said she still couldn't believe that the woman had not been pregnant.
The woman was seen in the Reitz NG Kerk about three weeks ago and didn't "seem heavily pregnant", said another resident.
"Everybody is still doubting whether she really had been pregnant, because she is a big woman. She never seemed like a woman reaching full term pregnancy," said another one.
According another resident, the cellphone photograph the teacher circulated during the past two weeks did seem suspicious. "We couldn't understand how a newborn baby's neck could be so strong."
An emergency meeting was held at the school on Tuesday to decide about the teacher's future.
She will appear in the Krugersdorp magistrate's court on a charge of kidnapping on Wednesday.
- Beeld
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