Boyfriend 'threatened' Karin
2006-07-18 07:25
Llewellyn Prince and Carryn-Ann Nel
Cape Town - "If I can't have you, no one else will." This was apparently what Karin Kortjé's boyfriend Cheslyn Williams said when she broke off their relationship by phone early on Thursday night.
Williams was arrested early on Friday morning for the murder of a Cape guesthouse owner where the couple was staying.
Kortjé had gone out with a member of her management team, but without Williams on Thursday evening, and found the body of Renate Kellerman, 39, at the Le Petit Chateau guesthouse on her return.
She immediately told police where they could trace Williams in Eerste River.
Friend became suspicious
Kellerman's bakkie and personal possessions stolen during the murder, when she was stabbed several times with a knife, were later found abandoned in Eerste River.
Bobby Hendricks, an Eerste River nightclub owner and friend of Kortjé's, told on Monday that Kortjé phoned him minutes after she discovered Kellerman's body.
He went to the guesthouse and found her and Jabu Mlotshwa, a member of her management team, in hysterics among hordes of policemen.
Hendricks said Kortjé told him in tears how Williams told her after she broke off their relationship that he would "rather kill her and then kill himself".
Kortjé's manager Anneke de Ridder did not want to comment about this on Monday.
Hendricks said an extremely nervous Williams, "who had fresh scratch marks on his face" arrived at his nightclub shortly before 02:00 and borrowed R100 from him.
"He said he did not want to go to prison any more and that we must keep him out of jail. He said he'd made a mistake because cameras at a garage in Blue Downs had seen him getting out a bakkie and asked if I didn't have parking space for this bakkie."
Hendricks said he immediately suspecting something was amiss and refused to let Williams park there.
Victim may have been raped
"Minutes later a hysterical Jabu phoned me and said they needed me at the guesthouse. A friend and I went there."
Meanwhile a calm Williams, 21, whose address is given on the charge sheet as Kortjé's home in Boksburg, Gauteng, appeared briefly in the Bellville magistrate's court on Monday in connection with Kellerman's murder. He glanced frequently at relatives in the public gallery.
He was provisionally charged with murder.
The State also wants to follow up outstanding information in relation to previous judgments and outstanding warrants for his bail application.
The State will oppose his bail application.
Police spokesperson Elliot Sinyangana said that two other men aged 40 and 43 who were arrested with Williams and questioned about the murder, have been released.
He said a post-mortem still has to be done to determine whether Kellerman was raped.