'I slit my wife's throat'

2008-02-20 21:48

Pretoria - A statement, in which a Delmas man confessed to battering his wife with a spanner and slitting her throat because he imagined another person in bed with her, was admitted as evidence against him on Wednesday.

Acting High Court Judge Peter Mabuse ruled that a statement made by Ockert Daniel "Ockie" van den Berg, 39, to a magistrate in 2005 was admissible as evidence, despite Van den Berg's claim that he had been coerced into making it.

Van den Berg earlier this week pleaded not guilty to the August 2005 murder of his wife, Christa, and attempted murder of his son, Jacques.

He said he could not remember attacking them, although he could remember hearing "shots" in the house and finding his son wounded and his wife dead.

He said if the court found him responsible for the attack on his family, he had not been accountable for his actions because of his low intellect, post-traumatic stress, depression and severe anxiety about his wife's confession that she had had an affair and that their marriage was over.

In his statement to a magistrate, Van den Berg said how he had visited a sangoma for reassurance after his father-in-law repeatedly insisted that his wife was "messing around" with other men.

Smelt 'dead blood'

After he returned home that fateful night he heard three shots "in his head" and smelt burning plastic. He passed out while going to investigate.

Later, while getting ready to get into bed with his wife, he again smelled burning plastic and "dead blood".

He thought he saw someone in bed with his wife, so he took a spanner and hit out "to get the person out of the bed".

When he started hitting, he realised he had hit his wife. She groaned, and started crying out, but he hit her again. Then she was quiet.

When he heard her gasping, he pushed a knife into her back and slit her throat "so that she could bleed to death, because no one could help her any more," he told the magistrate.

Van den Berg also said in the statement he had hit his son with the spanner as well, but had not meant to kill him and only wanted to prevent him from discovering his mother was dead.

Van den Berg disputed the accuracy of the statement and claimed he had been coerced into making a confession because the police had refused to let him attend his wife's funeral or to visit her grave unless he made a confession.

The trial was postponed to June 17 because a psychiatrist for the defence was not available to attend the trial this week.

- SAPA