Judge may have been poisoned
2009-06-11 07:33
Cape Town - Acting judge Patrick Maqubela, who was found dead in his luxury apartment in Bantry Bay on Sunday afternoon, may have been poisoned.
Initially police said Maqubela had died of a heart attack last Friday. However, the post-mortem performed on Monday couldn’t find conclusive proof that he had died of a heart attack.
On Tuesday, provincial police spokesperson, André Traut, said the investigation into the cause of his death has turned into a murder investigation, since new pieces of evidence and information indicated that a crime had possibly been committed.
According to a reliable source, it hasn’t yet been determined whether Maqubela did somehow ingest poison, and if he did, how it was ingested, or what kind of poison it was.
Blood on pillow
If, indeed, he was poisoned, it would probably be the kind of poison which causes a person’s blood to become diluted. According to the source, this could possibly explain the blood on the pillow which was found on Maqubela’s face.
Maqubela’s wife, Thandi Maqubela, did not respond to phone calls on Wednesday.
Emeritus Prof. Deon Knobel, former head of the medical law and toxicology faculty at the University of Cape Town (UCT), said the only poison he could think of which would cause blood dilution, is rat poison, which contains the ingredient Warfarin.