Inge Lotz Murder: Closing Arguments
Monday saw the beginning of the final days of the van der Vyver trial. After a marathon run of 7 odd months, the final phase of the trial began: the closing arguments.
First off was Prosecutor Christhenus van der Vijver who presented the closing for the state.
The Prosecution:
van der Vijver began by saying that the circumstances of Inge’s murder clearly showed that the murderer was someone known to her.
He went on to say that there was a clear conflict between Fred and Inge, which Fred had tried to hide from the police.
The court, he said, could also not exclude the ornamental hammer found in Fred’s bakkie as the murder weapon.
Concerning the fingerprint allegedly found on the DVD, he rejected the defence claims of fraud.
The argument that a so-called “mishmash of dates” in police exhibit registers was indicative of a conspiracy did not hold water either.
“If there was an orchestrated attempt by the police to fabricate this evidence, one would expect much more care would have been taken to wipe out the tracks of this conspiracy,” Van der Vijver said.
van der Vijver then turned the floor over to the defence team.
The Defence:
Advocate Dup de Bruyn told the court that there was no acceptable evidence against his client relating to either the fingerprint or the shoeprint.
Further, there was no evidence linking his client to the ornamental hammer.
He also reminded the court that there was nothing to contradict Fred’s alibi that he was at work when the murder happened, and that there was no evidence of a ‘major row’ with Inge just before the murder.
de Bruyn said that there was overwhelming circumstantial evidence that Inge had been excited and exuberant on the morning of the murder – sending Fred loving messages.
The policeman who had lifted the controversial fingerprint had given three contrary statements of how he obtained the print, while none of the dates in the continuity registers agreed.
Contradictions were not necessarily an indication of fraud “but there comes a point where enough is enough”, he said.
The defence will continue with their argument tomorrow.
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