Uproar as ‘black widow’ dodges life sentence

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Published Apr 29, 2016

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Pretoria - The woman dubbed “the black widow”, who hired a hitman to kill her husband and then had him killed because he blackmailed her, showed remorse for the killings and did not deserve to life imprisonment.

Portia Tsotetsi did not deserve to serve more than an effective 20-year jail sentence for the double murder, Judge Tati Makgoka ruled in the high court in Pretoria on Thursday.

The judge turned down an application by the Director of Public Prosecutions for leave to appeal against the “lenient” sentence meted out to Tsotetsi.

Family members who had attended the earlier court proceedings gasped in shock upon hearing that she would serve an effective 20 years in jail.

“She should have received a double life sentence,” the enraged brothers of her husband and Standerton teacher, Nzimeni Sithatu, said after Tsotetsi dodged a life sentence.

Although sentenced to 20 years on each murder, the judge earlier said the sentences should run concurrently as the murders were closely related to each other.

Tsotetsi first hired Dumisani Ngubeni to murder her husband. He allegedly killed Sithatu in February 2012 by hanging him from the ceiling in the bathroom of the couple’s home.

Tsotetsi claimed she knew nothing about her husband’s killing, as she took sleeping pills that night and went to bed. She said when she woke up, she discovered him hanging from the ceiling in the bathroom.

Ngubeni was murdered three months later after he blackmailed Tsotetsi for more money.

Tsotetsi called him to her home after “agreeing” to pay him for his silence. When he arrived, she and Stanley Dube overpowered him and stabbed him to death.

Dube was sentenced to life imprisonment for his role.

Judge Makgoka found mitigating circumstances warranting a lesser sentence than life as Tsotetsi’s husband had infected her with HIV and because she had spent five years in prison awaiting trial.

The prosecution, in its application for leave to appeal against the sentence, said the woman showed no remorse for what she had done.

But Judge Makgoka said she did offer an apology in court to the families of both dead men.

He said he closely watched her demeanour and it was clear to him that she recognised that the deaths of her two victims caused the families a lot of anguish.

Witnesses earlier testified that the 30-year-old woman wanted her husband dead, as he wanted to divorce her. They said she would have suffered financially if he left her. According to the witnesses, she initially tried to kill him by giving him muti.

In testifying in mitigation of sentence earlier, Tsotetsi said shortly before her husband’s death she discovered she was HIV positive. This was after she discovered by chance that her husband used anti-retroviral medication. She was tested and found to be HIV positive.

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Pretoria News

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