Pretoria - “You betrayed your husband, who called out for your help while he was being stabbed 16 times,” a judge told a mother of two who had her husband murdered.
Hazel Ferreira, 32, her brother Edward Koch, 33, and the hitman they had hired for R700, Kevin Hutton, 32, were on Tuesday each sentenced to life imprisonment in the high court in Pretoria.
Ferreira’s husband Francisco Ferreira was stabbed to death in the couple’s Bassonia home, east of Johannesburg, while he was sleeping on the couch in the lounge.
The court heard that Ferreira’s wife made him coffee and ensured he was comfortable. He fell asleep, before she let the killers into the house.
The court heard that the victim woke up while being stabbed and pleaded with his wife to assist him. “But he was met by betrayal from you and he surrendered to the attack, without fighting back,” the judge told Ferreira.
The court heard that Ferreira, who owned three butcheries in Joburg, gave his wife a lot of cash to buy another business, but she squandered the money and her husband was due to find out.
She wanted to prevent this and then called her brother to assist in killing her husband. They planned the murder at length and then roped in Hutton, the executioner.
Judge Tshifhiwa Maumela said this murder nearly stayed unresolved - and just another crime statistic - as the trio had thoroughly cleaned up the scene, before wrapping up the corpse in blankets and bin bags. They loaded it into a wheelie-bin and placed it on the back of a bakkie.
But the three made the mistake of hiring a taxi driver to drive the bakkie to a parking lot at the Department of Home Affairs in Alberton.
The accused asked him to assist, as they did not have driving licences. He had no idea there was a corpse in the back in the bin. But he became suspicious when they dumped the vehicle there. He phoned police, who made the gruesome discovery.
The judge said it was thanks to the driver that justice was done.
The three accused had pleaded not guilty to murder, although Hazel Ferreira had admitted to cleaning up the bloody scene and assisting in dumping the body.
She defended herself by saying that her children were due home from school any minute that day and she did not want them to walk in on their dead father and see all the blood.
Her co-accused claimed that when they got to the house, the man was already dead. They said they simply agreed to assist her to get rid of the body.
But CCTV footage from cameras in the street, outside the couple’s home presented as evidence, showed the three together, outside the house.
There was also footage of them cleaning up the house after the murder and of the bin being loaded on the back of the bakkie.
The way in which the body was disposed of, showed the three’s lack of respect for human life, the judge said.
Ferreira was subjected to a cruel, inhuman attack, while he harmed no one, the judge said. “All he did was entrust his wife with the money. She squandered it costing him his life.”
Pretoria News