Durban — A woman, accused along with the widow of a murdered husband, has denied that a WhatsApp conversation between her and an erstwhile accused had been about killing Mark Buttle.
Buttle was stabbed multiple times in the neck in 2018 while in his car in Newlands East allegedly by his wife Analidia Dias Bella Dosantos, her lover Teagan Allison Brown, and the two women’s friend Charmaine Margaret Khumalo.
Dosantos and Khumalo are on trial without Brown, who died in July ahead of the trial starting.
The three are alleged to have hatched and executed a plan to kill Buttle. An insurance policy is alleged to be the motive behind the murder coupled with the claim that Dosantos, 41, was to have been having an affair with Brown, 25.
The WhatsApp conversation between Khumalo and Brown was handed in as part of evidence exhibits in the trial by senior State prosecutor Khatija Essack.
Khumalo told the court that Brown had asked for assistance in finding someone who would break into the home Dosantos shared with Buttle. That was what the WhatsApp conversation was about, she testified.
Khumalo told the court that Brown, who was her neighbour, had promised to pay her R5 000 for organising a person who would execute the housebreaking.
“Even though I did not have the details she (Brown) told me that there were documents and some money she wanted from Dosantos’s house,” she said.
She said from the conversations she had had on WhatsApp with Brown about the break-in, it seemed that Dosantos was in on the plan, adding that she only found out after Buttle was murdered that Dosantos did not know about it.
Khumalo said she had a number of a man, Xolani, whose surname she did not know, whom she asked to do the housebreaking.
“I wouldn’t know if the break-in happened, I spoke to him, he agreed. After that, we did not speak, I gave him Brown’s number.”
In one page of the messages, Brown asks: “Any chance your friends can do the party today on our side the venue is done … Because if he can we will pay whatever he asks … ”
Under cross-examination, Khumalo said the conversation was about her getting Brown in contact with someone who would sell her drugs for a party she was having, this was while in her evidence in chief, she had just said it was about a party Brown was planning.
Further to this, she said that the person she would ask about the drugs was her lover at the time Shareen Ogle, who was selling for someone else.
Khumalo, in responding to Brown in the messages, said: “I will ask him”. Asked why she would refer to Shareen as “him”, she told Essack that it had been a mistake.
“When did you realise you made a mistake? Is it now? And why did you not tell your counsel this,” asked Essack.
Ogle, a State witness, testified that Khumalo had confessed to her that she, Dosantos, and Brown killed Buttle.
On another page of the conversation, Brown says: “We are getting on edge; thought we would have heard from you about the venue.”
Khumalo alleged that this conversation was now about the break-in. In the conversation Khumalo replied, “I’ve spoken to him”, adding that the job would be done sometime the following week and that, “It rather gets done properly with no mistakes.”
Six days after this conversation Buttle was murdered.
The trial continues.
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