Thursday, December 20, 2018

The Incompetent Defense of Heinrich van Rooyen

Jessica Wheeler murdered in 2005
I am going through the court records of Heinrich van Rooyen who was sentenced for life for the murder of two girls in Knysna in 2005.   This is just about one of the girls.  Jessica (pictured on the left) was first found lying on her stomach.   In all the court records as well as in the Judge's summing up, he accepted that she was found lying on her back. 
The defense never called the State's witness, Investigating Officer Trollip, as a hostile witness because had they done so, the entire case that they had built to frame Heinrich would have tumbled down around their heads.   Nowhere do they talk about the fact that the crime scene had been trampled over by a number of people and cops before the so-called official photos were taken?   Who was the policeman who first took pictures of her lying on her stomach and why did those photos never came to light?  Or that she had been turned over and her jeans thrown over the upper part of her body before taking the pictures?    The jeans were laid out on her bum and legs while she lay on her stomach.  The autopsy states that she was asphyxiated by ground which was found in her mouth and pharynx which stands to reason because she was found on her stomach.    Heinrich admits that he and Jessica had been having an illicit affair because he had a common-law wife and she had a drug cop as a boyfriend for whom she was an informer.    Heinrich also admits to having consensual sex with her on the wall behind the club and the phone records of both Jessica and Heinrich were not answered or used for the time period that Heinrich said they had sex.  He stated that he did not ejaculate into her vagina, but outside of it.   This is the reason why no DNA or semen was found inside her vagina and that some was found on her panties.   If someone sodomises another, do they take the time to put the panties back on?  The court accepted that Heinrich had sodomised her because she had two small cuts of 0.75cm to the anus - which could have been caused by constipation but they would be larger cuts if she had been sodomised.   The defense just allowed this to go over everyone's heads and did not bother to cross-examine properly.   When the person who did the autopsy was questioned in court, she could not say in which order she took the specimen of the semen; whether it was first on the outside and then on the inside or vice versa.  It is very easy to contaminate evidence by inserting a sample stick into an anus, bypassing the outside.  But the judge accepted that she had been sodomised and declared that the defense was just 'kicking up dust".   Why did the judge and state not accept the eyewitness account of Kiewiets?  Kiewiets saw two people who he actually named.   Why did they boost Minnie's eyewitness account when he said he drove past and saw (between 2 and 3 in the morning - and taking his eyes off the road) a white girl and a coloured man with wavy hair as gospel truth?   Minnie also declared under oath that he was driving a 5-ton truck but the owner of the bakery for which Minnie drove, never owned a 5-ton truck.   The irregularities from the investigating officer Trollip with his tampering with evidence and re-writing affidavits, the judge who was biased and accepted everything the prosecutor said and the incompetence of the defense advocate Price, has put an innocent person in prison for life.  

0 comments: