Tongo: He said, on going back, he will attract more clients and refer them to me.
Van Zyl: Did you ask how many clients, cost, evaluate the offer?
Tongo: I never asked that.
There's going to be an awful lot of this kind of questioning.
The lack of detail about the hit is unfortunate for the prosecution, and they have to hope that the judge will accept that this was a bunch of morons.
Mind you, if the defence push it too far they're going to look unrealistic themselves. These sorts of thugs don't create risk assessments or written contracts.
I have a feeling they have at least some of the contents and are waiting for Dewani to take the stand before presenting them. A very risky strategy it that's the case as there's the possibility of the case collapsing without Shrien taking the stand.
I think it's interesting that Dewani's counsel haven't mentioned the phone correspondence to Tongo thus far. We'll see if they mention it before Tongo's cross-examination ends.
Too risky I would have thought. Although unless Tongo actually collapses and confesses in cross examination, there is now enough to take the case forward. Or there should be. You can never tell with this judge.
As for the cross examination, I don't think they have reached the point of the first phone call yet. Van Zyl seems to be going through it chronologically.
firstly, Anni is carrying the money (supposedly) for a surprise she is not to know about.
secondly, how was Shrien going to explain to Anni stopping off to pay the helicopter pilot without Anni finding out?
thirdly, who would pay a helicopter pilot of unknown reputation to you, organised by some taxi driver who could deny arranging it, untraceable cash - on a promise?
fourthly, why didn't Shrien ever mention this to the police, to Sneha, to Nick Parker of the Sun, or anyone?
fifthly, why would he pay over the odds for this - more than the advertised rates of helicopter trips still being advertised?
The best evidence that the prosecution could ever get would be someone from the bachelor party to say that Dewani never had a helicopter ride at his stag party.
I am curious about Shrien's family. Initially I fully understand their support for him. They stated (or implied?) the male prostitute was a hoaxer and a fraud. Wonder what they felt when that turned out to be true? How much did Shrien then confide in them? Did his siblings know his sexuality all along? At what point did his brother try and obtain the tapes?
Who was Shrien talking to during his 4 years of mental illness?
We have had some of Anni's relatives on the stand. Why would it be unreasonable to have some of Shrien's? (Of course Shrien is not accountable for their actions, but under oath they may shed light on things.) Is there any chance of this?
I am curious about Shrien's family. Initially I fully understand their support for him. They stated (or implied?) the male prostitute was a hoaxer and a fraud. Wonder what they felt when that turned out to be true? How much did Shrien then confide in them? Did his siblings know his sexuality all along? At what point did his brother try and obtain the tapes?
Who was Shrien talking to during his 4 years of mental illness?
We have had some of Anni's relatives on the stand. Why would it be unreasonable to have some of Shrien's? (Of course Shrien is not accountable for their actions, but under oath they may shed light on things.) Is there any chance of this?
For most of his mental illness, Dewani stayed at an institution a few minutes walk from his family home.
He was escorted to the family home every day, where he would spend several hours, swimming, watching TV, and presumably cruising the Internet.
At the hospital he apparently refused treatment, including group treatment, and the only regular session he had was his once a week one on one with the psychiatrist who diagnosed him and presented the defence reports to the court.
He had a campervan on the premises where he spent his days when he didn't go home. Apparently he had a computer in the van and access to the Internet. Although no-one ever checked or knew what he was accessing.
These details were within various reports and newspaper articles during the extradition process.
Starting off the day with more "mistakes" in his written statement. Nothing mind blowing but the cumulative build up is unfortunate and must lead to doubts
SD said he didn't carry the money because his suit pockets were stitched up. I wonder if any of the cctv footage shows him putting his hands or phone in his pockets, either before the murder or after at the Cape Grace.
SD said he didn't carry the money because his suit pockets were stitched up. I wonder if any of the cctv footage shows him putting his hands or phone in his pockets, either before the murder or after at the Cape Grace.
There are pictures of him with his hands in his trouser pockets. I think the pockets he is referring to are the jacket pockets. Lots of men keep them stitched don't they. Because they ruin the line of the jacket if loads of stuff is in them
To be fair that might not have to do with his sexuality, it could have been a one off, he could have been feeling guilty, or erm...I don't know how to word it, he didn't like to do the penetrating....
Yes this is the thing which bothers me more than anything else about SD's defence - the helicopter trip, which was clearly fabricated years after the event (and after SD's brother allegedly got hold of some hotel CCTV and caught a random conversation between hotel staff about helicopter trips) and the very bizarre notion that anyone wanting to arrange a "hit" would ask a random taxi driver, the very first person they had contact with after arriving in Cape Town.
Dewani has been previously noted to be controlling and precise (e.g. the detailed spreadsheet of arrangements for Anni's funeral) so the incredibly random and haphazard nature of arranging to have her killed seems completely out of character for him.
The only thing I can think of is that he decided to have her killed at very short notice. This was an event which was probably unplanned right up to the point of going on honeymoon. Perhaps he had toyed with the idea previously but it wasn't until they had tied the knot that he took the idea seriously. He could potentially have waited until they returned from honeymoon and then made a much more detailed plan, taking time to be careful to cover his tracks but he didn't. Why? Why the sudden need to get it done right there and then? Why his desperate anxiety during the planning when he allegedly kept asking Tongo how the plan was going and if it was all going to plan?
The thing which springs to my mind is that Anni was planning on saying or doing something and he had to shut her up quickly because perhaps she was going to expose his outright homosexuality to the families. He had allegedly not consummated the marriage and it might have been his complete inability to have sex with his wife which finally proved definitively to her that he had no feelings for her or any other woman in that regard.
In my mind that's why the issue of his sexuality is important and why the judge's disregard of it seems illogical.
Yeah, the difficulty I have is that while on the one hand the helicopter story seems like a pack of lies, the alternative story that Dewani asked the first taxi driver he met when he stepped off the plane to help kill his wife is no better! In fact the helicopter story itself isn't really implausible at all, it's just the fact that he didn't tell anyone about it for so long that makes it unlikely. Who knows, maybe the defence will pull a rabbit out of the hat and produce a witness to say Dewani told them about the helicopter trip not long after the murder.
I agree that some kind of urgent motive like Anni revealing his homosexuality would make Dewani asking the taxi driver much less surprising. There doesn't seem any evidence that this was the case though, so it would just be speculation, not much use from a prosecution standpoint. And Anni seems to be the type to wear her heart on her sleeve, based on her texts - would she really not have said anything to anyone, even to hint at, and just carried on as normal?
The alternative is that he did have some contact with Tongo prior to arriving in SA, so it wasn't as random as it seemed. But again, no evidence to support that, and no particular reason for Tongo to lie about it either.
A final possibility is that it was just a vague idea that Dewani wasn't even quite serious about, but decided to throw it out there to see what happened. Maybe she annoyed him on the plane or something! And if nothing came of it, OK, he'd just try to make the marriage work. He couldn't really ask anyone else once he'd asked Tongo, anyway - if you're intending to have your wife killed, pretty risky to have a witness walking around who knows you're looking for a hitman - so it was kind of an all or nothing thing.
In terms of the judge disregarding his sexuality, I think if all the prosecution has is that he slept with men, that's not much use when Dewani says he's bisexual. All the more so since he also admitted to the thing with German Master or whatever his name is. Hearing the salacious details adds nothing, and I think the judge was right to disallow it. Evidence that Anni had found out about any of this would be an entirely different matter, of course.
Starting off the day with more "mistakes" in his written statement. Nothing mind blowing but the cumulative build up is unfortunate and must lead to doubts
Yeah, there's no dramatic collapse, but certainly an unfortunate lack of detail and rather a lot of "mistakes". Either these guys are liars or they're morons, there's really no third option here!
Defence lawyer is doing a decent job, at first I thought he wasn't getting anywhere, but he keeps chipping away.
Hello all, have been quite engrossed by the excellent discussion on here, with the quite dedicated research and insightful points. And finally caught up with the end of the thread so would like to add my two-bit's worth:
1) whilst Motive always appear to be important in depicted stories in movies and TV shows, I think as far as proving the case against SD is concerned, as someone else above has pointed out, this is only important to show the circumstances surrounding the fact of death of the accused and the accused's role in it. In other words, the Judge wants to know what the relevance of the accused's sexuality has to do to with putting the bullet in the victim - just because we think (and have been led to believe) that SD is gay/bi and therefore desperate to not be found out, it does not mean he would go so far as to kill - i.e how it puts the smoking gun in SD's hands .... So, I'm thinking the Prosecution is slacking in not drawing a fuller picture of the situation SD believed himself to be in and how that pressure was strong enough to push him to want the death of his new wife. As far as this goes, I think the judge is right to have ruled at that (early) stage that SD's sexuality is not relevant, especially as SD has admitted to be bi then. Lots of people have lots of reasons (motives) for wanting another person out of the picture but it does not mean they will kill to make that happen.
2) munchausen's sufferers do not develop the condition suddenly - there'd be some evidence which given SD's prodigious psychiatric/medical defence to avoid extradition would have revealed or hinted at .... But that would mean he did do the deed ;-)
3) the presumed disparity of SD's apparent 'controlling' nature against the seeming randomness of the hit ordered with lack of planning etc - well I'd like to point out that since SD has reportedly been engaging with strangers on the internet in some quite dangerous activities in completely lonely scenarios, I would hazard the guess that he has at least a devil-may-care approach to dealings with strangers or that he felt confident in his ability to assess people quicker than others. More likely the former than the latter IMO.
I'm not certain what the issue is with respect to Tongo's confusion over the terms of woman and wife - point was that he is saying that SD asked him to get someone killed and someone was killed!
As for the helicopter ride rationale being used to explain the phone calls/texts and large sum of cash being carried around, again like others have pointed out above, whether or not it's code or otherwise, it simply does not make sense. Even if SD is known to be comfortable carrying large sums of cash around, the most un savvy traveller knows to not do that, least of all when travelling, going out at night with just your new wife in a place not known for being the safest city on the planet. For someone who is canny enough to wrangle a reduce-priced safari and an alleged free hotel room upgrade I'm fairly certain he'd be unlikely to court trouble with large sums of cash. But I could be wrong Then of course, I'd ask what the circumstances were surrounding said helicopter ride .... Is it normal to pay before the ride? And which helicopter company is providing the trip?
I'm also not understanding the Defence's cross of whether Tongo considered SD's promise of future referrals and work. Am pretty sure Tongo has met more than plenty who promised to tell their friends back home and to get them to give him work .....^_^ or is the Defence fishing ....?
Here's my theory on how the defence might handle the helicopter story...
Initially SD was not a suspect therefore had no reason to mention the money was for a helicopter tour.
Later he found out that he was a suspect and felt that he was being stitched up by the police. So had he mentioned the money was for a helicopter tour at this point, any evidence for it would have 'disappeared.
This is why he sent his brother out there to find any evidence to suggest SD is innocent. After the cctv evidence about the helicopter tour was found, this is when he decided to release this alibi.
Here's my theory on how the defence might handle the helicopter story...
Initially SD was not a suspect therefore had no reason to mention the money was for a helicopter tour.
Later he found out that he was a suspect and felt that he was being stitched up by the police. So had he mentioned the money was for a helicopter tour at this point, any evidence for it would have 'disappeared.
This is why he sent his brother out there to find any evidence to suggest SD is innocent. After the cctv evidence about the helicopter tour was found, this is when he decided to release this alibi.
Sounds more like behaviour of a guilty man than not. Especially as SD has financial ability to get good if not the best legal protection and defence. If the helicopter ride is a true story, he/his Defence should and would have provided evidence long before in answer to the charges and not instead incarcerate himself in a hospital to avoid trial.
Yeah, there's no dramatic collapse, but certainly an unfortunate lack of detail and rather a lot of "mistakes". Either these guys are liars or they're morons, there's really no third option here!
Defence lawyer is doing a decent job, at first I thought he wasn't getting anywhere, but he keeps chipping away.
he is making good inroads now he is onto the money and the plan. I always thought the money was going to be a problem.
Tongo also seems to be forgetting quite a few communications he had with Qwabe.
The defence have done a timeline. This doesn't sound good for the prosecution. We all know how timelines can destroy a case....
SD said he didn't carry the money because his suit pockets were stitched up. I wonder if any of the cctv footage shows him putting his hands or phone in his pockets, either before the murder or after at the Cape Grace.
knew I had seen it somewhere - look at this tweet from LA Jansen - when they showed in court the cctv of SD and Tongo at the Cape Grace -
Leigh-Anne Jansen @LA_JANSEN · Oct 28
#DewaniTrial @eNCAnews Dewani stands, leaning against a ballistrade, one hand in pocket
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Anyone with a Twitter account should contact Leigh-Anne Jansen (@LA_JANSEN) - maybe she could get a message to the prosecutors in court. Dewani seen on CCTV footage with hand in pocket - but claiming in his plea that his suit pockets were stitched up.
There are pictures of him with his hands in his trouser pockets. I think the pockets he is referring to are the jacket pockets. Lots of men keep them stitched don't they. Because they ruin the line of the jacket if loads of stuff is in them
have just read your post. yeah, maybe it was the trouser pocket, maybe not. I haven't seen the footage, but we will get to see it after Tongo's examination.
Anyone with a Twitter account should contact Leigh-Anne Jansen (@LA_JANSEN) - maybe she could get a message to the prosecutors in court. Dewani seen on CCTV footage with hand in pocket - but claiming in his plea that his suit pockets were stitched up.
As I said before, he was walking along all the time with his hands in his pockets. In his plea he said he had his phone and 4,000 rand, but the 10,000 rand was too big so Anni had it. He must mean his jacket pockets. Men often have an inside jacket pocket where they keep the hit man money, but his was stitched up. As he says he is being:D
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There's going to be an awful lot of this kind of questioning.
The lack of detail about the hit is unfortunate for the prosecution, and they have to hope that the judge will accept that this was a bunch of morons.
Mind you, if the defence push it too far they're going to look unrealistic themselves. These sorts of thugs don't create risk assessments or written contracts.
Too risky I would have thought. Although unless Tongo actually collapses and confesses in cross examination, there is now enough to take the case forward. Or there should be. You can never tell with this judge.
As for the cross examination, I don't think they have reached the point of the first phone call yet. Van Zyl seems to be going through it chronologically.
Preserved for posterity.
The last time I checked, murderers didn't have to log a flight plan.
But no, the contract needn't be signed and notarised
Indeed. Watch for re-arranging and over-explaining, then ask Why?
Who was Shrien talking to during his 4 years of mental illness?
We have had some of Anni's relatives on the stand. Why would it be unreasonable to have some of Shrien's? (Of course Shrien is not accountable for their actions, but under oath they may shed light on things.) Is there any chance of this?
For most of his mental illness, Dewani stayed at an institution a few minutes walk from his family home.
He was escorted to the family home every day, where he would spend several hours, swimming, watching TV, and presumably cruising the Internet.
At the hospital he apparently refused treatment, including group treatment, and the only regular session he had was his once a week one on one with the psychiatrist who diagnosed him and presented the defence reports to the court.
He had a campervan on the premises where he spent his days when he didn't go home. Apparently he had a computer in the van and access to the Internet. Although no-one ever checked or knew what he was accessing.
These details were within various reports and newspaper articles during the extradition process.
SD said he didn't carry the money because his suit pockets were stitched up. I wonder if any of the cctv footage shows him putting his hands or phone in his pockets, either before the murder or after at the Cape Grace.
There are pictures of him with his hands in his trouser pockets. I think the pockets he is referring to are the jacket pockets. Lots of men keep them stitched don't they. Because they ruin the line of the jacket if loads of stuff is in them
I agree with you until just before here.
Shrien couldn't get it up for the German Master either.
Yeah, the difficulty I have is that while on the one hand the helicopter story seems like a pack of lies, the alternative story that Dewani asked the first taxi driver he met when he stepped off the plane to help kill his wife is no better! In fact the helicopter story itself isn't really implausible at all, it's just the fact that he didn't tell anyone about it for so long that makes it unlikely. Who knows, maybe the defence will pull a rabbit out of the hat and produce a witness to say Dewani told them about the helicopter trip not long after the murder.
I agree that some kind of urgent motive like Anni revealing his homosexuality would make Dewani asking the taxi driver much less surprising. There doesn't seem any evidence that this was the case though, so it would just be speculation, not much use from a prosecution standpoint. And Anni seems to be the type to wear her heart on her sleeve, based on her texts - would she really not have said anything to anyone, even to hint at, and just carried on as normal?
The alternative is that he did have some contact with Tongo prior to arriving in SA, so it wasn't as random as it seemed. But again, no evidence to support that, and no particular reason for Tongo to lie about it either.
A final possibility is that it was just a vague idea that Dewani wasn't even quite serious about, but decided to throw it out there to see what happened. Maybe she annoyed him on the plane or something! And if nothing came of it, OK, he'd just try to make the marriage work. He couldn't really ask anyone else once he'd asked Tongo, anyway - if you're intending to have your wife killed, pretty risky to have a witness walking around who knows you're looking for a hitman - so it was kind of an all or nothing thing.
In terms of the judge disregarding his sexuality, I think if all the prosecution has is that he slept with men, that's not much use when Dewani says he's bisexual. All the more so since he also admitted to the thing with German Master or whatever his name is. Hearing the salacious details adds nothing, and I think the judge was right to disallow it. Evidence that Anni had found out about any of this would be an entirely different matter, of course.
Yeah, there's no dramatic collapse, but certainly an unfortunate lack of detail and rather a lot of "mistakes". Either these guys are liars or they're morons, there's really no third option here!
Defence lawyer is doing a decent job, at first I thought he wasn't getting anywhere, but he keeps chipping away.
(Don't quite understand the last one - how many wives did Tongo think Dewani has?!)
1) whilst Motive always appear to be important in depicted stories in movies and TV shows, I think as far as proving the case against SD is concerned, as someone else above has pointed out, this is only important to show the circumstances surrounding the fact of death of the accused and the accused's role in it. In other words, the Judge wants to know what the relevance of the accused's sexuality has to do to with putting the bullet in the victim - just because we think (and have been led to believe) that SD is gay/bi and therefore desperate to not be found out, it does not mean he would go so far as to kill - i.e how it puts the smoking gun in SD's hands .... So, I'm thinking the Prosecution is slacking in not drawing a fuller picture of the situation SD believed himself to be in and how that pressure was strong enough to push him to want the death of his new wife. As far as this goes, I think the judge is right to have ruled at that (early) stage that SD's sexuality is not relevant, especially as SD has admitted to be bi then. Lots of people have lots of reasons (motives) for wanting another person out of the picture but it does not mean they will kill to make that happen.
2) munchausen's sufferers do not develop the condition suddenly - there'd be some evidence which given SD's prodigious psychiatric/medical defence to avoid extradition would have revealed or hinted at .... But that would mean he did do the deed ;-)
3) the presumed disparity of SD's apparent 'controlling' nature against the seeming randomness of the hit ordered with lack of planning etc - well I'd like to point out that since SD has reportedly been engaging with strangers on the internet in some quite dangerous activities in completely lonely scenarios, I would hazard the guess that he has at least a devil-may-care approach to dealings with strangers or that he felt confident in his ability to assess people quicker than others. More likely the former than the latter IMO.
I'm not certain what the issue is with respect to Tongo's confusion over the terms of woman and wife - point was that he is saying that SD asked him to get someone killed and someone was killed!
As for the helicopter ride rationale being used to explain the phone calls/texts and large sum of cash being carried around, again like others have pointed out above, whether or not it's code or otherwise, it simply does not make sense. Even if SD is known to be comfortable carrying large sums of cash around, the most un savvy traveller knows to not do that, least of all when travelling, going out at night with just your new wife in a place not known for being the safest city on the planet. For someone who is canny enough to wrangle a reduce-priced safari and an alleged free hotel room upgrade I'm fairly certain he'd be unlikely to court trouble with large sums of cash. But I could be wrong
I'm also not understanding the Defence's cross of whether Tongo considered SD's promise of future referrals and work. Am pretty sure Tongo has met more than plenty who promised to tell their friends back home and to get them to give him work .....^_^ or is the Defence fishing ....?
Initially SD was not a suspect therefore had no reason to mention the money was for a helicopter tour.
Later he found out that he was a suspect and felt that he was being stitched up by the police. So had he mentioned the money was for a helicopter tour at this point, any evidence for it would have 'disappeared.
This is why he sent his brother out there to find any evidence to suggest SD is innocent. After the cctv evidence about the helicopter tour was found, this is when he decided to release this alibi.
Sounds more like behaviour of a guilty man than not. Especially as SD has financial ability to get good if not the best legal protection and defence. If the helicopter ride is a true story, he/his Defence should and would have provided evidence long before in answer to the charges and not instead incarcerate himself in a hospital to avoid trial.
Tongo also seems to be forgetting quite a few communications he had with Qwabe.
The defence have done a timeline. This doesn't sound good for the prosecution. We all know how timelines can destroy a case....
knew I had seen it somewhere - look at this tweet from LA Jansen - when they showed in court the cctv of SD and Tongo at the Cape Grace -
Leigh-Anne Jansen @LA_JANSEN · Oct 28
#DewaniTrial @eNCAnews Dewani stands, leaning against a ballistrade, one hand in pocket
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have just read your post. yeah, maybe it was the trouser pocket, maybe not. I haven't seen the footage, but we will get to see it after Tongo's examination.
As I said before, he was walking along all the time with his hands in his pockets. In his plea he said he had his phone and 4,000 rand, but the 10,000 rand was too big so Anni had it. He must mean his jacket pockets. Men often have an inside jacket pocket where they keep the hit man money, but his was stitched up. As he says he is being:D