Uncles to stand trial for killing niece
Tashville and Michael Godlo appeared in the high court on Friday for a final pre-trial hearing.
“The matter is trial-ready for 3 August 2015. Both accused are in custody,” said prosecutor Jacqueline Sibiya.
Their lawyers, Saleem Halday and Josephine Losch, were present in court.
On Monday, a third brother Christopher Godlo, 31, was sentenced to an effective 35-years in jail for raping and killing Chelsea Godlo, after pleading guilty as part of a plea and sentencing agreement enforced by the court.
He was given 20 years for rape, half of it suspended, and 25 years for her murder.
Judge John Hlophe told Christopher Godlo that he should be ashamed for hurting his niece and having sexual intercourse with a minor.
In his plea, Godlo said he and his brothers initially planned to kill his sister, her child and their stepbrother because they had threatened to evict them from their father’s house should he die.
On August 12 last year, Chelsea, a Grade 5 pupil, returned from school and he decided to implement part of the plan.
“…[I] thought that as I was going to kill her, I would rape her first,” he said in his plea.
He called her into the brothers’ Wendy house on the Gugulethu property and said he wanted to have sex with her. He followed through despite her objections.
He tried to strangle her, but his girlfriend returned with his brothers and saw him on top of the girl through a Wendy house window.
His girlfriend hurled abuse at him for raping the girl, but he said nobody took her insults seriously.
“This could be due to her drunkenness,” he said.
While residents were looking for the girl, he said he and his brothers tried to strangle the girl in the Wendy house.
“At one stage, I left the deceased who was still alive, and participated in various decoys with the community, assisting in searching for the deceased and reporting her missing to the police,” he stated.
“On my return, I discovered that the deceased was stabbed in her neck with a screwdriver and was dead.”
He admitted to first hiding her body in a bag in the backyard and then stashing the bag under their father’s bed, where police found it the next day.
A post-mortem revealed that the girl had died from strangulation and puncture wounds to the neck.
Author: Jenna Etheridge, News24
NewsWire ID: 3410
File photo: Youtube