South Africa - Anni Dewani, 28, shot to death, Gugulethu, 13 Nov 2010 #1

[delilah]

Why drive to visit the slums of South Africa in the middle of the night? This is the most damning imo, why not see it during the day if they really wanted to see impoverished residents and their homes.

Snipped

I thought that too, but it's not actually the version in his statement.

In his statement he says he and Anni went to the surfsude sushi restaurant on the seafront. Afterwards, they were debating with Tongo what to do next. Nothing appears to have been agreed and they are on the motorway with Tongo driving and Dewani and Anni presumably in the backseat. Dewani says he got a text from Tongo (para 74) apparently wanting confirmation Dewani has the money 'for the helicopter ride' (Dewani says this is meant as a surprise for Anni, hence the covert communication). After he confirms he has it, Tongo turns off the motorway and into what I presume is one of the townships, and that's when they get 'hijacked'.

I've only been to Cape Town once, but I do recall the long journey from the airport on the motorway that runs parallel to the massive township on the Cape Flats, so it's not like it's a long way from where they might have been travelling if they were legitimately going back to Cape Town, assuming they were on this stretch of road or similar.

 

[Lux et Veritas]

Perhaps Judge Traverso and her assessors will be smarter than Masipa.

Ask more questions.

Refuse to fall for craven DT bullsh#t.

Refuse to be bought or intimidated.

Maybe she’s got a f##king spine.

Why yes, the OP trial has forever ruined me - I am a bitterly cynical, hardcore optimist. LOL

 

[delilah]

If Dewani is innocent, he's going to have so much trouble explaining these messages Anni sent to her family and friends. He should have let her be, he sounds too controlling and desperate in trying to make her stay. Considering he's gay, and imo, not bisexual, just such a selfish man. Doesn't make him a murderer, just not a nice guy.


Bride-to-be Anni Dewani sent desperate text messages to her family before her wedding, saying: ‘I’m going to be unhappy for the rest of my life’.
Mrs Dewani sent a series of increasingly distressed messages to her cousin Sneha, expressing deep reservations about her fiancé Shrien.
In August 2010, two months after she got engaged, she spoke of her loneliness while visiting his family, writing: ‘Miss you so much. Don’t want to be with these people. I hate them. Want to cry myself to death.’

By September, while she was in India for wedding preparations, she appeared no happier and wrote on September 16: ‘Fighting a lot with Shrien. Told him I’m going home.

‘Wish I never got engaged. Everyone tells me how fortunate I am – even my designer tells me he’s good-looking and that I’m lucky. Absolutely sick.’
On September 21, five weeks before the extravagant Mumbai ceremony, she wrote: ‘I don’t want to marry him . . . we have nothing in common. He’s putting pressure on everything. He’s a perfectionist.’
In another text, she said: ‘Want to cry myself to death’.

The Swedish-born bride was concerned that her husband refused to be intimate with her, and texted: ‘One cannot even hug him.’ On September 22, she texted Sneha and said: ‘Told his and my parents I don’t want to get married.’

But her cousin said Mr Dewani persuaded her he would change and the wedding went ahead.
A week later, the situation appeared to have deteriorated and she wrote: ‘Hate him. I am not happy.’
Messages sent to her cousin from her honeymoon in South Africa show she was still distressed. On November 10, she said: ‘What shall I do? It’s been one day and I feel exactly the same as I did before.’

But the next day, two days before her death, she seemed to have had a change of heart, texting: ‘Hello! It’s much better now. How are you? Is going better than before. Hard to explain but I’ll call you soon as I return. Hate the word divorce.’
On November 13, she was shot dead in a taxi on the outskirts of Cape Town.


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...otage-raises-concerns-case.html#ixzz3FOyiKmXO

Those are even more damning than RS' messages to OP.

Or maybe Anni was just another of those 'fickle' women who wind up dead by pure accident.

 

[PrimeSuspect]

.
"Later there were gasps in the ornate, wood-lined courtroom when a police video showed his wife’s bloodstained body lying in the back of an abandoned car, still wearing her black evening dress and high heels, her hair blowing softly in the breeze."
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/06/shrien-dewani-first-day-murder-trial-wife-anni


... her hair blowing softly in the breeze.

I can't adequately articulate the feelings that came over me when I read this.


If I was directing a film, I'd say, "When you get to the part where the actor has just finished reading this line, zoom out from a mental image of their mouth opening and out of it coming a soul-wrenching scream that resonates out into the universe.

It must have been confronting watching footage of police examining the car and revealing Anni's lifeless body sprawled in the back seat of the car, blood everywhere. Noting her hair blowing in the wind is kinda macabre, it's like the hair is still alive, if that makes sense, it's not frozen still like her body. Awful image, her poor family will never forget.

My first impression from reading the description of the video is why be dressed to the 'nines' to drive around the slums of Gugulethu? Too bizarre for words.

"This is the safest place in the world for foreigners," says 56-year-old entrepreneur Mzoli Ngcauzele, whose restaurant the couple were rumoured to have visited on the Saturday evening until it became clear it had closed at 7pm. "Criminals in townships hardly ever choose foreign tourists. You have to have a link with the place to become a target. There is something fishy about the case." Set in an area of corrugated and tiled roofs atop brick houses painted pink, pale blue and green, Mzoli's seven-day-a-week braai (barbecue) diner and butchery opened in 2000 and draws up to 800 customers at the weekend.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/nov/21/south-africa-gugulethu-tourist-murder

 

[PrimeSuspect]

Perhaps Judge Traverso and her assessors will be smarter than Masipa.

Ask more questions.

Refuse to fall for craven DT bullsh#t.

Refuse to be bought or intimidated.

Maybe she’s got a f##king spine.

Why yes, the OP trial has forever ruined me - I am a bitterly cynical, hardcore optimist. LOL

I feel the same, lol. It's like what the hell happened? :whoosh:

 

[ColonelMustard]

In, what I believe is SD's fiction, my assumption is that, if a driver said that, the reason would be so SD would calm down and get out assured that Annie would later being deposited somewhere extra safe. Whether there was any intention that she would be or not wouldn't matter.

In an actual situation, if there was a real reason for separating two people like that, I suppose that a driver might say anything to get the guy out of the car.

However, any criminal worth their salt would simply say, "Get out now or I'll shoot you," and mean it.

 

[PrimeSuspect]

Dear PrimeSuspect,

Every relationship has its ups and downs.

Sincerely,

Judge Masipa

LOL, we have got to keep a sense of humour. :floorlaugh:

 

[soozieqtips]

Noting her hair blowing in the wind is kinda macabre, it's like the hair is still alive, if that makes sense, it's not frozen still like her body. Awful image, her poor family will never forget.

~snipped~

BIB - Yes! That's what I thought when I read it. Her body was still and lifeless, but her hair was still moving and 'alive'. It was such a simple description, and yet it captured a moment in time so graphically. Her parents must have been devastated when they saw that video. What a horribly sad image for them to see.

 

[seattlechiquita]

I was definitely expecting televised proceedings. Hoping Anni finds peace and her family justice. And hoping work allows me to follow here with you friends :wave:

 

[PrimeSuspect]

Snipped

I thought that too, but it's not actually the version in his statement.

In his statement he says he and Anni went to the surfsude sushi restaurant on the seafront. Afterwards, they were debating with Tongo what to do next. Nothing appears to have been agreed and they are on the motorway with Tongo driving and Dewani and Anni presumably in the backseat. Dewani says he got a text from Tongo (para 74) apparently wanting confirmation Dewani has the money 'for the helicopter ride' (Dewani says this is meant as a surprise for Anni, hence the covert communication). After he confirms he has it, Tongo turns off the motorway and into what I presume is one of the townships, and that's when they get 'hijacked'.

I've only been to Cape Town once, but I do recall the long journey from the airport on the motorway that runs parallel to the massive township on the Cape Flats, so it's not like it's a long way from where they might have been travelling if they were legitimately going back to Cape Town, assuming they were on this stretch of road or similar.

He must have changed his version of events, because in his handwritten statement he says -

Dewani says they went to the crime-ridden township of Gugulethu at Anni’s suggestion.
‘Zola took us into Gugulethu because my wife insisted to see how the nightlife in the townships was,’ he says, adding: ‘At a road turning left, I heard a knock on the windscreen. I then saw two black males. One opened the driver door and the other the passenger side door.

I find this really damning, I can't imagine Anni demanded anything in this relationship, it was SD in the 'drivers seat'.

Further in his version of events, SD is way to friendly and obliging with hijackers. This part is very strange too. -

‘I will not be able to describe the male that was driving the car. I can only say the other male was very black, he had two piercings in his right ear. I will not be able to describe his facial features.’



The more I read, the worse it looks for SD. jmo

 

[Interested Bystander]

What can this mean?

"In an attempt to shorten the proceedings I have made a number of admissions in terms of section 220 of the Criminal Procedure Act 1977..."

Dewani statement para 106

He has admitted he is bisexual and that there was some conflict in the relationship because they were both quite dominant characters and that the relationship was broken off at one point by Anni but rekindled. I think all these points would have been brought up in the trial. It could have taken days to argue about them (if it was anything like OP's case) but his admissions will stop a lot of the argument, if not all, that might have been expected had he not made the them.

 

[soozieqtips]

Two days after Anni’s murder, Zola Tongo met Shrien Dewani at the Cape Grace, where he gave him an envelope with R1,000 in a white plastic bag. Dewani handed over the bag to Tongo in the hotel’s Internet room, which has no CCTV coverage, but cameras caught Tongo leaving the room with the money stashed under his shirt. He then went to the men’s toilet and later emerged carrying the bag in his hand before exiting the hotel. (This was shown on Panorama).

What does seem remarkable is that Dewani, a man whose wife had just been brutally murdered, would have the presence of mind in what must have been the depths of overwhelming grief, to arrange to pay Tongo, in person, his “outstanding” fee two days after the murder.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/arti...nni-more-than-just-shrien-dewani-in-the-dock/

 

[seattlechiquita]

I am currently watching the panorama docu.

 

[soozieqtips]

I am currently watching the panorama docu.

I've forgotten parts of it, but remember there were some clips of them looking very loving towards each other. Maybe (IF) Dewani had already sorted out the murder, he was able to relax and be charming, knowing Anni wouldn't be around for long?

 

[PrimeSuspect]

He has admitted he is bisexual and that there was some conflict in the relationship because they were both quite dominant characters and that the relationship was broken off at one point by Anni but rekindled. I think all these points would have been brought up in the trial. It could have taken days to argue about them (if it was anything like OP's case) but his admissions will stop a lot of the argument, if not all, that might have been expected had he not made the them.

Imo, his admission about his sexuality was hard to deny, the male prostitute he visited several times is supposedly an upstanding citizen, well known in the industry and would not lie for any reason. SD had no choice but admit it was true.
But it will save time not arguing and prolonging the trial, but given the chance, imo, he would have, it's one more cross against him. SD didn't go through this farce of a wedding unless he was covering his sexuality. jmo

 

[seattlechiquita]

I've forgotten parts of it, but remember there were some clips of them looking very loving towards each other. Maybe (IF) Dewani had already sorted out the murder, he was able to relax and be charming, knowing Anni wouldn't be around for long?

and, if alcohol was involved as you can see in the footage, I can see Anni lowering her defenses.

The docu seems to be made from the NG perspective. Maybe the UK protecting one of their own?

 

[JudgeJudi]

Imo, his admission about his sexuality was hard to deny, the male prostitute he visited several times is supposedly an upstanding citizen, well known in the industry and would not lie for any reason. SD had no choice but admit it was true.
But it will save time not arguing and prolonging the trial, but given the chance, imo, he would have, it's one more cross against him. SD didn't go through this farce of a wedding unless he was covering his sexuality. jmo

The millionaire businessman confessed to sleeping with Leopold Leisser – nicknamed the German Master – and other escorts he had met online or in gay clubs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-justice-honeymoon-murder-new-bride-Anni.html

He could hardly deny the claims of Leopold Leisser because I read somewhere where LL says he has photo/s evidence and he's testifying for the state.

This being the case, it's obvious SD would have admitted upfront that he was bisexual as he had just married Anni. What I want the PT to do is to is to bring forward women who say they've had a sexual liaison with SD to prove that he is bisexual.

Why didn't the DT bring forward at least one woman to justify this statement? Possibly because they can't. To me that's as obvious as the DT not playing the audio that OP screams like a woman.

 

[delilah]

He must have changed his version of events, because in his handwritten statement he says -

Dewani says they went to the crime-ridden township of Gugulethu at Anni’s suggestion.
‘Zola took us into Gugulethu because my wife insisted to see how the nightlife in the townships was,’ he says, adding: ‘At a road turning left, I heard a knock on the windscreen. I then saw two black males. One opened the driver door and the other the passenger side door.

I find this really damning, I can't imagine Anni demanded anything in this relationship, it was SD in the 'drivers seat'.

Further in his version of events, SD is way to friendly and obliging with hijackers. This part is very strange too. -

‘I will not be able to describe the male that was driving the car. I can only say the other male was very black, he had two piercings in his right ear. I will not be able to describe his facial features.’



The more I read, the worse it looks for SD. jmo

He must have changed his version of events, because in his handwritten statement he says -

Dewani says they went to the crime-ridden township of Gugulethu at Anni’s suggestion.
‘Zola took us into Gugulethu because my wife insisted to see how the nightlife in the townships was,’ he says, adding: ‘At a road turning left, I heard a knock on the windscreen. I then saw two black males. One opened the driver door and the other the passenger side door.

I find this really damning, I can't imagine Anni demanded anything in this relationship, it was SD in the 'drivers seat'.

Further in his version of events, SD is way to friendly and obliging with hijackers. This part is very strange too. -

‘I will not be able to describe the male that was driving the car. I can only say the other male was very black, he had two piercings in his right ear. I will not be able to describe his facial features.’



The more I read, the worse it looks for SD. jmo

thanks. How extraordinary - a defendant who changes his story!

The first is much more likely to be accurate than his second version, which was no doubt made after much consulting with his defence team.

 

[JudgeJudi]

I want to make a correction to my previous post - I've been unable to find that he's a state witness.


Video showing amongst other things Dewani inside court plus he and Anni dancing.

http://media.smh.com.au/news/world-...ns-gps-discovery-5851410.html?next_video=true

 

[Interested Bystander]

The millionaire businessman confessed to sleeping with Leopold Leisser – nicknamed the German Master – and other escorts he had met online or in gay clubs.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...-justice-honeymoon-murder-new-bride-Anni.html

He could hardly deny the claims of Leopold Leisser because I read somewhere where LL says he has photo/s evidence and he's testifying for the state.

This being the case, it's obvious SD would have admitted upfront that he was bisexual as he had just married Anni. What I want the PT to do is to is to bring forward women who say they've had a sexual liaison with SD to prove that he is bisexual.

Why didn't the DT bring forward at least one woman to justify this statement? Possibly because they can't. To me that's as obvious as the DT not playing the audio that OP screams like a woman.

I wonder if we will get to see a witness list any time soon. That could make interesting reading.