Durban — A cellphone expert is expected to take the stand on Wednesday when the trial against a Pinetown nurse, alleged to have hired hitmen to kill her husband, resumes in the Durban High Court.
Nomphumelelo Patricia Goncalves is alleged to have hired her brother Nkosinathi Zungu and two others to kidnap her husband, Nkosi Timmy Langa, from their Pinetown home and kill him. The trial began in May but was adjourned when Goncalves was admitted to a psychiatric hospital.
A previous State witness and hitman in the matter, James Mashudu Mthimkhulu, had testified how Langa was killed with an electric cord cut from a clothes iron in his home. The cord was put around his neck and Zungu and Mthimkhulu allegedly pulled on the cord from different ends.
It is alleged Gonclaves had hired the men to murder Langa as she had allegedly endured physical abuse at his hands.
Langa was allegedly bound by his hands and forced into his car taken by the hired hitmen. Goncalves had allegedly phoned the hitmen warning them not to withdraw money from her husband’s bank account from ATMs in Durban and surrounds. The men had obtained Langa’s PIN to his bank cards that were in his car while he was bound in his home by threatening to kill him if he gave incorrect numbers.
The men gained entry to the home from the main gate entering through a door intentionally left unlocked.
The nurse and her brother are on trial for the murder. Goncalves also faces charges of defeating the ends of justice for allegedly falsely reporting her husband missing and the theft of his car.
Mthimkhulu confirmed the identity of the other two hired men in a photo album exhibit. He testified the money was withdrawn after Langa had been strangled with the electrical cord and left in a forest in Ozwathini. At that stage, they were on the way to Pietermaritzburg to find a buyer for Langa’s Isuzu X-Raider they were travelling in.
Goncalves is alleged to have made another call to the hitmen allegedly to ask “are you finished with him”.
She had also phoned alerting the men that Langa’s car was being sought and they had to remove the tracker. Zungu allegedly had R5 000 deposited into his account to find someone to do so and for a cleansing ritual with a sangoma as they “had just killed a person”.
Once the tracker had been removed it was thrown by Mthimkhulu into the Tugela Ferry River along with the registration plate of Langa’s car.
Mthimkhulu is already serving 20 years’ imprisonment for his part in the kidnapping, robbery and murder.
Daily News