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Forensics investigated
| Date: |
14 September 2008 07:00 |
| Producer: |
Eugene Botha
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| Presenter: |
Devi Sankaree Govender
Bongani Bingwa
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| Show: | Carte Blanche |
On the 16th of March 2005 the calm of the university town of Stellenbosch was shattered when the body of a young woman was found in this apartment block. She had been bludgeoned to death on the sofa in her flat. She was Inge Lotz, a brilliant Masters student at the university. Her brutal murder caused shock and revulsion.
At the time of her death in 2005, Inge was in a steady relationship with 25-year-old Fred van der Vyfer. They had started dating a year earlier when they were both full-time students. Louis van der Vyfer is Fred's father.
Louis van der Vyfer (Fred's father): "They were really a beautiful couple - a couple we were proud of as parents. And we had only high hopes for their future."
But Inge's death shattered all dreams of a future together. And for Fred, this was the beginning of a nightmare: a nightmare that very nearly cost him his freedom - a nightmare in which he stood accused of murdering his girlfriend in cold blood. It took a three year battle, costing millions of rand, to eventually clear his name.
Last month, at an international forensic conference held in Kentucky in the United States, Fred for the first time spoke publicly of his ordeal. His legal team and the forensic experts who had testified on his behalf, also made presentations. What they told the forensic community at the conference sounded more like the script of a Hollywood movie than real life.
From the start Fred had had an ironclad alibi.
Louis: "He was in a meeting during the time of the incident."
This was confirmed by CCTV footage at his place of work, and by numerous witnesses who were in the meeting with him. Yet, despite this evidence, Fred soon discovered that he was a suspect. Apparently the police had found this incriminating fingerprint on a DVD cover.
Louis: "Unfortunately all our attempts to meet with them, and to discuss the issue, were refused."
Then things went from bad to worse. On June 15, 2005, Fred was arrested for Inge's murder.
Louis: "We realised that...well we believed that it had to be a mistake. It couldn't be anything else. And that's why we believed that it could be cleared and sorted out without much ado."
Nevertheless, the family brought in advocates Terry Price and Dup de Bruyn to defend Fred.
Terry Price (Advocate): "We got the docket - the police docket - from them. We looked through the papers; I looked through the entire police docket, and I was absolutely shocked to see that there was absolutely nothing linking Fred to the case at all."
Dup de Bruyn (Advocate): "When we saw the evidence - when I read the police docket - I couldn't actually believe that they could continue with the case."
But they did.
Devi Sankaree Govender (Carte Blanche presenter): "A date for the trial was set in the Cape High Court. The state's case against Fred hinged on three pieces of forensic evidence: A fingerprint, a bloody smear on the bathroom floor and an ornamental hammer."
The first piece of evidence was Fred's fingerprint on a DVD cover which Inge had rented from a video store shortly before her murder. This would've placed Fred in Stellenbosch, in Inge's flat at the time of the murder, and not 40km away at his place of work.
Dup: "If it was indeed Fred's fingerprint on the DVD cover, there could be no doubt that he was guilty so that is why that was such an important aspect."
The second piece of crucial evidence was a blood smear on the bathroom floor in Inge's flat. The police claimed that Fred's shoe had made the print. The third piece of evidence was an ornamental hammer, which the police had identified as the murder weapon.
From the start, the fingerprint evidence was suspicious. Even the prosecution's experts questioned it. Initially, the prosecution had said they wouldn't use it, but in the end they did. Christhenus van der Vijver was the senior prosecutor.
Devi: "Had all things been equal, chances are you wouldn't have used that as evidence - based on what your own expert had said"
Advocate Van Der Vijver: "Yes, that is exactly the point. If the defence ... if they hadn't insisted, persisted with the claim that there was fraud with regard to the fingerprint, we would not have presented the fingerprint evidence."
Despite this, the state's case against Fred seemed overwhelming. Fred's team started his defence by attacking the fingerprint evidence. The police testimony was that they had found Fred's fingerprint on the DVD cover in Inge's flat. The defence granted that it was indeed Fred's fingerprint, but they denied it was lifted from the DVD cover. To support this, they brought in Pat Wertheim, one of the world's foremost fingerprint experts. He confirmed that the fingerprint was not lifted from a DVD cover.
Pat Wertheim (Forensic Fingerprint Expert): "A DVD cover is plastic, it has chemical plasticisers in it that make it a little oily. And when you powder the surface with the aluminium powder, the powder sticks to the surface and you get a background coating. The fingerprints will still stand out, but you've got that solid coating. When you take a lift off a DVD cover, invariably you trap little bubbles under the lifting tape, and those bubbles show up in the lift. In the folding that was alleged to have come from a DVD cover, there should have been a background coating with bubbles under, but there weren't. There was no background of powder at all."
Pat was sure that Fred's fingerprint was lifted from a glass surface.
Pat: "Glass, perfectly clean glass, has nothing on the surface to which the powder clings. Therefore when you powder a clean glass, the powder falls right off."
They then ran a number of tests on used drinking glasses and found that the patterns were identical to Fred's fingerprint lift. There were even lip prints on the test glass that matched the inexplicable lip print on Fred's fingerprint lift.
Pat: "And the conclusion then was that this lift could not have come from a DVD cover, but must have come from a drinking glass. There is no other explanation."
Pat feels certain there was foul play on the part of the police.
Pat: "There was not a single lift anywhere in that evidence that could have come from a DVD cover. Therefore an honest mistake is out of the question. This was not an accident, this was an intentional fabrication of evidence by somebody."
Devi: "Was there not fraud involved in terms of that fingerprint?"
Advocate Van Der Vijver: "No, well, the court has made it very clear in its judgement that there wasn't enough evidence to come to such a conclusion. As a matter of fact, the court said in its judgement that it might have been negligent on the part of the police, or it might have been a lack of experience. But the court definitely never made a ruling that there was malicious intent or fraud on the part of the police as far as the fingerprint is concerned."
Devi: "The defence then also challenged the findings of Superintendent Bruce Bartholomew. He was the one who testified that the blood smear on the bathroom floor was a shoe print and that it was made by Fred's shoe."
To support his findings he contacted this man, Bill Bodziak, who had been in the FBI for 28 years. He's considered the leading forensic expert on footwear impressions.
Bill Bodziak (Footwear impression expert): "In January of 2006 I was contacted via email by Superintendent Bruce Bartholomew of the South African Police Service."
Bartholomew arranged to visit Bodziak to discuss his theory that Fred's shoe had made the blood smear on the floor. When they met, Bodziak disagreed with Bartholomew's findings.
Bill: "There is nothing that mark, in any way, that a) it was made by a shoe, and b) that it was made by that shoe."
However, on his return to South Africa, Bartholomew reported back that Bodziak had agreed with him. Fred's defence team then brought Bodziak himself to South Africa to contest Bartholomew's report.
Bill: "I testified for two or three hours the first day that item by item in the letter that he wrote - known as Bartholomew's report, of his travel to the United States - that these were lies, that these were not what happened and not what I said."
What is also significant is that the prosecution had had a conference call with Bodziak some time after Bartholomew's visit. Bodziak told them that he disagreed with the findings. Yet, the prosecution continued to use Bartholomew's false report as evidence.
Bodziak: "I had explained to them everything about the visit with Superintendent Bartholomew, and my opinion and everything. And afterwards their response was, Well, we are truly shocked.'"
But despite this shock, the prosecution continued to present Bartholomew's report as evidence.
Devi: "Was it not a bit of a risk going on with the issue of the shoeprint evidence, despite the fact that there was this disagreement between Bartholomew and Bodziak?"
Advocate Van Der Vijver: "We confronted Bartholomew with Bodziak's version, and he stuck to his guns. He said, No, Bodziak is not telling the truth.' So, that's why we presented the evidence."
The court later found that Bartholomew was an unreliable witness. But it stopped short of ruling that that he had lied. Then the defence team turned their attention to the alleged murder weapon. They flew out Mike Grimm, a forensic expert on footwear impressions and wounds.
Mike Grimm (Forensic footprint & wounds expert): "In my examinations over the years of injuries, especially the human head - where you have a bony structure below the surface - generally those marks are indicative of the shape and size of the instrument that made contact. The hammer, in this case, that was recovered - the bottle-opener hammer - the head was only 20mm in width. It's physically impossible for a hammer-head of this size to have made injuries on the scalp that 30mm in width."
In fact, Mike is sure that the injuries on Inge's head weren't made by a hammer at all.
Mike: "An instrument of this size and weight could have inflicted sufficient injuries to kill someone. But the marks on her head are not consistent with this at all. Had it been a hammer, to inflict the type of injuries to the scalp that were inflicted, the hammer would have gone through the skull and would have left large gaping holes on the side of the head - not just the lacerations that are apparent. Everything indicated to me that it was something other than a hammer. My opinion is that in all likelihood, the marks on her head were caused by a handgun."
At the conference, Mike also proposed a theory that the bloody smear was caused by a piece of tissue that was cut from Inge's torso, and dropped by the murderer. However, the police wanted to prove that Fred's hammer was the murder weapon and they used it to conduct tests on pigs' heads. But the hammer was not up to it, and bent.
The police then used a much larger and heavier hammer for further tests. The test results from this larger hammer were submitted as evidence.
Devi: "But that ornamental hammer that was found in Fred's bakkie failed the test - because the hammer bent. So they used another hammer. That's the part I don't understand."
Advocate Van Der Vijver: "Well...yes, it is so. That after the second or the third blow - I'm not quite sure, I cannot really recall as to after how many blows it bent - they used that other hammer, a similar hammer...that is a fact. And I think because Mr Maritz explained during his testimony that they were afraid that they might do further damage to the hammer. And so that's why they got hold of another hammer to see if it makes the similar marks."
Fred's team concluded their arguments, and everyone anxiously awaited the judge's ruling. On the 29th of November last year Judge Deon van Zyl read the verdict: The court unanimously finds the court's alibi to be true, and that the State could not prove his guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The court finds him not guilty.
Some of Fred's international forensic experts expressed real concern at the implications of this case.
Pat: "I don't believe that this was the first time it happened. I believe this time was a little different because the Van Der Vyfers had the resources to bring in outside expertise. But I would suspect that there are innocent people in jail in South Africa today, that were put there by fabricated evidence."
Advocate van der Vijfer indicated that the police officers who had investigated Fred's case, and who had allegedly manufactured evidence and lied in court, would not be prosecuted. This is because the court never found that there was deliberate fabrication of evidence or that police witnesses had lied.
While the criminal case has been dismissed, the ordeal for Fred and his family is not over yet. Inge's parents still believe he is guilty, and have instituted a civil case against him for R8.5-million. And from his part, Fred's team is suing the police for R46-million for unlawful arrest.
And for Dup, Fred's advocate, what initially seemed to be a simple, straightforward case, turned out to be the fight of a lifetime.
Dup: "There is nothing as scary as defending an innocent man."
IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER:While every attempt has been made to ensure this transcript or summary is accurate, Carte Blanche or its agents cannot be held liable for any claims arising out of inaccuracies caused by human error or electronic fault. This transcript was typed from a transcription recording unit and not from an original script, so due to the possibility of mishearing and the difficulty, in some cases, of identifying individual speakers, errors cannot be ruled out.
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