Durban — After having been in custody for a little more than two months while awaiting sentence, a Newlands East woman –who hatched a plan to kill her husband with her lesbian lover – will know her fate on Tuesday (today) as sentencing proceedings are expected to get under way in the Durban High Court.
Mark Buttle was stabbed 53 times in the neck in 2018 while in his car in Newlands East, allegedly by his wife Analidia Dias Bella Dosantos, her lover Teagan Allison Brown, and the two women’s friend Charmaine Margaret Khumalo.
As fate would have it Brown died in July last year ahead of the trial. In January this year Dosantos and Khumalo, who had been out on bail during the trial, are now behind bars after being convicted of Buttle’s murder.
The three hatched and executed a plan to kill Buttle. The State said an insurance policy was the motive behind the murder. In addition, Dosantos, 41, was alleged to have been having an affair with Brown, 25.
Following the murder, Dosantos, while driving on Napdale Road, parted ways with the other women, going to a nearby house where she reported that she had been with her husband and they had been hijacked.
During the trial, Senior State Prosecutor Advocate Khatija Essack introduced a confession and a pointing-out by Khumalo. The defence objected and a trial within a trial ensued for the court to determine the admissibility of the evidence on the grounds that the accused was under undue influence. Acting Judge Murray Pitman ruled that the confession and pointing-out were inadmissible and not permitted in the trial.
Evidence that on the night of Buttle’s murder Brown and Khumalo pitched up after midnight on the doorstep of another woman’s house with bloodied clothes did not form part of the evidence of the main trial. This was after a statement detailing all this was ruled inadmissible by Judge Pitman in a second trial within a trial.
It came about after the defence for the two women objected to the submission of a statement made by Inga Ogle, who had also since died, on the grounds that Ogle could not be cross-examined on the statement.
Ogle was married to the daughter of a State witness, Shareen Ogle, who is Khumalo’s ex-lover. During the trial, Shareen testified that Khumalo had confessed to her about the murder. But when Khumalo took the stand she denied this.
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