Cape Town – As investigations into Hilliary Gardee’s murder continue, claims of muti killings, poisoning, and people disappearing have reportedly surfaced.
According to IOL, the first accused in the case, Sipho Mkhatshwa, sought cleansing from a sangoma in Nkomazi, Mpumalanga, following Hillary’s murder.
Mkhatshwa allegedly attempted to sell two albino children from his fiancée’s previous marriage for R2 million to an Eswatini national for muti.
He also offered one of the albino children in exchange for his cleansing, but the traditional healer declined.
Mkhatshwa failed to make payment for the cleansing, resulting in the sangoma calling the police on him.
“The sangoma claims Mkhatshwa has been consulting with him for years, and he has been giving him muti for different things besides cleansing him,” the report quoted a source close to the case as saying.
Mkhatshwa is also being investigated for the alleged poisoning death of his former wife, Cecelia Sibiya, in 2019, according to the report.
SowetanLIVE reported earlier that “a consultation for a cleansing ritual with a sangoma, a confession statement and bloodied shoes at a guesthouse is how police were able to link three men to the brutal murder of Hillary Gardee”.
The report said that a source close to the investigation had detailed how Mkhatshwa, “crumbled and confessed to police about Hillary’s murder”.
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Philemon Lukhele, the second accused in the case, owns a guest house that was allegedly used to hold Gardee captive in Nelspruit.
According to reports, the guest house was frequently used for sex orgies.
“The girls are students around Nelspruit, and it is suspected that they were either drugged or intoxicated before the sex orgies,” said one police officer as quoted by IOL.
A few weeks before Gardee’s murder, a security guard who used to work at the guest house was also murdered.
“Police are following allegations that a security guard who used to work at the guest house was also killed a few weeks before Gardee for allegedly seeing something he wasn’t supposed to see,” the officer added as quoted by the report.
Hillary went missing on April 29 after a shopping trip to a Spar near her home in Mbombela, Mpumalanga.
She was found dead in a field outside Mbombela, Mpumalanga on May 3 with a gun wound on her head.
Sipho Lawrence Mkatshwa, Philemon Lukhele and Mduzuzi Gama were arrested and charged with murder, rape, conspiracy to commit murder, kidnapping and possession of illegal firearms.
The trio appeared in the Mbombela Magistrate’s Court on Monday last week where they abandoned their bail application. The case was rescheduled to June 9.
Hillary was the daughter of former EFF secretary-general Godrich Gardee.
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Compiled by Sinothando Siyolo
