Leigh Matthews Murder Apppeal: Donovan Moodley Targets Detective Piet Byleveld
Yesterday saw super sleuth Piet Byleveld become – in a rather dramatic turn of events – the target of murder convicted Donovan Moodley’s application for a retrial.
Moodley, convicted for the kidnapping and murder of Leigh Matthews in 2005, is now claiming that he was tortured by Detective Byleveld and forced to confess. He further claims that he told Byleveld the kidnapping was orchestrated by three drug dealers – Frank, Allie and Jemba – but that the detective forced him to say that he carried it out alone.
However, Byleveld has always maintained his belief that Moodley had help, at least, in moving the body (as he explains in this podcast) although, according to Byleveld, Moodley refused to reveal his accomplice(s).
The Leigh Matthews case features in Hanlie Retief’s best-selling biography, Byleveld: Dossier of a serial sleuth.
Convicted murderer Donovan Moodley argued in the High Court in Johannesburg on Wednesday to be retried for the 2004 kidnap and murder of university student Leigh Matthews.
He was applying for a retrial — something without precedent in South African law — because he wanted to tell “this version of the truth, which I maintain to be the truth”, he told the court.
He also elected to represent himself.
Mandy Wiener, author of the highly acclaimed book, Killing Kebble, tweeted from the retrial, which continued in the Johannesburg High Court today.
In one tweet, Wiener speculated whether Moodley had been reading Antony Altbeker’s Fruit of a Poisoned Tree, after Moodley repeatedly referred to the “Poisoned Tree” planted by Byleveld and Van Zyl.
Here are a selection of her tweets:
#Moodley This is a surreal, never-ending amalgamation of CSI, Judge Judy, Oprah and Tropical Heat (that ponytail says @KarynMaughan).
Mandy Wiener
MandyWiener
#Moodley Donovan repeatedly referring to the ‘Poisoned Tree’ planted by Byleveld and Van Zyl. Reading Altbeker in prison much?Mandy Wiener
MandyWiener
#Moodley “I was a young defenceless boy crushed by the might of the State and the Poisoned Tree”.Mandy Wiener
MandyWiener
#Moodley “I am now one of the most respected leaders in the prison society. I am no longer the shy boy”.Mandy Wiener
MandyWiener
#Moodley “I tried with all my strengths to get hold of the Oprah show. She did a whole show on people who pleaded guilty”.Mandy Wiener
MandyWiener
#Moodley Van Zyl: Moodley makes sweeping statement that everything he needs was destroyed by Byleveld. No factual basis to this.Mandy Wiener
MandyWiener
Book details
- Byleveld: Dossier of a Serial Sleuth by Hanlie Retief
Book homepage
EAN: 9781415201435
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Image courtesy IOL
- Fruit of a Poisoned Tree: A True Story of Murder and the Miscarriage of Justice by Antony Altbeker
Book homepage
EAN: 9781868423330
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- Killing Kebble by Mandy Wiener
EAN: 9781770101425
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Apr
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