BERNARD MAKGABO NGOEPE
Were you with Mrs - I assume you were not with Mrs May?
INSP. DE LA REY: Not on the day that the arrests were made. At a later stage after we had sorted out all the evidence and the articles, she came to my office to identify the items which concerned her. At the stage of the arrests, as you will know it is impossible to take a witness with you when you are busy arresting somebody because it can be a very dangerous situation.
ADV. MTHEMBU: . . . (inaudible) groceries was not in the boot as the accused say and if the groceries was in the house in the kitchen as you say, how could you possibly identify grocery as belonging to the deceased and not to the household concerned?
INSP. DE LA REY: Mr Chairperson, at all the different houses and it is not only one particular house where groceries were found and confiscated, it is coincidental that the deceased had gone to do shopping on the same day which he was murdered and it had been at one specific supermarket where he had done his shopping and all those which I found had the same labels the same boutiques of the shopping centre and that immediately confirmed to me that these were the groceries of the deceased and that is why I didn't confiscate those ones. The deceased and the lady who stayed with the deceased also identified this as property which articles which they had bought the same day, so it wasn't just one house where there were groceries it was at the house of accused No. 3's common-law wife's mother and also 337 K as well as accused 1's brother's house, so the kind of articles which I found and confiscated were the same as those which the deceased had bought that day that he was murdered and it is on that basis that the articles were identified as being the deceased property.
ADV. MTHEMBU: So, you had fore knowledge that the deceased had bought some groceries from a well known supermarket?
INSP. DE LA REY: Yes, that is correct. During the investigation one does a lot of inquiries and we found out from the people that had gone to buy groceries that specific day and Mrs May also told me at a later stage that they had gone to get groceries in Bloemfontein. That is the whole reason why they wanted to come to Bloemfontein on that particular day of the murder, to buy groceries, so I did know more or less what I was looking for but I could see that firearms were missing from the safe after going through the identify document of the deceased. I knew there had to be groceries because they had gone to buy groceries.
ADV. MTHEMBU: And before of that fore knowledge when you got into the various houses, and you found some groceries with the label from that well known supermarket, you suspected that that could have well have been groceries that had been bought by the deceased?
INSP. DE LA REY: Very definitely, yes.