Marinda Steyn continued testifying in the Krugersdorp murders trial currently taking place in the South Gauteng High Court.
The trial of the three remaining accused, Cecilia Steyn, Marcel Steyn and Zak Valentine, in the so-called Krugersdorp murders case, has seen some shocking testimonies, with Cecilia taking the stand on Monday and denying almost everything the State questioned her about.
Marinda then took the stand saying she and Cecilia are best of friends and that she (Cecilia) did not know about most of what had happened.
Yesterday she testified that they were just a group of friends, yet in her plea agreement she admitted to managing an enterprise.
Although she maintains that Cecilia had nothing to do with the murders, she did not exonerate Cecilia in her plea statement.
Read the first two parts of her testimony here:
#KrugersdorpMurders — Marinda Steyn said Cecilia is her very best friend during testimony
#KrugersdorpMurders — Marinda Steyn’s testimony of why they started killing people
Today she continued, saying there was “hidden information” in a document that she signed, implicating Cecilia Steyn. She claimed she signed without knowledge of this. She said she trusted her lawyer and did not know that Cecilia was also an accused.
She denied having any involvement in the bombings and said she only found out about it later. But Le Roux Steyn (her son) testified that she was arrested in 2013 because her fingerprint was found close to the scene of the bombings.
In his testimony, Le Roux said Cecilia instructed them to plant home-made bombs under the cars belonging to Ria Grunewald and other Overcomers Through Christ members.
Advocate Amanda Nel pointed out there were irregularities between the statement in the plea agreement and Marinda’s current testimony.
Marinda attributed this to the amount of information she gave when her plea agreement was drawn up and says that they left out things because there was too much information.
She testified that Pastor Reg Benedixen ‘changed’ Grunewald, but in Grunewald’s testimony she cried about the pastor. Marinda said this is because people only remember the good about people when they are gone and not the bad things. She said she had her own reasons to kill Benedixen.
She explained that Valentine was dressed as a woman while driving to Bendixen before killing him. Before the killing, he took off the disguise to look like a police officer. He then dressed as a woman again when leaving.
When asked about the killing of Valentine’s wife, Mikeila, Marinda claims that she killed Mikeila on her own. She said that Valentine broke the trellis gate of their home in order for it to look like a robbery. She had to go through another door as to avoid suspicion about the robbery. She added that Valentine signaled her to tell her that his wife was asleep and she could enter. It was pointed out that Mikeila’s murder and the number of stab wounds indicated that this killing was more personal for Marinda. Mikeila was stabbed multiple times after she was already dead.
Marinda responded that she “only stabbed her until she [Mikeila] stopped breathing”.
The questioning moved on to the murders of Joan and Peter Meyer. They [Marinda and Valentine] used “false SIM cards” when contacting the Meyers, but did not take their cellphones along when they murdered them, because they were afraid their “signals” would implicate them.
Marinda said, when speaking of the Meyers, that she wasn’t afraid of taking the polygraph test, because she “didn’t kill them”.
She was questioned about Valentine’s faked death. The court heard that Marinda is the only person to claim that Jarrod Jackson was injected with [Valentine’s] insulin. “I was part of the Jackson murder,” she said when speaking of the faking of Valentine’s death.
Marinda said she wanted to help Valentine and that is why she took care of his death documents. She had no intention to defraud Discovery.
She added, “I didn’t go to Cecilia to tell her that Valentine isn’t really dead”.
After Valentine faked his death, he went into hiding on a plot. “When he [Valentine] couldn’t stay at the plot any more, he went back to the Herberg Hotel [in Krugersdorp CBD], and then I lost track of him,” Marinda said.
However, in yesterday’s testimony she implied that she gave the money she transferred from Glen McGregor’s account to Valentine to pay his rent. But today his lawyer informed her that Valentine had not been living at his residence in Tarlton at that stage.
Nel added that by the time the other murders were committed, Valentine had already been working at Kia Kaha Ministries and earning his own money. and was not dependent on them any more. Marinda said she was willing to support Valentine for as long as possible so that they would not get caught.
Marinda denied giving Valentine R6 000. It came to light that Marinda sent Valentine a tablet through Le Roux so they could communicate “discretely” about the last killings and Valentine needing money and not having food. It is still unclear whether Valentine was at the plot during this time because of conflicting testimonies.
Marinda was asked if she communicated with Cecilia while in prison, but claimed that she had absolutely no contact with her, in person or over the phone, in prison.
The State queried the fact that Marinda and Cecilia’s evidence overlap nearly completely, and suggested that they had rehearsed the same stories, “especially in regard to Satanism”.
Cecilia and Marinda’s testimonies differ completely from all the other testimonies, who all said that the two definitely partook in Satanism. Marinda denies that their actions had anything to do with Satanism and answered in the affirmative when asked whether she and Cecilia are both devout Christians.
In a final blow, Nel then introduced Marinda’s diary into evidence. The entry where she made a list of what to talk to her children about after they had been arrested was pointed out.
Some of the points said “Say nothing further”, and “What had been said, C wants to know?”.
On one of the pages, she wrote about what to do when she dies. She added that all the money that came after her death should be given to the Electus Per Deus witches, although she claims that they do not exist.
Court then took a short recess. Marinda’s testimony continues this afternoon.
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