What Batchelor’s phone could expose

Questions around who might have swiped former soccer player Marc Batchelor’s cellphone moments after he was gunned down have surfaced and have resulted in the arrest of a private investigator, who has also been found to be an acquaintance of Batchelor.

The private investigator was expected to appear in the Randburg Magistrate’s Court on Monday but was released due to the matter not having been placed on the court roll.

How the arrest of the investigator happened raises crucial questions around what may have been the motive for Batchelor’s senseless death after his cellphone was traced, using sophisticated cellphone-tracking technology.

Police are now looking at recovering the phone’s data, which was erased. The deleted contents include messages which might have fingered Batchelor’s would-be killers.

TimesSelect reports that a forensic expert pointed out that if the missing data was manually deleted, some contents could be recovered and that it was possible to see if the data was transferred to another device.

Should the phone have been “shredded” (a process where information on the phone would be removed using a computer or data destruction tool), there may be no hope for police.

The motive for the shooting still remains unknown, but according to police crime intelligence sources within the private security sectors, the football player’s death is suspected to be an alleged revenge shooting.

They claim police were investigating whether the murder was in revenge for Batchelor allegedly stealing a one-ton consignment of cocaine from an Eastern European drug-smuggling syndicate.

Batchelor was shot and killed by two men on motorcycles as he turned into the driveway of his home just before 7pm on Market Street in Olivedale on July 15.  It dawned to investigators at the scene that his phone was missing.

This led to police taking the private investigator in for questioning on Friday night. He was then detained over the weekend.

(Compiled by Gopolang Moloko)

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.