Appeal denied in case of 79-year-old’s killing

A RUYTERWACHT carpenter, who who smoked a cocktail of drugs before killing an elderly woman by stabbing her to death, has lost his High Court application to appeal against his 2017 conviction for murder and the sentence of life imprisonment.

During his trial it emerged that Ryan Faure then 29, smoked a mixture of dagga and crushed mandrax, known as “witpyp” before stabbing Susan Loubser, 79, multiple times in the chest and neck.

The State’s case against Faure was that he broke into Loubser’s Ruyterwacht home in May 2015, robbed her of her television set and certain other items and stabbed her to death.

The State relied on the evidence of the investigating officer, Faure’s ex-wife and two witnesses, Mario Lottering and Nathan Solomons. Lottering and Solomons told the court that Faure had admitted to them that he had broken into the Loubser’s home, robbed and killed her. Lottering told the court that on the night of the incident Faure had brought a flat-screen TV wrapped in a blanket to him and asked him to find a buyer for it.

In his trial testimony Faure had denied the crimes and while he admitted being friendly with Lottering and Solomons he denied making any confession to them.

Nevertheless the trial magistrate accepted the evidence against Faure despite there having been some hesitancy on both of their part to testify against him and rejected Faure’s version of events as false beyond reasonable doubt taking into account various unsatisfactory features and the improbabilities in his version.

In the end the Regional Court sitting at Parow convicted Faure of one count of housebreaking with intent to commit robbery and robbery with aggravating circumstances and one count of murder.

On the robbery conviction he was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment and on the murder conviction to life imprisonment.

In his notice of appeal Faure argued that the magistrate had erred in her ruling and that Lottering and Solomons were poor and unreliable witnesses.

He brought up the fact that at one stage during the trial the State tried to discredit Lottering as a witness when he deviated from the statement he gave to the police. Faure also said that Solomons was unable to satisfactorily explain why he had initially failed to come to court to testify.

In his ruling on Faure’s application to appeal, Judge Lee Bozalek said: “In a considered and comprehensive judgment, the magistrate set out her reasons for accepting the evidence of the two witnesses, Lottering and Solomons, and for rejecting Faure’s evidence as false beyond reasonable doubt.

“I can find no convincing basis on which to reject any of the magistrate’s findings in this regard. As regards the appeal against sentence, I consider that the magistrate correctly found that Faure failed to establish the existence of substantial and compelling circumstances.

“The appeal against the appellant’s conviction for murder and the sentence of life imprisonment is dismissed and the conviction and sentence are confirmed,” said Judge Bozalek.