Court hears of hit on wife for R4.5m

STARTLING details came out during the bail application of a 27-year-old man accused of ordering a hit on his wife for a multimillion-rand insurance pay-out.

It was revealed that Mi-chael-Merrington had tried to get his wife, Aldridge, killed so that he could lay claim to R4.5 million comprising insurance and pension money.

Merrington is alleged to have hatched a plot to have his wife, 31, killed by approaching a 20- year- old beggar, Glen Cona, 20, in Johannesburg.

However, on the day of the murder, Cona got cold feet and could not go ahead with it.

The two were later arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder and attempted murder.

Merrington also faces an additional charge of assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm for allegedly stabbing Cona when he failed to kill his wife.

At the bail application in the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court yesterday, the prosecutor said the crime was a schedule one offence and the onus was on the State to prove that releasing the accused would not be in the interest of justice.

The investigating officer from the Brackendowns Police Station, Mario Nes, said he believed that the motive for the murder was a R4.5 million insurance pay-out that Merrington would have benefited from had his plot succeeded.

He also said the two men were flight risks and releasing them would interfere with the process of justice.

The court had to be adjourned for a while to give a visibly shaking Cona time to compose himself.

After repeated attempts to swear him in failed, the court resorted to using the affidavit he gave to the police after his arrest.

In the affidavit, Cona said he had been at a traffic light begging when Merrington approached him and asked him to kill his wife.

When he told him that he had never killed anyone before, Merrington had told him to try.

Merrington took him to his house and told him to wait in the bathroom for Aldridge to come back from work.

When she arrived, Cona lost his nerve because Aldridge and Merrington’s three-yearold son was present.

Merrington, who was in the house at the time, was holding the three-year-old.

The matter was postponed to March 23.