MASERU
Mphatšoe Ntjelo and his wife from Quthing has been convicted of 4 counts of heinous ritual murders. He is accused of slaughtering and mutilating three of his own children and one who is his younger brother supposedly for wealth through ritualistic means.
Justice Molefi Makara of the High Court delivered his judgment on Wednesday. Ntjelo will be sentenced on the 07th August this year. Ntjelo’s wife, ‘Mamotšabi is said to have died in police custody in 2015.
Justice Makara found that Ntjelo and his wife massacred their three year old Nthona, 10 year old son, Molefi and Reatšeliseha who was only three months old and buried them in their two huts in their rural home in Quthing in October 2014.
The couple then murdered Ntjelo’s younger brother in February 2015. The judge also found that the bodies were disfigured with the purpose to create muti with the hope that it will help the couple have a chain of shops, lots of cattle and taxis.
One of the corpses was found buried together with head of a donkey and muti. Justice Makara said, “There is no reasonable conclusion that can be taken from all these incidents except that it is the accused and his wife that committed all these inhuman and uniparental incidents.
In the premises and the analysis of the case, it is found that the crown has proved beyond reasonable doubt you are guilty of having killed the four deceased persons who had to be your closest relatives,” said Justice Makara.
The judge said the couple was detained by suspicious neighbours who asked about the whereabouts of the children and Ntjelo lied and said that they were in Mohale’s Hoek at his doctor’s place. But when the villagers and the Chieftainess questioned him deeper, Ntjelo pointed to where they had buried the children.
The Chieftainess called the police who ordered Ntjelo to exhume the bodies from the inside the small hut and the roundavel.
Justice Makara found that Ntjelo confessed to the Chieftainess and her subjects that he had disembowelled the children, buried Nthona in a small hut and Motšabi in a roundavel.
“In January 2015, the accused ordered Molefi to go and sleep and his wife later went to Molefi’s bedroom where ‘Mamotšabi tightened a cloth on his mouth while the accused decapitated him”, said Justice Makara. They took out his heart and visceral fat.
Ntjelo is said to have taken a saw and grinded Molefi’s skull to extract his brain, and later buried him in a roundavel. He said in February the couple murdered the infant and took out his heart, mutilated the armpits, cut off the ears, and then later buried the infant together with Nthona in a small hut.
Ntjelo is said to have used a spade to dig the corpse from the hut. “While asked to exhume the bodies he buried, the accused exhumed Molefi’s mutilated body with his head on his stomach. The infant’s corpse was identifiable as it had not decayed yet and the corpse had a chest wound, armpits, and the ears were not there,” said Justice Makara.
