V3473 Kanton Klassop

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Kanton Klassop was thirty years old when he faced charges of murder, rape, robbery with aggravating circumstances, two counts of housebreaking with theft, and arson. He insisted on conducting his own defence.

The events started on 11 March 1985 when the Smith family of Port Alfred left their home early in the morning. Mr and Mrs Smith went to work and their daughter went to school. When they returned later in the day they found that someone had broken into their house and had stolen some of their possessions. The burglar had smashed a window to gain entry. They reported the matter to the police and gave them a list of the stolen items.

On the morning of Friday 12 July 1985 Mrs Dorothy Gilder left for work. Her fifty-five-year-old domestic assistant, Mrs Girley Evelyn Ndzube, was left in charge of the house and was to engage in her usual household duties. Mrs Ndzube was to leave the key in a special hiding place when she had finished. However, when Mrs Gilder returned home in the late afternoon she found the house locked and the key not in its place. The kitchen window was open. Mrs Gilder called the neighbour’s gardener and the young man climbed through the open window to unlock the doors. He found Mrs Ndzube’s body on the floor in the kitchen. They called the police. There were signs of a violent struggle just inside the front door. The house had been ransacked.

Mrs Ndzube’s body had been placed with her legs apart and a jersey and a brick over her private parts. A khaki jacket and a towel covered her head. When these were removed, she was seen to have suffered a number of chop-like blows of such severe force that the left side of her face and head was shattered. The blows had penetrated her skull and brain and completely destroyed the left eye and its socket. There was a pool of blood under her head. There were also signs that a ligature of some sort had been tied through her mouth and around the back of her head. There were injuries to her neck consistent with strangulation.

There were signs that the killer had prepared a meal for himself in the kitchen while his victim lay a few feet away.

The police gathered evidence from the scene. They found identifiable fingerprints on a powder-box on the dressing table in the bedroom, and on a cake tin, a wine carton and the bread knife in the kitchen. All of these items belonged to Mrs Gilder and had been in the house earlier in the day when she had left for work. They took blood samples and the pathologist took vaginal swabs and scrapings from under Mrs Ndzube’s fingernails. These would later prove to be inconclusive.

The next day Mrs Gilder and some family members cleaned the house. Her son-in-law found the murder weapon under the bed in Mrs Gilder’s bedroom. It was a heavy meat cleaver. Tied to its handle was a school tie taken from the Smith’s house on 11 March. Blood traces on the cleaver matched Mrs Ndzube’s blood type. Mrs Gilder found that some items were missing from the house; these included a rare torch and siren combination her son-in-law had given her for use in case of an emergency.

On 13 July 1985 the Smith family returned from an outing and found that their house had been broken into a second time. Various items including foodstuffs, bedding and crockery had been taken. Fires had been started in two separate places in the house and had caused some damage but had somehow been extinguished. Outside the broken window they found a torch and siren combination that did not belong to them. They again made a list and reported the matter to the police. The police took possession of the torch. Mrs Gilder and her son-in-law were able to identify it as the one that had been taken from her house the previous day.

Klassop was arrested on 16 July 1985. He was living in the wild in a shelter behind some bushes although he also had a room at his mother’s house.

Klassop had no answer to the circumstantial evidence. His fingerprints matched those taken at the scene of the murder. A number of items taken from the Smiths’ house during the two burglaries had been found in his possession. The explanations he gave were demonstrably false in a number of respects.

The evidence suggested that Klassop must have entered Mrs Gilder’s house through the front door. Mrs Ndzube must have resisted him as signs of a violent struggle were found just inside the front door. Klassop was armed with the meat cleaver. He had carried it to the scene tied around his waist with the tie he had previously stolen from the Smiths. It could easily be concealed under his shirt or coat in that manner. The struggle had continued towards the kitchen. There Klassop put the tie around Mrs Ndzube’s face to overpower her and to stop her from calling for help. He then struck Mrs Ndzube with a brick and with the meat cleaver until she was dead.

Klassop then searched the house and prepared to take a number of items with him. In the process he handled the items on which his fingerprints were subsequently detected. He took some food and ate some of it in the kitchen and the rest in the bedroom. Before he left he wiped the blade of the meat cleaver and threw it under the bed. He left the house after taking more food, a radio and tape combination, a towel and Mrs Gilder’s torch. There were indications that he had been disturbed before he could gather everything he had wanted to take. Some things were found wrapped in a bedspread in the bedroom. He had finished some wine too; the empty container was also found under the bed. The next day Klassop took the torch to the Smith’s house when he went to burgle it for the second time. He left the torch under the window by mistake.

The Court acquitted Klassop on the rape count but convicted him as charged on the other counts. Klassop admitted to a long list of previous convictions. He was a serial burglar. All his recorded crimes had been committed in Port Alfred. The local police must have known him well.

There were no extenuating circumstances. The Judge sentenced him to death on the murder count, to twelve years imprisonment on the robbery count, to three years on each of the housebreaking counts, and to three years on the arson count.

Klassop arrived in Pretoria on 11 February 1986. Six weeks later he changed his mind about legal representation. It would take nineteen months before his final appeal was rejected.

He was hanged on 3 December 1987. He was recorded as being thirty-two years old, although his criminal record suggested that he might well have been a few years older than that.