Yesterday saw 28-year-old Howard Oliver on trial for the murder of Tokai teen Franziska Blöchliger, and of course it was another day fraught with high emotion.

The court heard from the woman who discovered Franziska’s body, 56-year-old nurse Yvonne Elger, as well as Shireen and Andreas Blöchliger.

We’ll start with Elger – IOL below:

“I thought it was a white plastic bag, a huge garbage bag at first, but when I looked again I could see it was a body. I screamed”…

Elger had been walking her dogs when she found the teenager’s body. At the time of the discovery, the local neighbourhood watch and police were already conducting a search.

A shocked gallery in the Western Cape High Court gasped in horror when the naked body of the 16-year-old was shown in video footage lying face-down in the bushes.

Her parents had attended the trial for the first time.

Then Shireen relived the day in question:

Her hands shook and her eyes were red from crying, but she tried to control her emotions as she stood under oath.

She told the court that Franziska had been jogging to keep fit for her upcoming trip to Switzerland, where she would have taken part in a school exchange programme for three months.

The mom said her daughter was used to running in Tokai and when Franziska didn’t get back at the agreed time, she didn’t suspect anything was amiss.

“Franziska was not used to any kind of violence; that’s not how we raised our kids,” she said.

She said her daughter would not have fought back.

“She would give her phone.”

Father Andreas was said to be choked up with emotion:

“She was an angel. She was fantastic; we were a very close,” he sobbed.

Oliver admits that he attacked Franziska, but pleaded not guilty to the two rape charges and the murder charge.

According to his version of events he smoked mandrax before encountering her jogging:

“I grabbed her but she was strong and I dragged her to the bushes. I used her shoelace to tie her wrists, mouth; but I took her pants off but not her panties,” he said.

Oliver said during the attack, the 16-year-old passed out, but she was still breathing. He said he fled the scene, but got a sense that someone else was in the bushes.

Oliver said while in prison, a man had admitted to being at the forest on the same day.

It’s all just so god damn sickening.

[source:iol]