The Panayiotou trial is crawling along in the Port Elizabeth High Court.

Christopher Panayiotou, the suspected mastermind behind the murder of his wife Jayde back in April 2015, has denied the charge.

A video played out to the court this morning, though, could do a whole lot of damage to his case.

The video is “a conversation between Panayiotou and alleged middle-man Luthando Siyoni,” reports eNCA, which was “secretly recorded in a sting operation during the investigation against Christopher”.

Christopher hired Siyoni, a bouncer, to recruit hitmen to kidnap and kill his wife.

After the state and defence spent several weeks arguing, it was ruled on Monday by Judge Dyalin Chetty that the video evidence was admissible in court.

In the video, Christopher appears to implicate himself in his wife’s murder by telling Siyoni that he should “stop trying to contact him as his phone was being monitored by the police”.

He carries on:

You’ve been phoning me all day and they’re tracing my phone. Now you must destroy it. I have to tell them you’re phoning me else they’ll think I’m involved. You have to throw it away; the phone and the sim card my boy.

These boys [the killers] made it big. I told you to let them do it outside the house and take the bags and the rings and then they didn’t take the watch or anything. They just left everything there. You see, so it looks like a hit now. They’re after me, I can’t just meet you.

Watch the video below:

Panayiotou now faces an additional charge of defeating the ends of justice.

Times LIVE has a full transcript of the conversation here.

And so the case continues.

[source:enca&timeslive]