I’m not big into judging other people’s lifestyles, but one has to draw the line at murder.

It’s been called “a tangled web of murder, divorce and perjury, overshadowed by unanswered questions”, so there will be plenty of attention paid to what goes on in the High Court in Pretoria today.

At the centre of it all is Cathy van Oudtshoorn [above with father/husband Chris], who married the man who adopted her as a toddler, and now stands accused of his murder.

Times LIVE below:

…van Oudtshoorn, 31, allegedly fatally shot her father/husband Chris van Oudtshoorn, a 57-year-old electrical engineer from Brakpan, in April 2016 while he was watching TV.

Deepening the intrigue is Chris’s ex-wife Jorina van Niekerk, 55, who has been convicted and jailed as an accessory to the murder. She pleaded guilty to defeating the ends of justice.

Van Niekerk, who is serving a five-year sentence, is believed to have been roped in to the murder by Cathy.

The murder took place in their Brakpan home, and it is alleged that Cathy attempted to make it look like a robbery.

Via an IOL report from back in February, here’s how that played out:

Van Niekerk, during her trial, said in a statement that that her daughter fetched her in April 2016, to come and visit her and her husband.

“She told me she wanted to kill the deceased. I told her to think carefully about it.’

The mother said on the day of the incident she went to a mall with her daughter, where the latter spoke to two men.

“She requested them to kill the deceased for an amount of R2 500. One said that was too little and he wanted R5 000. She then gave them R2 500 and said she was going to give them the remaining amount after they had killed the deceased.”

Van Niekerk said her daughter [van Oudtshoorn, below] took the men to her house to show them where her husband normally sat in the evenings.

According to her her daughter cooked for her husband and served him his food that night. “She told me if the two gentlemen are not going to do it (murder)  she will do it herself. I told her she must not do it, but rather divorce him instead.”

Van Niekerk said she went outside at a stage to speak to her husband over the phone. “I heard a loud bang. My daughter called me and said I should drive her to the garage to put petrol in the car. She then told me she killed the deceased…”

Van Niekerk said when they got home, her daughter told her to help her take things out of the cupboard and throw them on the floor, so that it looked like they were robbed while they went to the petrol station.

The mother said she assisted and when the police arrived, she lied and told them that they had  been robbed.

According to a family source, Cathy may plead temporary insanity, and they have been left shocked by a murder they say nobody saw coming:

“Chris was such a good man, he supported Cathy and Jorina. They had everything – cars, houses, whatever they needed. They lived together with his biological daughters for a long time.”

Jorina remarried in 2014, in the same house she used to share with Chris.

The unusual but close-knit family spent time together at least once a week, the family member said.

“Jorina and Cathy were very close all that time. They still had a mother-daughter relationship. And every year we would have huge Christmas and New Year celebrations. There were no signs of any problems between them and I knew [Chris] was in love with Cathy, and well, now we believe Cathy shot him.”

Whilst family sources have been hesitant to go on the record, an interview back in 2016 saw one source allege that Chris’ murder may have been linked to a change in his will, which had taken place three weeks prior.

According to Cathy’s lawyer, Thembi Bokako of Legal Aid, quoted in the Times LIVE story from earlier today:

“It has been stressful for her but she’s coping under the circumstances. She has a new baby, who was born in June.”

It is not mentioned who the father of the baby is.

They sure do things differently in Brakpan, right?

[sources:timeslive&iol]