Any day that you appear in court on charges of murdering your wife is going to be a bad day, but yesterday’s proceedings saw some damning evidence against Rob Packham come to light.

All eyes were on the Cape Town High Court as Lodewyk Janse van Rensburg, the logistics manager at Twizza (the beverage production company where Packham was the general manager), testified on behalf of the state.

Janse van Rensburg’s testimony is of particular importance because Packham tried to use his former employee as an alibi.

TimesLIVE reporting below:

…Packham called him in the afternoon and asked him to lie about his whereabouts earlier that day.

Janse van Rensburg said Packham told him he had a fight with Gill the previous night and she had disappeared. He sent Packham sympathetic messages and his former boss detailed the lengths to which he had gone to find his wife…

In one of the messages, Packham said Gill’s car had been found with an unknown body inside.

“Honestly, worst day of my life. Family is traumatised. Tragic and scary,” wrote Packham. “As I was last to see Gill I am a ‘person of interest’ to Saps, not a suspect but under scrutiny. Very difficult. They found her car burnt out with unidentified body in it. Terrifying and tragic. ID (identity) not clear until Dna (DNA) done by Wed (Wednesday) or Thur (Thursday). Sorry not much use to anyone right now.”

Despite his anxiety, Packham reminded his subordinate not to forget about their fictitious 8:30am meeting. “Nb (NB) our 8:30 hook up at the plant on tburs (Thursday) pls,” he wrote to Janse van Rensburg.

Interesting how, in the midst of such an intense family tragedy, he stresses the fact that Janse van Rensburg must lie on his behalf.

Here’s Janse van Rensburg recalling the phone conversation in greater detail in an IOL article:

“I arrived at work just after 8am. I then did my prep work for a meeting to be held in Soneike at 10am. I left the office at about 9.30am. I did not see Packham at work that morning.

“When I got back to the office after my meeting, I received a call from Packham at 12.23pm and he asked if I was with other people, then asked me to step away from them to a private area.”

“He then told me if anybody calls, (I was) to say that we had been at the production plant for a meeting at 8.30am. I agreed,” he said.

He said he agreed to cover for Packham because he sounded stressed and was looking for his wife, which seems fair enough.

Just in case you can’t remember the specifics of the crime, here’s IOL once more:

On the day she went missing, February 22, 2018, she did not arrive for work at the usual time of 7.30am. Her body was later found in the boot of a burnt out BMW near the Diep River train station.

The State alleges that her husband used a blunt object to hit her on the head and, with the alleged intention of obstructing the course of justice, set her BMW on fire while her body was in it.

On Monday, Packham’s youngest daughter, Nicola, had testified about her father’s infidelities, saying that her mother had found out in October 2017.

You may remember Rob’s truly pathetic attempts to contact his former mistress using a fake identity.

Nicola also stated that the day before her mother went missing, her father had said in a counselling session, with wife Gill present, that he still had feelings for his mistress.

She added that her mother had been “very upset about it”.

Here’s the moment Packham was led from the High Court:

The trial will continue today.

[sources:timeslive&iol&iol]