Marc Batchelor’s murder on Monday night was almost certainly an orchestrated ‘hit’, with two men on motorbikes opening fire on his vehicle outside his home in Olivedale, close to Bryanston.

Journalist Mandy Wiener says that the close grouping of bullets seen on the windscreen of the car is indicative of semi-automatic weapons, adding that the killing was similar to organised crime hits seen in the Johannesburg area.

Furthermore, after making contact with underworld figures Mikey Schultz and Nafiz Modack, it appears that Batchelor may have upset some dangerous people.

As with most things in life, hitmen can come relatively cheap, or they can be pricey. According to independent forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan, who spoke with IOL, hitmen for hire are readily available in the country:

[He] said gunmen for hire were always on standby to take a job.

O’Sullivan said it had become easy to hire “unprofessional” assassins, with prices ranging between R50 000 to R100 000.

“You will recall Shrien Diwani’s wife was murdered for R50 000. A professional ‘job’ if that’s the right word can go for R200 000 upwards. I know of one such attempted hit we investigated a few years back when a person from Portugal contracted someone from Russia to do a hit in South Africa for a million rand,” O’Sullivan [below] said.

The forensic investigator recalled how the Russian national came to South Africa and allegedly hired imprisoned Czech national Radovan Krejcir to do a hit for R500 000.

He claimed that Krejcir then hired someone else to do it for R250 000 and the price went lower as a third hitman was contracted to do the job for R100 000.

In that example, the target of the hit was injured but survived, so maybe you get what you pay for.

O’Sullivan also called the lack of arrests from the SAPS “shocking”, although law enforcement’s appetite (and willingness) for dealing with organised crime has been sub-par for as long as I can remember.

For those who run in these circles, the sound of a motorbike may be startling:

Motorbike hits are not new to Gauteng.

The first well known such hit was on state witness Hazel Crane who was killed before she could testify against Lior Saadt, a suspected notorious Israeli mafia figure.

“Her husband (Shai Avissar) had previously been battered to death with a cricket bat and his body found in a shallow grave near Pretoria. Avissar was a crime associate of Saadt and they ran a protection racket in the Jewish community,” O’Sullivan said.

Not the kind of company you want to keep.

Batchelor hit the headlines post-career for his involvement in a number of nightclub brawls in 2007. He was sacked from SuperSport in the aftermath, but popped up again during the trial of Oscar Pistorius.

Having claimed that Pistorius once threatened to break his legs, he was down to testify as a state witness. Although he wasn’t called on, he did have some terse exchanges with Oscar’s family members.

His brother, Modack, and some former teammates have come out in support of Batchelor’s character, saying that he was often misunderstood, humble, and loyal.

[source:iol]