[imagesource: Paul Cremer/Facebook]

It’s been just over two years since horse rider Meghan Cremer’s body was found dumped in the bushes in Olieboom Road, Philippi, Cape Town.

Cremer – who lived in a cottage at Vaderlandsche Rietvlei Farm in Philippi, where she stabled two horses, and worked at the Woodstock Bakery as well as selling horse ribbons and products she made – went missing in August 2019 only to be found strangled with one of her horse ribbons.

During the trial, it emerged that one of the farm workers Jeremy Sias, who was employed by Cremer and rented a cottage in the nearby informal settlement, confessed to murdering her.

Sias’ recorded confession was played out in court, showing him bent over in a dense bush in Philippi in August 2019, pointing out Cremer’s bound body to police before crying out “I didn’t mean to kill her”.

TimesLIVE reported that after a five-day manhunt from the police, this confession was thought to be damning evidence.

But then, in January this year, Sias was found not guilty of murdering Cremer, shocking everyone involved in the case.

In short, the story is that on Saturday, August 3 2019, at 6:45 PM Cremer’s car was seen on CCTV leaving her cottage and driving towards the bottom gate of the farm – it is not clear if she was driving.

Two days after a missing person’s case was reported when she didn’t show up for work, two men allegedly affiliated with gangs in Grassy Park were caught driving her white Toyota Auris without number plates.

That’s when Sias was implicated, leading police to her body, and confessing to her murder and theft of her car, bank cards and phones three days later.

But judge Elizabeth Baartman saw that despite this evidence, the fact that police allegedly assaulted Sias and coerced him to confess to murdering Cremer and point out the body put a spanner in the works of justice.

Sias said that the police promised “he would receive bail and a short prison term” if he confessed:

It was this trauma of assault and interrogation that led him to show police where Cremer’s disposed body was located and say he “didn’t mean to kill her”.

Sias’ story is that he found Cremer’s car and took it for a spin, found her handbag under the seat containing cellphones and bank cards – which he used and destroyed (and was charged for) – and then found her body in the boot:

Startled, he consumed more alcohol and dumped the body in secluded bushes before attempting to sell the vehicle. He said he didn’t want to go to police or tell his employer about the incident because they might “see him in a bad light”.

A turning point in Sias’ acquittal of murder also came from another telling testimony.

Linda Mohr, Cremer’s friend and owner of the farm where she was renting the cottage, along with her son James, also a friend of Cremer, took the stand as defence witnesses.

Besides describing how Cremer had lost a lot of weight before her death, had large amounts of cash on hand, and had been leaving the farm at odd hours leading up to her death, there were also messages between her and James where she speaks about her consumption of cocaine:

Cremer’s message to James: “I was far from sober I’m fairly sure it was border line illegal’ and ‘don’t tell anyone about the drugs especially not Nikki’, followed by ‘Don’t take large amounts of cocaine. The sweats that come afterwards are not worth it’

It is suggested that there could have been a drug dealing angle to her death.

In Baartman’s judgment, she pointed out how important Mohr’s testimony was to her findings, calling her a “credible witness and displayed a commitment to ‘fair play'”.

Sias was just found guilty of the theft of Cremer’s car and credit card, as well as defeating the ends of justice by “destroying items which belonged to the deceased, cellular phones and throwing the iPhone in the toilet to avoid detection by the authorities”.

[source:timeslive]