Defence shreds Jayde witness

Chuckles, doubt over tale of booze, mystery cash

Riddles of stolen bottles of whiskey and a mystery bag of cash had a key state witness fumbling for words yesterday as the defence cast doubt on his credibility.

A former employee of murder accused Christopher Panayiotou told the Port Elizabeth High Court his boss had used his cellphone to contact self-confessed middleman Luthando Siyoni before Panayiotou’s wife Jayde’s disappearance on April 21 last year.

In addition, Mawonga Ndedwa said the businessman had asked him to give Siyoni R30 000 in cash after he found the bank bag stashed in the storeroom at Panayiotou’s OK Grocer in Algoa Park.

On April 23 – two days after petite Uitenhage teacher Jayde’s disappearance – Panayiotou allegedly gave him R1 000 to get rid of his cellphone and snapped his SIM card in half.

But Ndedwa said he had kept the phone and after seeing a newspaper report about Panayiotou months later, he had decided to hand it in to police.

However, defence advocate Terry Price SC accused Ndedwa of being a disgruntled employee fired for stealing and claimed to have a recording of him contacting Panayiotou’s mother, Fanoula, after he was fired, most likely to try to extort money.

Ndedwa’s bizarre response – that he had decided to get himself fired so that he could claim full unemployment benefits and had purposely drunk the Jameson whiskey in front of a security camera – had those in the court gallery chuckling.

Price said looking at Ndedwa’s cellphone billing, it was strange that he had used the very SIM card he claimed Panayiotou had destroyed after wards.

Panayiotou, 30, is accused of orchestrating his 29-year-old wife’s murder with Siyoni, who has admitted to arranging the hit men.

Ndedwa started working at OK Grocer and the Infinity Cocktail Bar next door as a merchandiser and handyman in 2012.

“Chris was nice to all his staff,” Ndedwa told state advocate Marius Stander.

He said Siyoni had been the bouncer at Infinity, but he had rarely seen him because they worked different hours.

Ndedwa said he had become unhappy at work after Panayiotou’s arrest, when Fanoula became his boss.

“We disagreed about the things she wanted to change,” he said.

He claimed that in about December, he had read a report in The Herald for the owner of a certain cellphone number.

“I decided to stop working [at OK] and informed the police that the number was mine.”

Asked by Stander why that specific number had only been used until April 23 last year, Ndedwa said Panayiotou had come to see him at the shop that day.

“He said I must part ways with the phone or the police would come looking for me.”

He said Panayiotou had given him R1 000 to buy a new phone and then broken the SIM card in half.

Ndedwa said Panayiotou had used the phone from time to time.

Stander said according to Ndedwa’s cellphone billing, a call had been made to Siyoni on April 8, two weeks before Jayde’s murder.

Ndedwa said he had only become aware of this when Siyoni called back one day looking for Panayiotou.

Before this, he had never even had Siyoni’s number saved on his phone.

Ndedwa said about a week before Jayde’s disappearance, he had gone into the OK storeroom to fetch tools and spotted a white bank bag filled with cash.

“I immediately phoned Chris . . . He said there was R30 000 inside and that I must give it to Luthando. But Luthando did not show up that day.”

The bag was gone the next day. He said only he, Panayiotou and his mistress Chanelle Coutts, and two other managers had had keys to the storeroom.

In February, when he left OK’s employ, he told Fanoula he would be giving the phone to the police.

“She was shocked and just stared at me. Then she drank a glass of water, ” Ndedwa said.

“I went out to smoke and Chris’s uncle came and told me if I do this I will be putting Chris in a hole.”

But doubt was quickly cast on Ndedwa’s version by Price.

Warning Ndedwa that he would be questioning him for hours, Price said he wanted to give him an opportunity to come clean.

“Let’s start with why you left OK,” Price said.

“You were caught stealing a bottle of whiskey, a disciplinary hearing was held and you were fired.”

Ndedwa piped up immediately, saying that he had in fact stolen 11 bottles of whiskey during his employ and that he had thrown the security tags from the bottles at the back of the fridge.

“I opened the bottle in front of the camera,” he said.

Ndedwa said this had been his way of “getting out” of his job at OK because he was fed up.

Asked why he had not simply resigned, Ndedwa said he had been scared that he would not be able to enjoy his full UIF benefits.

Told by Price that he had faced a total of 16 disciplinary hearings, Ndedwa retorted: “There were a lot of them, I didn’t count.”

Price said: “Then, 12 days after you were fired, you went to the police to nail the person who treated you so well.”

Told that the defence was in possession of a recording of a phone call he had made to Fanoula after he was fired, Ndedwa immediately put Price on the spot, demanding to hear it.

Price said he would play it to the court at a later stage.

Ndedwa said he might have phoned Fanoula at some stage, but could not remember the exact details of the call.

The trial continues.