Rohde admits to secret meeting, text messages

Jason Rohde admitted yesterday that he had a secret meeting with his mistress at the conference where his wife‚ Susan‚ died.

Facing cross-examination from prosecutor Louis van Niekerk during his murder trial at the Cape Town High Court‚ the former property company boss said that while sharing a room at the Spier wine estate with Susan‚ he was exchanging messages with Cape Town estate agent Jolene Alterskye.

He admitted that he deliberately kept his distance from Alterskye during the Lew Geffen International Realty Franchises conference they were both attending in Stellenbosch.

But “on the Friday or the Saturday‚ Jolene and I met up briefly around the corner for 10 minutes,” Rohde told Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe.

The father-of-three admitted that after rekindling his affair with Alterskye‚ his plan was to live a double life.
“But leading up to Spier I had seriously started thinking about divorce as being the way forward‚” he said. “I had mentioned it to Susan, but I had never taken concrete steps.”

Van Niekerk accused him of avoiding the ultimate confrontation that would end the marriage. “Susan was led to believe by you that you were working on the marriage,” he said. “That was a complete lie.” Describing how he rekindled his relationship with Alterskye‚ even while he was seeing marriage counsellor Carol Nader with Susan‚ Rohde said he had started communicating with her by phone. “When I next went down to Cape Town‚ I saw her physically.”

Van Niekerk questioned Rohde about the couple’s final row‚ on the eve of Susan’s death.

Rohde said Susan had found him texting in the bathroom in the early hours of Sunday July 24 2016. “There could only be one person I was messaging at that time of the morning‚” he said.

They had a “major, major row” in the bedroom. There was a “physical altercation”. Rohde maintains Susan committed suicide. The case continues.