Autopsy reveals savage knife attack on woman

AN autopsy report that yesterday became part of the evidence in a rape and murder trial in the Windhoek High Court speaks volumes about the ferocity of the knife attack that claimed the life of a young woman at Keetmanshoop in February 2011.

A total of 54 stab and cut wounds were recorded on the body of the late Anna Martha Vries (25) when an autopsy was done four days after her violent death, according to the testimony that medical doctor Yury Vasin gave before Judge Alfred Siboleka.

Six of the wounds were penetrating into her chest, with one of those being a stab wound to her heart that would have been a fatal injury, Dr Vasin testified.

Vries also had cut wounds to her neck. Those injuries, too, were regarded as fatal, with the major blood vessels in her neck having been severed, Dr Vasin said.

In the post-mortem report that Dr Vasin compiled, he recorded 49 stab wounds on Vries’ body. The stab injuries were found on her nose, the back of her head, neck, both upper arms, hands and chest.

The injuries on her hands and arms suggest that she was trying to protect herself against the person who was attacking her, Dr Vasin said.

He testified that he also found marks on Vries’ neck that appeared to have been made by fingernails. Those marks were likely to have been related to an attempt to manually strangle Vries, Dr Vasin told the judge. Dr Vasin is the latest prosecution witness to testify in the trial of Keetmanshoop resident Melvin Raymond Hanse (24), who is accused of having raped and murdered Vries during the night of 9 to 10 February 2011.

Hanse is also charged with a count of defeating or obstructing the course of justice, or attempting to do so, with the prosecution alleging that he cleaned Vries’ blood off his clothes and knife and that he hid the knife in an attempt to hide his involvement in her death.

Hanse has pleaded not guilty to all three charges.

Judge Siboleka has heard that Hanse and Vries were seen in each other’s company at a bar at Keetmanshoop on the evening of 9 February 2011. Vries was found dead the next morning near another bar.

Hanse’s defence lawyer, Joshua Kaumbi, has told prosecution witnesses that according to his client he walked with Vries from one bar to the next. Hanse’s version was that he left Vries alive and well at one of the bars when he went home, Kaumbi has said.

One of the first exhibits to be submitted to Judge Siboleka as part of the evidence in the trial is a record of the pointing out of scenes that Hanse did in the presence of a police inspector on 15 February 2011.

Hanse told the inspector that he had drank some wine and smoked some dagga and mandrax before he met Vries at a bar. They later left the bar in each other’s company, supposedly to look for people who had a key of Vries, he said.

He told the inspector that they started to quarrel after they had left the bar. Hanse said he stabbed Vries under her left breast after she had broken a beer bottle and tried to stab him with a piece of the bottle. Their quarrel continued and he then stabbed her several times more while she was aiming at him with the broken bottle, he said.

Hanse also pointed out the place where he said he had stabbed Vries in the neck and she had fallen to the ground. That was also the spot where he proceeded to have intercourse with her, he told the police officer.

He later discovered that she had died, he said.

According to what Hanse told the police officer, he wanted to go to the police station to report the incident, but he turned around and went home when it started to rain.

The trial is continuing.

Advocate Karin Esterhuizen is prosecuting.