Ex-caretaker jailed for storeroom murder at city school

FORMER Centaurus High School caretaker Johnny Venter has been sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for murdering a woman and then hiding her body in a storeroom on the school grounds for more than a year.

Venter’s trial came to a swift end when it returned to the Windhoek Regional Court on Thursday last week after a break of close to four months. Magistrate Gert Retief, who had convicted Venter on a charge of murder on November 22 last year, sentenced him to a 14-year prison term, of which four years were conditionally suspended for five years, after he had heard final arguments from Public Prosecutor Belinda Wantenaar and defence counsel Johan van Vuuren.Venter turns 46 this week.Magistrate Retief remarked during the sentencing that the final purpose of punishment by a court should be to deter the wider public from committing similar crimes.Courts should also strive to be consistent in the sentences they imposed, he added, noting that only shortly before Venter’s case was finalised, he had sentenced someone else for murdering a woman at Okahandja almost two years ago.There were similarities between those two cases, the Magistrate said.In both, a woman was killed by a man, alcohol had played a role, and the men who committed the deed had acted out of anger.He sentenced Venter to the exact same term of imprisonment that the accused man in the previous case received.Venter had been prosecuted on a charge that he had murdered an unidentified human being in his flat at Centaurus High School during April 2002.The victim is suspected to have been 26-year-old Maritsa Dorethy van Wyk, who disappeared around the time of the killing.She was originally from Rehoboth and was the mother of two children, who remained with her husband at Rehoboth when she moved to Windhoek.Venter was arrested and charged after skeletal human remains were discovered wrapped up and bound in a blanket and plastic bags in a disused storeroom on the grounds of Centaurus High School on May 23 2003.He had stopped working at the school as a janitor shortly before that.After his arrest, Venter offered two versions to the Police on how the body had ended up in the storeroom.Initially he claimed he had accidentally strangled a prostitute he had picked up in Windhoek’s Ausspannplatz area when she started screaming at him in his flat.Later on, though, he claimed his father, Johannes Hendrik Venter, who is now 69 years old, had actually been responsible for the woman’s demise, and that he had offered to hide the body and shoulder the blame for the deed to protect his father.Venter Snr and his son were both prosecuted in the trial that started before Magistrate Retief in late September last year.Venter Snr was acquitted when the Magistrate decided that Venter Jnr’s accusations that implicated his father were improbable and had to be rejected as lies.The troubled relationship between the two men again featured when Van Vuuren addressed the Magistrate before sentencing on Thursday.Van Vuuren gave the court a pre-sentence report that a clinical psychologist, Dr Johan Rieckert, had compiled on Venter’s behalf.In it, Rieckert related that Venter had gone through a difficult and traumatic childhood, especially in the most important formative years for any child, which is up to the age of seven.Venter and his sister grew up in a children’s home in South Africa.”The loss of his mother at a very young age and the constant rejection from his father had a detrimental effect on the emotional wellbeing and development of this man,” Rieckert reported.”Considering these facts, there is a big possibility that Mr Venter could distort the truth, in order to protect his father, as he could believe that his father would somehow have appreciation for him if he did this.”Mr Venter seems to be the victim of neglect in his childhood years, which could cause an individual to act in an abnormal way,” Rieckert stated.It was unfortunate that Venter had a bad childhood, but it should also be remembered that the person that he killed also had children who remained behind without a mother, Wantenaar replied when she addressed the court.Van Vuuren had asked the court to impose a sentence that was “saturated with mercy”.”That day when the deceased was murdered, he had no mercy for her,” was Wantenaar’s response.Magistrate Gert Retief, who had convicted Venter on a charge of murder on November 22 last year, sentenced him to a 14-year prison term, of which four years were conditionally suspended for five years, after he had heard final arguments from Public Prosecutor Belinda Wantenaar and defence counsel Johan van Vuuren.Venter turns 46 this week.Magistrate Retief remarked during the sentencing that the final purpose of punishment by a court should be to deter the wider public from committing similar crimes.Courts should also strive to be consistent in the sentences they imposed, he added, noting that only shortly before Venter’s case was finalised, he had sentenced someone else for murdering a woman at Okahandja almost two years ago.There were similarities between those two cases, the Magistrate said.In both, a woman was killed by a man, alcohol had played a role, and the men who committed the deed had acted out of anger. He sentenced Venter to the exact same term of imprisonment that the accused man in the previous case received.Venter had been prosecuted on a charge that he had murdered an unidentified human being in his flat at Centaurus High School during April 2002.The victim is suspected to have been 26-year-old Maritsa Dorethy van Wyk, who disappeared around the time of the killing.She was originally from Rehoboth and was the mother of two children, who remained with her husband at Rehoboth when she moved to Windhoek.Venter was arrested and charged after skeletal human remains were discovered wrapped up and bound in a blanket and plastic bags in a disused storeroom on the grounds of Centaurus High School on May 23 2003.He had stopped working at the school as a janitor shortly before that.After his arrest, Venter offered two versions to the Police on how the body had ended up in the storeroom.Initially he claimed he had accidentally strangled a prostitute he had picked up in Windhoek’s Ausspannplatz area when she started screaming at him in his flat.Later on, though, he claimed his father, Johannes Hendrik Venter, who is now 69 years old, had actually been responsible for the woman’s demise, and that he had offered to hide the body and shoulder the blame for the deed to protect his father.Venter Snr and his son were both prosecuted in the trial that started before Magistrate Retief in late September last year.Venter Snr was acquitted when the Magistrate decided that Venter Jnr’s accusations that implicated his father were improbable and had to be rejected as lies.The troubled relationship between the two men again featured when Van Vuuren addressed the Magistrate before sentencing on Thursday.Van Vuuren gave the court a pre-sentence report that a clinical psychologist, Dr Johan Rieckert, had compiled on Venter’s behalf.In it, Rieckert related that Venter had gone through a difficult and traumatic childhood, especially in the most important formative years for any child, which is up to the age of seven.Venter and his sister grew up in a children’s home in South Africa.”The loss of his mother at a very young age and the constant rejection from his father had a detrimental effect on the emotional wellbeing and development of this man,” Rieckert reported.”Considering these facts, there is a big possibility that Mr Venter could distort the truth, in order to protect his father, as he could believe that his father would somehow have appreciation for him if he did this.”Mr Venter seems to be the victim of neglect in his childhood years, which could cause an individual to act in an abnormal way,” Rieckert stated.It was unfortunate that Venter had a bad childhood, but it should also be remembered that the person that he killed also had children who remained behind without a mother, Wantenaar replied when she addressed the court.Van Vuuren had asked the court to impose a sentence that was “saturated with mercy”.”That day when the deceased was murdered, he had no mercy for her,” was Wantenaar’s response.