While the long-awaited trial of alleged wife killer Arnold Terblanche is set to reach the city’s high court soon, one of his co-accused is gearing up to plead guilty to his alleged role in the murder of the businessman’s estranged wife, Vicky.
Dylan Cullis will be back in the Gqeberha magistrate’s court next week for a date to be set for his case to be transferred to the high court for a plea.
Cullis, along with Terblanche, and Vicky’s boyfriend Reinhardt Leach, are accused of conspiring to murder her in October 2021. Vicki’s body was later found buried in a shallow grave on a plot in Greenbushes.
Her remains were pointed out to the police by Cullis a day after she was reported missing by Leach on October 20 2021.
On Friday, the magistrate’s court heard that while the case had been postponed to March 23 for a high court date to be set for the murder trial, Cullis’s name would be removed from the charge sheet once his plea bargain with the state had been finalised.
Senior state advocate Marius Stander told magistrate Abigail Beaton that Cullis would return to the same court next week.
Stander further told the court the murder case would be joined with Terblanche’s other case, where he stands accused of conspiring to kill his co-accused and a state witness, as well as six counts of conspiracy to defeat the ends of justice.
Terblanche faces additional charges of conspiring to have Cullis, Leach and state witness Mario de Ridder Jnr killed, as well as paying R550,000 and gifting a car to a man posing as a police officer to influence which judges would hear his bail appeal, and to have investigating officer Colonel Kanna Swanepoel removed from the case, among others.
Terblanche failed at his second attempt at bail based on new facts in December when magistrate Kriban Pillay found that he posed a flight risk and that he had the propensity to interfere with state witnesses.
Terblanche has since brought an application to appeal against Pillay’s decision not to grant him bail, which is expected to be heard in the Makhanda high court on February 9.
In his notice to appeal, Terblanche cited 28 reasons why he believed Pillay had erred in dismissing his bail application based on new facts.
He claimed Pillay had failed to conduct a proper evaluation of the evidence before him, failed to properly consider and apply the principles of law applicable to a bail application, failed to consider the strength of the state’s case, and that he gave a one-sided judgment, among others.
Terblanche, Leach and Cullis face charges of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and defeating the ends of justice.
Leach and Cullis abandoned their bail applications shortly after their arrests.
It is alleged that Leach and Terblanche conspired to kill Vicki, and that Cullis was present when the murder took place and her body disposed of.
According to the state, Vicki was drugged and then suffocated on or about October 18 2021 at her Mill Park home and her body was stuffed into the boot of a car and driven around town before it was buried.
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