A luxury estate with impenetrable boundaries and top notch security. This is the picture painted of De Zalze estate where the gruesome murder of three members of the Van Breda family took place.

In court on Tuesday‚ however‚ a different image has emerged: according to Piet Botha‚ defence for Henri van Breda‚ the Stellenbosch Detectives Unit provided stats on 190 incidents at De Zalze since December 2002 – including 24 house break-ins.

Botha also said that they had called in a blood spatter expert and footprint expert to examine the scene. He said the footprint expert had concluded that “shoe prints of blood on the scene were that of the first investigating officer”‚ who is now deceased.

This information Botha presented in support of Van Breda’s plea statement that it was an outside intruder and not him who had carried out the crime.

Botha started the day’s proceedings by questioning Sergeant Adrian Kleynhans‚ who was the first one the scene. During his testimony last week Kleynhans said that Van Breda seemed “panicked and emotional” in contrast with his original statement which said he was “traumatised“.

 “You gave this statement in court to purposefully bring the court into a mis-perception about what happened‚” said Botha.

 Kleynhans denied that this was his intention and blamed the discrepancy on “human error“‚ adding that his original statement was correct.

He said‚ however‚ that Henri was “emotional” and “shaky” when he approached him to comfort him.

 At one point‚ Judge Siraj Desai reprimanded Botha for the way in which he was speaking. Botha responded “I do have a loud voice” to which Desai responded‚ “Yes you do have a booming voice but it is not necessary to raise it.”

Van Breda stands accused of the triple murder and the attempted murder of his sister in 2015.