Tebogo Tshipi

Tebogo Tshipi

A widower and a sangoma have been denied bail after allegedly killing a woman and selling and buying her body parts and warm blood.

The Mankweng magistrates' court in Polokwane turned down the bail applications of Johannes Matsika, 34, and Julia Mabina, 45, last week.

They appeared before magistrate Fanie Smuts charged with murder after allegedly killing Jane Matsika, 31, and burying her in a shallow grave in the Matsika couple's yard.

Earlier, Matsika confessed to killing his wife, Jane, and selling her blood and body parts to Mabina, a sangoma, for R4500 in January.

Matsika was on the run until last Wednesday when a policeman arrested him at a church gathering in a neighbouring village.

After he had confessed to the killing and implicated Mabina, she was arrested on Thursday as an accomplice.

Then Matsika led a team of police investigators to the shallow grave in his own back yard where he and Mabina had allegedly buried his wife.

Police exhumed the woman's badly decomposed body so they could conduct a post-mortem.

Inside the shallow grave they also found a bucket and a screw- driver.

Matsika said he had used them during the gruesome killing.

Police said he had told them he had used the bucket to drain his wife's blood into it.

Smuts postponed the hearing to January 11 to give police sufficient time to conduct investigations.

They will carry out a postmortem into the woman's death, but early indications are that she was hit on the head with a blunt object.