“I just could not take another night. I then walked to the lounge and pulled the trigger.”
These were the chilling words of murder accused Cathy van Oudtshoorn, who admitted in the Pretoria High Court yesterday that she had shot dead her adoptive father-turned-husband after allegedly being sexually abused by him since she was nine years old.
Van Oudtshoorn, 31, wept and hid her face as the court heard her application to be referred to the Weskoppies psychiatric hospital to back up her claim that she suffered non-pathological criminal incapacity when she shot her husband, Chris van Oudtshoorn, 58, in their Brakpan home in 2016.
The mother of two is accused on five counts: murder, robbery, possession of a firearm, unlawful possession of ammunition, and having intentionally defeated or obstructed the course of justice.
She told a harrowing tale of sexual abuse and torture by Chris, which allegedly began when she was legally adopted by the family at the age of nine.
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