Loadshedding delays testimony of Jason Rohde's daughters

Jason Rohde, the businessman convicted of murdering his wife, arrived at the high court in Cape Town on Wednesday to listen to his daughters giving evidence in his sentencing proceedings.

Rohde has been in Pollsmoor Prison since being convicted by Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe on November 8. He murdered his wife Susan in their hotel room at Spier in Stellenbosch in July 2016.

He arrived in court handcuffed and wearing a suit with running shoes. He was hoping to hear his daughters, but loadshedding halted proceedings until 12.30pm and he was led back down to the cells.  

His daughters - 20-year-old university student Kathryn and twins Josie and Alexandra, who wrote matric this year - were anxious about what would happen to them with their father in jail, Rapport reported.

Rohde, the former CEO of Lew Geffen Sotheby's International Realty, was also convicted of  attempting to defeat the ends of justice by staging the murder as a suicide.

Judge Salie-Hlophe found that Susan's death was consistent with manual strangulation and asphyxiation through external airway obstruction, such as smothering with a pillow.

She found that Rohde had tried to make it look as though his wife had hanged herself with the cord of a hair iron from a hook on the back of the bathroom door.

The judge ruled that Rohde’s testimony “was fraught with inconsistencies and he was economical with the truth”.