High-profile convicted murderers, each having made headlines for killing a defenceless woman, and after being jailed continued to change their stories and fight for their freedom, will this week make their bids for parole.
Paralympian Oscar Pistorius, who shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp dead as she cowered behind a locked toilet door in the middle of the night, will appear before the correctional services parole board on Friday.
And two days before that, on Wednesday morning, it will be the turn of Donovan Moodley, the man who kidnapped Bond University student Leigh Matthews, held her captive for hours while he extorted money from her father, before he forced her to undress and then shot her in the head. Her body was kept in cold storage and found in Walkerville 12 days later.
Model Steenkamp was shot on Valentine’s Day in 2013, while Leigh was murdered the day after she turned 21 — on July 9 2004. Family representatives for both women will be at the hearings, and both plan to oppose them. And both offenders will be fighting for their freedom, having launched court actions to force correctional services to grant them their parole hearings.
“We’re a bit apprehensive — this is not something we wanted. But we are ready to represent Leigh as best as we can. We don’t think Moodley deserves parole, and our biggest concern is that the system is anything but victim-centric. The offender holds all the cards and has more rights than the victim,” Rob Matthews told TimesLIVE Premium the day before the hearing.
Moodley’s parole hearing is a re-run of his first failed bid in January last year, where a gruelling eight-hour hearing ended with the parole board declaring: “It would be an insult to justice for murderer Donovan Moodley to be released on parole.”
Unwilling to accept defeat, Moodley stuck to the promise he made in an open letter written in November 2004 in which he declared: “I want to make this clear. I will stop at nothing, leaving no legal means untried. It is my right to pursue justice.”
Last week he petitioned the Joburg high court for the failed hearing to be scrapped and a new one ordered on grounds that the proceedings had not been handled properly and that the parole board had failed to consider his eligibility for parole fairly and objectively.
Referring to a list of claims and accusations by Moodley and his dissatisfaction with some of the documents before him, judge Stuart Wilson granted Moodley a new hearing. This was set down for March 29.
As the hearing drew near, Moodley petitioned the court several more times, accusing correctional services of violating his rights, failing to give him documents he believed he had a right to and failing to properly follow protocols leading up to the hearing.
In a sudden about-turn a week before the hearing, Moodley filed an urgent application to stop his parole hearing from going ahead, restraining correctional services, the parole board and minister of justice from proceeding while he waited to hear whether he had succeeded in his efforts to charge them with contempt of court.
In refusing Moodley’s request to delay the hearing, judge Wilson pointed out that the parole board was obligated to deal with all material submitted in an open and fair manner, and a failure by correctional services to provide copies of all documents to Moodley two weeks ahead of time, as demanded, did not mean they were in contempt. He pointed out that by asking for a postponement, Moodley was negating his own claims that his parole hearing was an urgent matter.
The hearing will not be open to the public and has been set down for the day. Moodley will be representing himself, while the Matthews family will be accompanied by their lawyer Tania Koen — who is also representing the Steenkamp family.
“We will be opposing parole because we believe Moodley is a danger to society, he is not remorseful, he is a self-confessed killer and yet spent years trying to have his conviction set aside. He has made numerous court applications over the years, each time hurting the Matthews family,” Koen told TimesLIVE Premium.
Koen will also accompany Reeva’s mother June Steenkamp to the Pistorius parole hearing on Friday. Dad Barry Steenkamp is too ill to travel, but June will be making oral representations to oppose bail and to comment on the victim impact statement.
The Steenkamps have been vocal about their belief that Pistorius has never been truthful, and that his claims that he had killed their daughter “by mistake”, believing she was an intruder hiding in the toilet, were dishonest.
June Steenkamp is understood to be planning to oppose parole on grounds that she believes Pistorius is a danger to society, that he has lied numerous times — as confirmed in Supreme Court of Appeal judge Willie Seriti’s finding that Pistorius was not remorseful, had not been truthful in court, lacked remorse and “does not appreciate the gravity of his actions”.
There are many parallels between the two cases — both offenders are angry men, both victims were defenceless and both were shot four times. The men describe themselves as model prisoners, claim they are rehabilitated and deserving of parole.
Both offenders have fought hard for their freedom, have used every available legal avenue to their benefit and both qualified for early parole through luck.
In Moodley’s case, this was because of a Constitutional Court judgment that found that all offenders sentenced to life between August 1993 and September 2004 must be considered for parole after serving 12 years and four months.
For Pistorius, the SCA twice corrected the 13-year five-month sentence after his lawyers successfully argued that time he had served during the state’s appeals against his original culpable homicide conviction should be factored into his parole eligibility. This prompted him to file a court application to compel the parole board to convene the hearing he feels entitled to.
Moodley has been in prison since October 2004, while Pistorius was jailed in October 2014. The Matthews family have declined to meet Moodley for a victim offender dialogue. Barry Steenkamp met with Pistorius. After the meeting, Steenkamp told the UK Daily Mail that Pistorius had wept when he read him a letter from June, but that the Blade Runner had continued to deny having shot Reeva deliberately.
According to Koen, both hearings will be closed, and both will end with a parole board decision.
“But even if the board says yes, they will not be allowed out immediately. There is a process that will follow that takes at least a month, so there is no chance of them going free immediately.”
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