Bouwer ex-wife jailed over killing

By AINSLEY THOMSON and GILL GIFFORD


The first wife of Dunedin psychiatrist Colin Bouwer - who poisoned his third wife here three years ago - has been jailed for two years for helping the couple's son to murder his wife in South Africa.

Bouwer, the former head of psychiatric medicine for Healthcare Otago, was convicted in November 2001 of murdering his third wife, Annette, and is serving a 13-year non-parole sentence.

His 27-year-old son, also called Colin Bouwer, is on trial in South Africa for the murder of his wife, Ria, 23, who was found strangled in the bath of their Johannesburg home four years ago.

Now Mariette Kruger - Bouwer snr's first wife and the mother of Bouwer jnr - has received a prison sentence after she confessed this week to helping to cover up Ria's murder.

Kruger, aged 53, told the Johannesburg High Court how she and her son tampered with the crime scene so it would appear as though a person had attacked, raped and killed Ria.

In the months after the murder it was reported that Ria's husband and their 1-year-old daughter, Melissa, had found her strangled in the guest bathroom of her home.

Nothing appeared to have been stolen and her killer had not broken in.

In her written guilty plea read out in court, Kruger admitted having thrown objects such as bubble-bath balls on the floor to make the scene appear disturbed, and providing a false alibi for her son.

Police worked on the case for several months without success, before Ria's mother employed a private investigator to conduct a separate investigation.

As the investigator narrowed in on the killer, Melissa was kidnapped. A frantic search lead to her being found two hours later, unharmed, in a utility vehicle belonging to Kruger.

After the kidnapping, Ria's mother was sent five straw voodoo dolls with moulded genitals. Then she was attacked in her driveway by a man who punched her in the face and broke her leg.

These attacks have not been solved.

The investigations led to the arrest of Colin Bouwer jnr.

His mother was taken into custody several months later and charged with being an accessory to murder.

Kruger's defence team asked that she be sentenced to house arrest, saying she needed medical care following a workplace injury some years ago. But the prosecution sought her imprisonment and contended that Kruger showed no remorse.

Judge David Makhoba told Kruger she would have adequate access to medical care while in prison.

The fact that she had helped her son to alter the crime scene to deceive police into believing that her daughter-in-law had been killed by intruders was an aggravating factor.

Although Kruger's motive remains unclear, it was alleged that she felt the victim was not a suitable wife for her son.

The case of the father and son, both charged with separate murders of their wives, has received extensive coverage in New Zealand and South Africa.

Bouwer snr, who moved to Dunedin from South Africa in 1997, was found guilty of poisoning Annette, 47, with a cocktail of drugs that replicated the symptoms of an insulin-producing tumour but could not be detected in normal blood tests.

The prosecution said Bouwer murdered her because of his affair with another Dunedin psychiatrist, Anne Walsh, and for a substantial insurance payout.

After his father was convicted, Bouwer jnr said his father found it easier to run away than face his responsibilities.

"He wasn't much of a father ... He never phoned ... I always had to do it.

"When I was younger he could never remember how old I was, or in what standard I was at school.

"I was always the one making contact.

"He was never interested in me or my sister."


- Additional reporting: NZPA