Question mark over murder evidence

AN alleged blood spot that was found on the trousers of murder and rape suspect Junias Fillipus prompted his arrest six months ago, a Police officer testified during a bail application by Fillipus yesterday.

Fillipus (32) is accused of carrying out a deadly attack on schoolgirl Magdalena Stoffels (17) in a riverbed near Windhoek’s Dawid Bezuidenhout High School, where she was a pupil, on the morning of July 27 last year. He is charged with rape and murder in connection with the incident.At this stage of the investigation of Stoffels’s death, there is only circumstantial evidence that could link Fillipus to the crime, a Police officer acknowledged yesterday.After close to half a year in Police custody, Fillipus launched a bail application in the Windhoek Magistrate’s Court in Katutura on Wednesday.The bail hearing continued yesterday with testimony from Police Constable Stephen Amatundu, who arrested Fillipus on July 27, and Warrant Officer Moses Snewe, who is the officer investigating the case.Amatundu related that he found Fillipus where he was washing clothes in the same riverbed where the fatally injured Stoffels had been found earlier that morning.The place where Fillipus was found was between 300 and 500 metres from the scene where Stoffels was found, both officers said.According to Amatundu, Fillipus reacted aggressively by picking up a stone in his right hand when he spotted Amatundu approaching him. Amatundu said he was wearing his Police uniform at the time. He said Fillipus dropped the stone when he drew his firearm.He said Fillipus was dressed only in boxer shorts, while the clothes he had been washing were drying on rocks at the scene.A pair of blue overall trousers was one of the items of clothing. Amatundu claimed he saw blood spots on the front of the trousers. When he asked Fillipus why there was blood on the trousers, Fillipus told him that it had been on the garment when he was given the trousers by someone he had worked for, Amatundu said.Fillipus told the court on Wednesday that he was washing the clothes because there was mud on it after his brother, a construction worker, had used the clothes for work.Amatundu also told the court that he noticed fresh scratches on Fillipus’s knees and back.Having seen the alleged blood spots and the scratch marks, he decided to arrest Fillipus in connection with the attack on Stoffels, he said.Fillipus was taken to the Katutura State Hospital for a medical examination after his arrest, the court has heard. Snewe testified that at the hospital he, too, saw scratch marks on Fillipus’s back and bruises on his knees.He also observed blood stains on the front of the trousers that were found with Fillipus, he claimed.Answering a question from Fillipus’s defence lawyer, Titus Ipumbu, Snewe told the court that at this stage the only evidence against Fillipus was circumstantial. He acknowledged that this circumstantial evidence was not at this stage supported by any other evidence.When Ipumbu asked him if he was excluding the possibility that someone else might have killed Stoffels, the officer conceded: ‘Yes, someone else could have done it.’The court heard on Wednesday that semen was found inside Stoffels’s private parts when an examination was done on her body six days after her death. A sample of this semen was sent to a forensic science laboratory in Canada for DNA analysis, but the results have not been received yet, the court was told.The bail hearing is scheduled to continue on Thursday next week, when Magistrate Elina Nandago will hear arguments from Ipumbu and Deputy Prosecutor General Heidi Jacobs.