Ex-cop was dead for 24 hours, court hears

Ex-cop was dead for 24 hours, court hears

Your brother's death will be on your conscience we are going to dump his body in a dumpster somewhere."

This was how Nigerian rent boys Anthony Chinedu and Victor Judge announced their intention to kill Hendrik Adams, a client they were on Wednesday convicted of kidnapping, torturing and killing.

But by the time the men made their threat to the 54-year-old's brother Petrus, an ex-policeman, he had been dead for at least 24 hours.

As Judge and Chinedu promised, Hendrik Adams's battered body was found with a urine-soaked sock in his mouth, stuffed into a dumpster outside a Berea, Johannesburg, house two days after their call to Petrus Adams - despite at least five different attempts to give them the R57 000 they demanded for his safe return.

Johannesburg High Court Judge Lucy Mailula on Wednesday used records of the phone calls that passed between Judge, Chinedu, Petrus Adams and his brother's close friend Susanna Claasens - over the July 2005 week that Hendrik Adams was held captive - to find the two killers guilty.

Disturbing transcripts of these calls revealed how an increasingly ill Hendrik Adams repeatedly pleaded for his family to pay the R57 000, while one of his captors told them: "I promise you this man is dying.

"His hands and feet are swelling up," one of the men said, before terminating the call.

Both Judge and Chinedu denied any involvement in Adams's killing, despite having made incriminating statements to the police. They also claimed they were not sex workers operating under the names "Black Stallion" and "Orchid".

The State proved that Chinedu was Airports Company South Africa employee Hendrik Adams's "favourite companion" and had left the Pretoria home he shared with his now-deceased partner, Petrus Nel, and driven to the Joburg suburb of Yeoville on July 1 to meet him.

The date turned deadly after Judge and Chinedu beat and tied up Adams, later demanding money they claimed he owed them from his friends and family. Their last drop-off demand, made to Petrus Adams, turned sour after they saw that he was accompanied by policemen.

It was then that they made their threat to kill Hendrik Adams, who died as a result of severe head injuries. He had also been starved.

Speaking to The Star on Wednesday, Petrus Adams said he knew "even before they made that threat my brother is dead".

"For two days before that they wouldn't let me speak with Hennie. They always had some excuse for not letting me speak to him. I was a policeman for 19 years I knew they were finding excuses.

"I even said to my wife 'Hennie is dead'."

Describing his brother's seven-day kidnapping as "the week from hell", Adams said he felt good about the convictions of Judge and Chinedu. "They got what was coming to them," he said.

Judge and Chinedu, who both claim to have young children, were due to be sentenced on Wednesday morning. They faced terms of life in jail.

This article was originally published on page 2 of the star on August 16, 2007