File
A man who stabbed and dismembered a woman has been convicted on charges of premeditated murder and sent for mental observation.
The National Prosecuting Authority said Kyle Ruiters was also found guilty in the High Court in the Western Cape on Wednesday of violating a corpse and attempting to defeat the administration of justice.
This, for the brutal murder and dismemberment of the body of 32-year-old Lynette Volschenk, who he stabbed to death in her flat in Belville in August 2019.
NPA spokesperson, Eric Ntabazalila, said the court granted the State’s application for Ruiters to be held at Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital for a 30-day period of observation.
“This is after an initial report from the same institution declared that he has “definite psychopathic traits,” he said.
Ntabazalila said the Hospital also recommended that “if convicted, the court should be advised that he could be declared a danger to the physical and mental well-being of others.”
He said Ruiters provided grim details of the incident in his guilty plea, saying that he cut up her body into nine parts using a saw, and put her severed head in a backpack before disposing of it in the bushes along Jip de Jager Drive in Bellville.
Ruiters said in his plea statement that he was a drug addict who owed his dealer R30 000, so he hatched a plan to kill a person and rob them of their belongings.
According to Ntabazalila, Ruiters said told psychiatrists earlier that he was fascinated by serial killers, and had researched the topic extensively.
“Among others, he researched Ted Bundy but was most fascinated with the Zodiac Killer who has never been caught. He also researched the dismemberment of bodies,” he said.
Judge Robert Henny postponed the matter to 9 June, and Ruiters will be held in prison until a place is available at Valkenberg Psychiatric Hospital.
