A former Hawks forensic investigator says she's assisting police investigators working on the Christopher Panayiotou murder case.
The Port Elizabeth businessman has been accused of orchestrating the abduction and murder of his wife Jayde in April last year.Panayiotou, who has lost several attempts at bail, goes on trial with three co-accused in the High Court in October.A fifth suspect has turned state's witness.Speaking on the DMB on Algoa FM , forensic analyst, Theresa Botha, says her passion is for organised crime and violent crimes."Up until very recently I was still a member of the Hawks in Kwazulu Natal. Obviously with all the experience and cases taking me all over the country I have helped securing convictions in quite a large number of cases successfully in really quite a new field.
My passion is organised crimes and violent crimes. What I do is, I take bulk information, whether cellphone information or banking details, and I assist the police to interpret that in the context of an investigation, be it a location of the crime to people involved, to verifying peoples' versions when there are statements available. To help the investigating officer then further his investigation from that"
Botha also explains why she offered her professional services on the Panayiotou matter."I have volunteered to assist in this case. Cases like these are very close to my heart. We have had in the recent past the Dewani case and Oscar Pistorius case where the general public feel that justice wasn't served. So, being a female and an emotional creature, I take it a very personally to act or to speak on behalf of the deceased in cases like this. Being objective still but feeling myself drawn to cases like these."Botha further explained why people from SAPS would need her assistance..
"It's a very sad story. There's this wonderful company, it's UK based, that markets and provides access to the software which provides the tools to allow you to do this and draw the inferences from it, which is actually the edge that we have. But when it comes to actually identifying the correct people, now to do what I do you need a specific mindset. You need a person that is analytical, objective, that has a passion, because it's very labour intensive."
