Wife killer Duane Singrew and cousin convicted of murder
In a gripping case, the Western Cape High Court has found Duane Singrew and Heinrich Jumat guilty of murdering Joan Singrew, shedding light on the tragic circumstances surrounding her death.
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A wife killer and his cousin were sentenced on Thursday by the Western Cape High Court, sitting in George, after being convicted for the brutal murder of Joan Singrew in November 2024.
Duane Singrew and Heinrich Jumat were found guilty following their arrest after Joan's lifeless body was discovered dumped in the Groot Brak River.
Senior State advocate Evadne Kortje secured the successful prosecution having proven to the court how the two kidnapped and murdered the 52-year-old victim.
Her partially decomposed body was discovered on November 25, 2024 after she was reported missing four days earlier when Joan did not report for duty and her adult daughter last saw her alive.
Joan was an employee at Go George, a scheduled public bus service operating in the Garden Route town. In a police search, Joan’s Go George uniform items - a jersey and blue cap - were found on a gravel road called the “Voetpad”.
Metres away, her body was discovered down a slope not far from where the jersey was found.
A rescue and tracing handler, who gave evidence in court, said that the search was very challenging where at times they had to abseil when the slopes were too steep and the area in which Joan’s body was found was described as difficult and dangerous with a steep ravine.
The handler told the court that it was only a branch that stopped the deceased body from descending further down the gorge and her body was not visible from the gravel road.
A week after her dumped body was found, Singrew and Jumat were arrested on November 29, 2024.
Postmortem results showed that Joan’s death was consistent with manual strangulation.
During trial, the court heard that throughout their relationship and marriage, Duane verbally, physically and emotionally abused the deceased, with her having taken out protection orders against her husband.
Both accused maintained their innocence by pleading not guilty.
According to court records, a white Ford Figo belonging to the couple - who shared two children aged 12 and eight - was used to drive on the gravel road and dump her body after an assault occurred at their Rosemore home. The court heard that Singrew in an effort to conceal evidence, mopped up blood spatter from the floor and walls.
During court proceedings, as one of the state witnesses, Dr Christa Hattingh - a specialist forensic pathologist for the Department of Health at the Medical Unit in Forensic Pathology in George - testified that cause of death was blunt force trauma to the head likely caused by hitting with a blunt object, kicking or fists to the area.
The State in heads of argument noted that Singrew initially responded quite confidently during cross-examination. “But it was when he was confronted with the video-footage, the DNA analysis, the blood spatter analysis that he started to fail in giving reasonable explanations.”
The State also said that Singrew’s “argumentative, haughty and dishonest nature was uncovered during the cross-examination by the state”.
“This Honourable Court, on several instances, had to intervene when the accused failed or was unwilling to respond to questions by the state or was sarcastic.”