Baby Jordan’s killers denied parole
|Published
Baby Jordan Leigh Norton was stabbed in the neck in her family's Lansdowne home on June 15, 2005. Baby Jordan Leigh Norton was stabbed in the neck in her family's Lansdowne home on June 15, 2005.
Cape Town - Sitting across the table from baby Jordan-Leigh Norton’s killers was a moment her family had been dreading for more than a year. Her grandfather Vernon Norton said he had steeled himself for the encounter – a parole hearing almost 10 years in the making – as the raw emotion of the girl’s death threatened to overwhelm him once again.
But a journey of fear, stress and anxiety ended in relief on Wednesday after the Drakenstein Prison Board denied two of her killers, Zanethemba Gwada and Bonginkosi Sigenu, their parole.
“We went there on our own terms, we wanted to make some sort of representation of our wishes,” said Norton, his voice calm as he recounted the events of the six-hour-long hearing. “We are relieved, satisfied with the board’s decision.It’s a win for us because we have been fighting for the whole time… But it also took us back to 2005 all over again.”
In that year his granddaughter was only a six-month-old infant living at her family’s home in Lansdowne. On June 15, four men – pretending to be from a courier company – arrived and told the child’s mother, Natasha Norton, they were delivering a parcel. Once inside, they stabbed Jordan in the neck.
A forensic pathologist would later testify that the single wound which killed the infant had been applied with such force that it had severed the trachea and left incisions on her vertebrae.
It emerged that the killing had been masterminded by Dina Rodrigues, who was dating Jordan’s biological father Neil Wilson at the time.
In a full confession, revealed in court, in papers presented as part of Rodrigues’ application for special leave to appeal her life sentence in 2013, she said she was infatuated with her then boyfriend, and became obsessed with getting the infant out of their lives.
That obsession led her to a taxi rank where she met two men, including Gwada and Sigenu, and sealed baby Jordan’s fate with a R10 000 payout.
In 2007 Rodrigues and the four men were convicted and sentenced to a life behind bars.
For the Norton family it began a process of healing, of coming to terms with the death of Jordan. Norton said until a year ago, they were on a positive path. But news that Gwada and Sigenu were applying for parole pulled them back into the horror of 2005.
On Wednesday morning, Norton, Jordan’s mom, Natasha, and uncle, Dylan, arrived at the Drakenstein Correctional Centre to argue against the killers’ release.
For the infant’s grandfather, seeing Gwada and Sigenu back on the streets was an “injustice”. “It would go against all that we have been through so far. It is my firm belief that people who commit such heinous crimes should see out their full sentence.”
The hearing, which began at about 10am, dragged into the late afternoon. Norton said they each had a chance to say their part. By 5pm Department of Correctional Services spokesman Simphiwe Xako confirmed that the pair’s parole had been denied.
They will have to argue their case again next year on June 17.
Norton said the decision was a “big relief”. “We are going to go back to Cape Town… There is a family gathering planned. This is not a celebration, it is just an outlet of relief that we have come this far.”
Cape Argus