Shrien Dewani - Honeymoon murder

[lonepinealex]

The plan for dinner changed on route, from fancy schmancy place to a quick snack wolfed down at breakneck speed. So it might have been cheap.

Where does the "breakneck speed" bit come from? In his statement he says he had R4000 for Tongo's fare, dinner and anything else they might spend money on. Was the amount they stole approximate, or are Dewani's amounts approximate? It's a small point really I suppose.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

No, I get Dewani's case on why he had money on him. I had previously thought there never was R10,000 in the taxi. Now I know better. It certainly is a mystery what happened to it, though. But now he admits he had it and planned to negotiate a price with the pilot face to face. He was not going to pay the full R15,000 up front, but offer half as a deposit and let himself be pushed up to R10,000 if need be. There is no suggestion Tongo would be handling either the negotiations or the money.

Dewani's statement is full of references to him negotiating stuff. He seems a typical asian business man in this respect: all prices are negotiable. If guilty, can he really have carried this principle to the extreme of short-changing two guys with a gun on their own turf? This incredible level of trust is one of many problems with the state's case.

I really don't get why you think he short-changed them. I mean technically, yes, they were owed another 1,000, but they got most of what they were after when they got the 14,000. And didn't Tongo meet him at his hotel afterward to get the additional 1,000 anyway? I think there was a video showing that additional payment.

As for the jewelry, it is possible either Dewani told them specifically not to take it or it is possible it would have been easily identified when they tried to hock it, so it was better not to take it.

I sure wish we could have trial transcripts!

 

[lonepinealex]

But they did take (and hock) some of the jewellery.

Anyway, until more stuff comes out in this trial I'm currently on the side of innocence. I just don't buy the proposed motive, it makes no sense.

 

[Agatha]

The motive makes sense to me, knowing (at second hand) the pressure to conform that can be put on members of some Asian communities. Dewani would not have been able to live his life as a bisexual or gay man - staying single would never be an option in his culture, and getting divorced even less acceptable.

Other aspects of the case make less sense to me. On the whole, I am teetering towards guilt (escaping through a car window which only winds down half way?) but I am trying to approach the trial with an open mind and waiting for the evidence to be explored in court.

 

[anglolawyer]

I really don't get why you think he short-changed them. I mean technically, yes, they were owed another 1,000, but they got most of what they were after when they got the 14,000. And didn't Tongo meet him at his hotel afterward to get the additional 1,000 anyway? I think there was a video showing that additional payment.

As for the jewelry, it is possible either Dewani told them specifically not to take it or it is possible it would have been easily identified when they tried to hock it, so it was better not to take it.

I sure wish we could have trial transcripts!

Are you bothered by the fact Qwabe doesnt know whether he was diddled out of 5,000 or 1,000? And if you were bank rolling a late night drive into a lawless township with two armed guys you didnt know, would you even consider stiffing them for a measly grand?

 

[lonepinealex]

The motive makes sense to me, knowing (at second hand) the pressure to conform that can be put on members of some Asian communities. Dewani would not have been able to live his life as a bisexual or gay man - staying single would never be an option in his culture, and getting divorced even less acceptable.

That is an extremely simplistic assessment.

 

[Agatha]

That is an extremely simplistic assessment.

Possibly. However, it's one I've arrived at after some considerable discussion with friends and colleagues within both traditional and more Westernised Asian families.

 

[lonepinealex]

So what's to stop him doing what countless other gay and bisexual men (and not just from his cultural background) have done, and live a double life? Are we to suppose that a rich, handsome widower in his early 30s wouldn't soon be under the exact same pressure to get married again?

Who's to say that Shrien didn't want to get married anyway? He might be bisexual (or gay), but he might also be culturally conservative and have wanted to be married. He might, as a successful business man, have wanted a trophy wife on his arm. He might have wanted children and to have them raised in a traditional family - that would be consistent with his claims to having had fertility tests.

The cultural pressure doesn't stop after the wedding. Ultimately the pressure is about having children and he may well have genuinely wanted to have them.

Yes his background is Indian, but Dewani is British and very wealthy. If he really wanted to be free to live a gay lifestyle he could have done so without taking such an extraordinary risk (especially while still at an age when remarrying would be an option were he really under such pressure to have a wife). It's not as if Anni didn't give him plenty of chances to get out of the relationship. According to his plea, the relationship was rekindled after he discovered he wasn't infertile - that would be consistent with him wanting to have children.

I think he is a traditional, culturally conservative man who was trying to have his cake and eat it (or, more charitably, trying to reconcile conflicting pressures) by having the apparently perfect life. We can see this in the cliched surprise engagement trip to Paris, the expensive engagement ring presented on a red rose. The ultra-traditional wedding and the plans for remodelling their future home to make it suitable for children.

Having Anni murdered days after the wedding in the expectation of being a free gay man is not consistent with any of that. If he really was just trying to keep the family pressure off, a double life would have been a much less dramatic way of achieving that long-term. He'd managed to keep his sexuality a secret up until then. Very unfair on poor Anni of course, and they'd both have been miserable, but far less of a crime than murder.

Divorce, btw, is not as taboo as it once was, even in India itself. It would have been perfectly possible for them to have divorced, especially given their wealthy, upper middle class, British / Swedish backgrounds.

And why would someone as rich as him opt for a cheapo assassination arrangement with a cabby he'd just met?

 

[Charlie Wilkes]

That is an extremely simplistic assessment.

Ah, but we have seen a precedent case in which a husband actually did commit murder for this very reason.

The motive is essentially plausible, and that is where sleight of hand enters the case. Dewani initially attempted to hide his sexual orientation - he lied about it because he realized that yes, it establishes a credible motive for him to have done what he is accused of doing.

That enables the prosecutor to center the entire case around the premise rather than the evidence. The eyes of the audience will follow right along: Aha! Dewani really DID have a motive, just as the prosecutor says! Therefore he is probably guilty.

The glaring weakness of the evidence, the improbable nature of the scheme described by Tongo, and the crucial points on which Tongo's story deviates from provable facts, will pass without much notice.

Cf Claus von Bulow. Nobody seemed to notice or care that Sunny von Bulow had been admitted to the ER with an almost fatal overdose of aspirin three weeks before the alleged murder attempt. Nobody cared that she had a massive overdose of barbiturates in her bloodstream when she lapsed into a coma. The focus was on von Bulow's highly credible motive, such that a sketchy story about insulin seemed to make perfect sense.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

So what's to stop him doing what countless other gay and bisexual men (and not just from his cultural background) have done, and live a double life? Are we to suppose that a rich, handsome widower in his early 30s wouldn't soon be under the exact same pressure to get married again?

No pressure or at the very least much less pressure would have been placed on a widower.

Who's to say that Shrien didn't want to get married anyway? He might be bisexual (or gay), but he might also be culturally conservative and have wanted to be married. He might, as a successful business man, have wanted a trophy wife on his arm. He might have wanted children and to have them raised in a traditional family - that would be consistent with his claims to having had fertility tests.

The cultural pressure doesn't stop after the wedding. Ultimately the pressure is about having children and he may well have genuinely wanted to have them.

Or Anni could have been a serious threat to his gay lifestyle. The fact that he was logged on during his honeymoon, before and after the murder is indicative of someone quite immersed in that lifestyle.

Yes his background is Indian, but Dewani is British and very wealthy. If he really wanted to be free to live a gay lifestyle he could have done so without taking such an extraordinary risk (especially while still at an age when remarrying would be an option were he really under such pressure to have a wife). It's not as if Anni didn't give him plenty of chances to get out of the relationship. According to his plea, the relationship was rekindled after he discovered he wasn't infertile - that would be consistent with him wanting to have children.

Did you see the wedding pictures? It is a difficult argument to make that he was more British than Indian. That wedding in Mumbai was phenomenal. It looks to me like he was on a train that kept gathering speed and he couldn't get off, or at least he believed getting off would have been worse than what he (allegedly) did.

I think he is a traditional, culturally conservative man who was trying to have his cake and eat it (or, more charitably, trying to reconcile conflicting pressures) by having the apparently perfect life. We can see this in the cliched surprise engagement trip to Paris, the expensive engagement ring presented on a red rose. The ultra-traditional wedding and the plans for remodelling their future home to make it suitable for children.

This is all conjecture.

Having Anni murdered days after the wedding in the expectation of being a free gay man is not consistent with any of that. If he really was just trying to keep the family pressure off, a double life would have been a much less dramatic way of achieving that long-term. He'd managed to keep his sexuality a secret up until then. Very unfair on poor Anni of course, and they'd both have been miserable, but far less of a crime than murder.

Divorce, btw, is not as taboo as it once was, even in India itself. It would have been perfectly possible for them to have divorced, especially given their wealthy, upper middle class, British / Swedish backgrounds.

And why would someone as rich as him opt for a cheapo assassination arrangement with a cabby he'd just met?

Are you Indian? Typically, they do not get divorced, at least not easily. Anni was now going to live with him. He would not have had the freedom he previously had with which to pursue men. The marriage increased the chances he would get caught too. How humiliating would that have been? The cheapo assassination fits perfectly when you consider the murder rate in South Africa. What a perfect cover.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

Ah, but we have seen a precedent case in which a husband actually did commit murder for this very reason.

Do you think he (M. Peterson) did it?

The motive is essentially plausible, and that is where sleight of hand enters the case. Dewani initially attempted to hide his sexual orientation - he lied about it because he realized that yes, it establishes a credible motive for him to have done what he is accused of doing.

That enables the prosecutor to center the entire case around the premise rather than the evidence. The eyes of the audience will follow right along: Aha! Dewani really DID have a motive, just as the prosecutor says! Therefore he is probably guilty.

The glaring weakness of the evidence, the improbable nature of the scheme described by Tongo, and the crucial points on which Tongo's story deviates from provable facts, will pass without much notice.

You could say this about any case with a strong motive.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

And the similarities here are interesting:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-26937466

Ginday, of Victory Lane, had flown to attend his arranged wedding to Varkha, 24, from India, at a lavish ceremony attended by up to 700 guests last year.

Jasvir Ram Ginday, 29, from Walsall, attacked Varkha Rani at their home with a metal pipe from a vacuum cleaner.

He strangled her then burnt her body in a garden incinerator, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard.

Judge John Warner told the court Ginday had struggled "being a gay man in a straight world". He told him he would serve a minimum of 21 years in prison.
But he had told a friend he was attracted to men as early as 2008, said prosecutor Deborah Gould.

 

[anglolawyer]

And the similarities here are interesting:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-birmingham-26937466

Thats the case Charlie was referring to. It came up a few pages back but further discussion of it is prohibited by Lionking.

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

Here is a question for you innocesti, when is the earliest you can find a reference to a helicopter flight? Supposedly, this helicopter flight was never mentioned in the press releases given by Dewani. It wasn't mentioned for 3 years (supposedly.)

 

[lane99]

Fact Check

..it's pretty clear that the tabloid press digging into his background...is at least as likely a reason for him deactivating his profiles as were the arrests...

Your argument would be quite weak even if it was premised on fact. But it's relative strength or weakness is a moot point for, since it's not based on fact, your argument is simply irrelevant.

The fact is the media were "digging into his background" on or before the time of even the first arrest in the case. But Dewani didn't deactive his gay orgy seeking profiles then. Nor did he delete them after a second conspirator was arrested. However neither of these two intended patsies could directly point to Dewani as the instigator of the plot to murder his wife.

It was only after the taxi driver- who up to this point Dewani was relying on to corroborate his story- was arrested that Dewani abruptly decided it was necessary to bury his bumhole buddy seeking activies even deeper than they had been before.
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[lane99]

When the evidence is against you...

...You could say this about any case with a strong motive.

You can say anything about any case. As long as one is willing to make assertions contrary to logic, reason, common sense, and the evidence. A truism on which the excerpt you cited is highly dependent.
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[lane99]

The BS-BC

...when is the earliest you can find a reference to a helicopter flight?

The earliest I'm aware of (which is probably the actual earliest) is in a British tv documentary that is shockingly credulous and biased in favour of Dewani.

In fact, they went so far as to cover up information the same presenter had reported previously in order to try and paint Dewani in a more favourable light.
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[Ampulla of Vater]

But they did take (and hock) some of the jewellery.

Anyway, until more stuff comes out in this trial I'm currently on the side of innocence. I just don't buy the proposed motive, it makes no sense.

So let me ask you this. If the car-jacking and attack was not previously arranged by S.D., why do you think he didn't use the 10,000 to bargain for the freedom of him and / or his wife?

 

[Ampulla of Vater]

The earliest I'm aware of (which is probably the actual earliest) is in a British tv documentary that is shockingly credulous and biased in favour of Dewani.

In fact, they went so far as to cover up information the same presenter had reported previously in order to try and paint Dewani in a more favourable light.
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I think this may have been the first thing I ever saw about this case.

So in the beginning, S.D. stated the money was to pay for Tongo's services and then, at some point, it became for this helicopter ride? Why would S.D. buy a helicopter ride in cash, through Tongo? That has to be one of the stupider moves an innocent S.D. would have made. Did they ever find a booking for a helicopter ride?

 

[anglolawyer]

Here is a question for you innocesti, when is the earliest you can find a reference to a helicopter flight? Supposedly, this helicopter flight was never mentioned in the press releases given by Dewani. It wasn't mentioned for 3 years (supposedly.)

The BBC documentary mentioned it several months ago. There is some CCTV film in the reception area at Mbolombo's hotel with audio in which a helicopter flight is mentioned after Tongo comes to see Mbolombo in a state of excitement. I cant remember where particularly the Beeb got it from.