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CALITZDORP murder accused Jaftha Andries yesterday admitted that he was with his niece, eight-year-old Charmaine Conradie, on the day she disappeared, but denied raping and killing the child.

He told the Oudtshoorn Circuit Court he sat at the sewage dam with her.

“Then we walked to the mountain and sat there and talked. She did not want to walk home with me and I left her there.”

Andries said testimony by Owen Ryneveldt, who was jailed in Oudtshoorn while he was awaiting trial, was not true and that he did not tell the prisoner anything.

He said Ryneveldt, who told the court last week that Andries admitted to him that he and Isak van Rooyen raped the child and bludgeoned her to death with a Coke bottle, threatened “to have sex” with him if he did not confess.

Andries, 43, was arrested after Conradie went missing on February 8 last year. Her decomposed body was found near the Calitzdorp rubbish dump a week later. Van Rooyen, also known as Sakkie Tiep, was arrested but was released due to lack of evidence.

“I always went to him at the rubbish dump when I had nothing to do and the Friday that Charmaine disappeared, I was there,” he told the court.

He accused both police and Kannaland mayor Nicky Valentyn of assaulting and threatening him to elicit a confession.

The case continues.