Killing Vicki Terblanche was the ultimate goal — so whether she was suffocated with a pillow or not, the drugs she was given were so lethal she would have died anyway.
These were the findings in the Gqeberha high court on Wednesday, ultimately sealing former schoolteacher Reinhardt Leach’s fate.
Leach, who was in a relationship with Vicki at the time, was found guilty of murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances and illegal possession of a firearm.
Sitting in the dock, with his hands in his lap, he repeatedly shook his head as judge Samson Dunywa read the verdict.
Leach, 36, was arrested shortly after the Gqeberha mother’s murder in October 2021 and has been in custody since.
Vicki was drugged, suffocated, and her body buried in a shallow grave in Greenbushes.
She was allegedly murdered at the behest of her estranged husband, businessman Arnold Terblanche.
He pleaded not guilty to the charges and will stand trial later in 2025.
Leach’s friend, Dylan Cullis, had earlier pleaded guilty to his role in the murder and is serving an 18-year prison sentence, while Mario de Ridder Jnr turned state witness.
It is the state’s case that Terblanche wanted Vicki dead because the two were going through a messy divorce which would have cost him millions of rand.
They were also fighting over custody of their minor son.
During Leach’s trial, however, it became a blame game between Cullis and Leach as to who had suffocated Vicki.
While the state rejected Leach’s guilty plea on the murder charge, disagreeing with certain aspects of his version of events, he maintained that it was Cullis who placed the pillow over Vicki’s head.
Cullis, who played open cards with the police from the start, denied this, claiming it was Leach who suffocated his own girlfriend.
Dunywa, however, found it to be irrelevant because of the sheer volume of drugs in her system.
“All the perpetrators had one common goal which was to kill the deceased,” the judge said.
“There was a shared purpose to commit murder.
“The participants acted together to achieve that purpose.
“The participants conspired to buy drugs for the deceased to use, which led to her overdose after the initial plan to shoot her [failed].
“There is overwhelming evidence from both the state and the defence that the participants had a common purpose to remove the deceased from society.”
Aggravation and mitigation of sentence arguments will be heard on Wednesday afternoon.
The Herald
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