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Posted on 08/20/2003 9:23:12 AM PDT by ijcr

After Ann-Marie Engelbrecht suffocated her husband with a plastic bag in their bed, she went to the next room to smoke a cigarette with her friends.

The Joburg High Court heard this week how the 29-year-old nursing sister from Krugersdorp bought handcuffs from a sex shop on June 29 last year, tied her husband Jakobus Johannes Engelbrecht's hands behind his back and put a plastic bag over his head before joining her friends in another room.

Engelbrecht confessed to killing her husband and tearfully told the court she thought she had "no other choice" because he had made her life "a living hell" and because she saw no future for her and her five-year-old daughter with him.

In her bail application after her confession and conviction, she claimed her husband physically, verbally and emotionally abused her for most of their 10-year marriage.

At one stage they separated and she sought a divorce but he "terrorised" her.

"Every time I would have to move to get away from him, but he would always find me. He would terrorise me at work and even at home," she said.

Engelbrecht claims he was not just jealous, he was possessive and said it was so bad that she couldn't even speak to patients.

But after they separated she suffered financially. She said she had two jobs to support her and her daughter.

She got back together with her husband because she wanted a stable life for her child. But she said the abuse continued.

Engelbrecht told the court that she had been awaiting trial for 14 months and during her time in jail had seen her daughter only twice.

And she said that because her artificial eye hadn't been replaced for close to a year, she was suffering from severe headaches and nausea.

She had received a pension payout of R10 000 and could afford to pay for bail.

"I feel as if part of me has been taken away. I just sit there every day and do nothing," she said.

But the prosecution opposed her bail application and told Engelbrecht that she had not even bothered to show up at court for one of her domestic violence cases.

The prosecution also said that she had often left her daughter with her husband to go to nightclubs and on one occasion had stayed away for more than a week.

The court also heard that her husband had caught her in bed with another man, but all he had said at the time was that she should not do it in front of their child.

She allegedly tried to get a gun to kill her husband three days before the murder and even asked a colleague if he knew of a poison that would not show up in postmortem tests.

But Engelbrecht denied all the allegations. On the morning of the murder, she said, her husband had asked her to fetch a package containing a video, ointment and a magazine from a sex shop a friend of his owned.

While she was there she decided to buy the handcuffs that she later used on him.

She said the family had a braai and her husband drank rum all day. Later, after he had gone to bed and fallen asleep, she handcuffed him and suffocated him.

On Thursday, Judge Kathy Satchwell denied bail but ordered that Engelbrecht get immediate medical attention and that her glass eye be replaced before December 1, when the case resumes for sentencing.

Before Engelbrecht was taken back into custody, Judge Satchwell allowed her to spend a few moments with a friend.

What followed was a tearful goodbye as the rest of the court watched on in silence.

Marius Engelbrecht, the dead man's younger brother, said: " The worst is to watch my niece crying for her father every day. She sleeps with his picture under her pillow."

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