The Brett Kebble trial has been roaming the news cycle lately, in case you didn’t know.

Incidentally, if you didn’t know, you should probably plug in to the world. It’s quite kiff here. Don’t delude yourself, you’re not a reclusive oil painter, or a brilliant poet laureate wallowing in a malaise of red wine, cheap cigarettes, loose women and angst. You’re just uninformed.

Anyhow, despite the popular name for the sordid affair, Brett Kebble isn’t on trial, he is very much deceased.

The man on trial is one Glenn Agliotti, esq. Glenny Baby allegedly promulgated the premature demise of mining magnate Brett Kebble by sourcing a few ne’er-do-wells to shoot Brett Kebble in a staged hijacking that was in fact a perverse assisted suicide.

That’s right. Kebble allegedly paid Agliotti to have himself whacked. Kebble found motive for offing himself when it became apparent that his commercial interests were up the creek, sans paddle. Evidently he wanted to safeguard his family’s financial future by successfully activating his life insurance policy. Witness testimony indicates that Agliotti in turn delegated the task to Clint “Irony” Nassif, Kebble’s head of security, who in turn enlisted the help of psychopath and part-time heavyweight boxer, Mikey Schultz.

Dammit. What an absolute mindbang.

Sounds sordid, doesn’t it? I bet the whole thing could be turned in to a gritty noir drama set on Jozi’s crumbling streets. Couldn’t it? No, it couldn’t.

Never in the history of criminals have scary criminals made themselves look so frikkin silly.

Just read this, please.

A plan to carry out the murder on September 26 failed at the last minute because Schultz’s car overheated. Nassif had told him that Kebble was “furious”, saying “we didn’t know what we were putting him through”.

And on the second scheduled attempt…

“I leaned out the (car) window, pointing the firearm at him… he just lifted his shoulder, his right shoulder, and looked in front… I aimed at his head and pulled the trigger, but the weapon did not discharge,” Schultz told the court, describing the night of September 27 2005.

After the gun failed to discharge the first time, he and two other state witnesses, Faizel Smith and Nigel McGurk, drove off. After inspecting the weapon they returned and found Kebble in his vehicle and tried again.

“I leaned out of the window and pointed the firearm… once again the gun did not discharge.”

Schultz said he then told Kebble to wait for him. The trio drove away for the second time. He inspected the gun, they made a U-turn and returned to where they had left Kebble.

However Kebble had driven off. They stopped their car and saw him coming towards them. They flashed their headlights at him, he made a U-turn and “stopped hard” next to them.

“I could see the disappointment in his face, he gave me a look like to say ‘get this over with, you’re putting me through hell’,” Schultz said.

Schultz then leaned out of the window and this time aimed for Kebble’s body.

“I pulled the trigger, this time the gun fired. I kept firing.”

Schultz could not remember how many times he pulled the trigger, but recalled that one of his instructions was that Kebble should not suffer.

Yeah, I guess he didn’t suffer much. I mean, knowing that you’re going to die, and then, not dying, and then knowing that you’re going to die, and then not dying again, and then, knowing that you’re going to die, and then not dying again, and then knowing you’re going to die, and then dying; that’s not suffering too much, right?

But then what can you expect from a hitman who does this in his spare time.

But that’s not the best of it. This morning all parties wondered in to court to find the private stenographer’s equipment had been nicked. Not the government stenographer’s equipment, mind you, but the private stenographer’s equipment, delaying the trial. This is what happens when you bring bumbling criminals together in one place. They can’t even go on trial with dignity.

Now who do you suppose is going to be in the market for a stenograph? You’ll never be able to shift that kind of merchandise, Agliotti.

Flip, Glenn. Just control yourself for a few frikkin hours a day, OK?

[Source : News24]