[imagesource: Facebook]
It’s approaching two years since Meghan Cremer’s body was found dumped in bushes in Olieboom Road, Philippi.
Cremer lived in a cottage at Vaderlandsche Rietvlei Farm in Philippi, where she stabled two horses, and worked at the Woodstock Bakery as well as selling horse ribbons and products she made.
Three men were arrested in connection with her murder and two men, Charles Daniels and Shiraaj Jaftha, have already been convicted in the Wynberg Regional Court.
The third, Jeremy Sias, a worker on the farm, pleaded not guilty to murder in the Western Cape High Court yesterday. News24 reports:
He faces four charges in total, included aggravated robbery, theft, and obstruction of justice, in that he allegedly dumped Cremer’s stolen iPad in a toilet and destroyed her cellphones to avoid being traced.
Cremer, 29, was strangled with a blue ribbon. She went missing on 3 August 2019 and is believed to have been assaulted and killed that day. Her body was discovered on 8 August – Sias pointed out her body…
Gillian Cremer, Meghan’s mother, took to the stand and detailed the horrors of the days after she went missing. Gillian had travelled to Cape Town from Knysna, where she lives, as soon as she suspected Meghan was missing.
Her last correspondence with her daughter was at 5PM on August 3, after which messages didn’t deliver and calls went to voicemail.
She then phoned farm manager Thomas Mbalula and asked him to check on Meghan’s cottage. TimesLIVE below:
Mbalula was the second witness called. He recalled the events on the day she went missing.
“On Saturday evening I tried to contact Meghan after I noticed her puppy was roaming around the farm. She would never leave the puppy on its own. I took the dog and went to her cottage door, which was closed with the security gate locked, and her car was gone. I started phoning her to find out where she was.”
…“I know the accused — Jeremy Sias [above]. He was employed at the farm as a labourer and he was responsible for maintenance and upkeep on the farm. He was working on the farm on August 3,” said Mbalula.
Mbalula opened a missing person case with SAPS in Philippi on August 4.
August 8 brought heartbreak for the family:
Her daughter’s face was so badly disfigured, she was only recognised by the ring she had been wearing since she was 15-years-old, bereft Gillian Cremer said…
“We couldn’t identify her face properly because of her injuries… We were shown her body. We gave them identifying scars that she had, that they checked. We asked them to look on her left hand for the ring she wore since she was 15. They found it on her and confirmed to us.”
Sias said he took Cremer’s car for a ride on August 3 but didn’t know at the time that it belonged to her or that she had been murdered.
TimesLIVE journalist Anthony Molyneaux has previously mapped out Sias’ whereabouts in a video from 2019:
The trial is set to continue for three weeks.
