I'm feeling terrible
Murder accused wants to apologise to familyApril 23, 2004 Edition 1
Barbara Cole
The "SMS murder" accused, Wesley Neil Julyan, broke down and cried yesterday when asked how he felt about what had happened.
Julyan, 19, who has denied strangling stranger Kenneth Gary van Aardt, 51, with a shoelace - he claims his drinking friend Jaco Strauss was the murderer - said that he felt "terrible" and that he wanted to apologise to the victim's family.
When state prosecutor Dorian Paver put it to him that he had expressed no feeling about the case, Julyan said he had and had even written a letter to Van Aardt's relatives.
His father, Clive, confirmed after yesterday's hearing at the High Court Southern Circuit in Ramsgate that he had shown the letter to relatives at a previous court hearing.
Van Aardt, of Amanzimtoti, was killed on March 1 last year after offering the men a lift because their car had broken down on the South Coast.
The state says the motive for the murder was to rob him of his Ford Ikon car.
Julyan claims he had been under the influence of alcohol and two Ecstasy tablets, which he said Strauss had given him, and also under the influence of Strauss.
Strauss, 22 - who has already been sentenced to 15 years in jail after pleading guilty to the murder - says it was Julyan who murdered the victim, using his (Strauss's) shoelace.
Strauss sent text messages to a former girlfriend in England about the murder, which is why the case has been dubbed the "SMS murder" trial.
After Interpol was tipped off, Port Shepstone-based detectives mounted an investigation.
Van Aardt's decomposing body was found in a shallow grave eight weeks after he went missing.
Julyan alleges that Strauss had ordered him to hold the victim's arms down and threatened that if he let go, Strauss would "f . . . ing kill" him and his family.
Strauss then strangled the victim, he alleges.
He said the Ecstasy tablets had made him feel "fuzzy" and that he was not thinking straight. He was also scared of what Strauss might do to him in light of the threat.
"Are you saying you were like some robot just doing Jaco's bidding?" Paver asked.
"Yes," he replied.
"If Jaco told you to jump off a cliff, would you have done that as well?" Paver asked.
"I would have at the time," he said.
He conceded that asking someone to hold a man's arms down in the middle of the night was somewhat "strange behaviour".
Julyan claimed Strauss had "fed" him Ecstasy tablets to make use of him.
He insisted that he "wasn't part" of the murder plan and that's why he had denied the charge.
Julyan said he later told a friend, Wayne Larmont, that he (Julyan) had murdered Van Aardt.
But he had said this only because Strauss had told him to, he claimed.
When Paver said that people who committed such crimes did not normally tell others to spread the news, Julyan replied: "I just did what he told me to do."
Julyan testified earlier this week that he had told Larmont he had murdered the victim to "act like a big shot" and gain respect "because I was a nobody".
In a later letter to Larmont, he asked why he would have used Strauss's shoelace to commit the murder if he himself had shoes on.
"I'm still so young and haven't even begun to live life yet, and because I told you a lie my whole life to going to be thrown away!"
The case is proceeding.
