Murder of Leigh Matthews

Leigh Matthews (8 July 1983 - 9 July 2004) was a South African university student who was kidnapped and killed in 2004. She was born to Rob and Sharon Matthews, had a sister named Karen, and the family lived in the Johannesburg suburb of Fourways. She was studying for a BCom Finance degree at Bond University in the suburb of Morningside, and a party for her 21st birthday had been planned for the day after she disappeared. On Friday 9 July 2004, she was abducted from the parking lot at Bond University. A ransom demand was made to her father, who left R50,000 near the Grasmere Toll Plaza south of Johannesburg. He spoke briefly with his daughter by telephone afterwards, which was their last contact.

On 21 July 2004, a municipal worker cutting grass discovered her body in open veld beside the R82 highway in Walkerville, south of Johannesburg. She had been shot four times. She was found without clothing but had not been sexually assaulted.

On 24 August 2004, Superintendent Piet Byleveld, a police detective, took over the investigation and identified 24-year-old Donovan Moodley as his prime suspect. Moodley was also a student at Bond University but was not acquainted with Matthews. Byleveld arrested him outside his home in Alberton on 4 October 2004, and Moodley appeared in the Randburg Magistrate's Court on charges of murder, kidnapping and extortion.

On 25 July 2005, Moodley pleaded guilty to all three charges in the Johannesburg High Court. Judge Joop Labuschagne found him guilty as charged but ruled that he had not acted alone. Moodley was sentenced to life imprisonment for murder, 15 years for kidnapping and 10 years for extortion, and began serving his life sentence on 4 August 2005. In his initial account, Moodley said he had been driven by a need for money: he approached Matthews in the parking lot and asked for a lift, then kidnapped her, extorted the R50,000 from her father, and later shot her in a deserted field in Walkerville before burning his clothes. Friends and family wore white ribbons during the trial.

Moodley later sought to appeal. He first indicated he would apply for leave to appeal his sentence, then claimed he had not killed Matthews and had been framed, withdrawing that application on 18 November 2005; in 2006 he said he had not acted alone. A further application for leave to appeal was dismissed on 25 November 2009, his sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court of Appeal on 25 May 2010, and the Constitutional Court unanimously dismissed a further application on 4 August 2010. On 1 February 2012, an application to set aside his conviction or order a retrial was dismissed. Byleveld, who retired from the South African Police Service in 2010, wrote in a 2011 biography that he believed Moodley had accomplices, and a new investigating officer was appointed to the case in 2011.