The Western Cape High Court gave Cassidy Hartzenberg a 20-year prison sentence for the murder of his aunt, Cape Town Magistrate Romay van Rooyen.
Hartzenberg (20) pleaded guilty and was convicted on charges of murder and theft on Friday, 1 March 2024.
This is according to a SAPS press statement released earlier today.
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An additional six years for motor vehicle theft was added to the 20-year sentence for murder. He will serve both charges concurrently.
The incident dates back to 10 September 2022, when the body of Van Rooyen was discovered at her home in Marina Da Gama, Muizenberg.
It was established that she was murdered via strangulation, and her vehicle was missing from her home.
An investigation was launched by the Hawks’ Serious Organised Crime Investigation, which led to the recovery of her vehicle in Mitchells Plain two days later and Hartzenberg’s arrest on 27 September 2022.
As reported by News24, Hartzenberg killed his aunt after she ‘refused to give him money to help him with a job application’.
Van Rooyen was a magistrate at the Department of Justice in Vredenburg, and started her career as a prosecutor in 1997, prosecuting in the district and regional courts, before she became an acting magistrate in 2016, where ‘she presided at various Magistrates Courts in the Western Cape’.
She was appointed as an additional magistrate for the Vredenburg Magistrates Court from 1 October 2021 onwards, as per a media statement released by the South African Government on 14 September 2022, four days after Van Rooyen’s murder.
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