Biehl Killing Confessions Read in Court

His hands soaked with blood, one of the South African youths accused of murdering Newport Beach student Amy Biehl knelt over his young victim to stab her and later boasted of killing a white person, according to testimony in a Cape Town court.

Details about Biehl’s brutal slaying emerged Wednesday when two of the murder defendants’ statements to police were admitted into evidence and read aloud in court.

The statements, although challenged by defense attorneys for Mzikhona (Easy) Nofemela and Usumzi Ntamo, are crucial pieces of evidence in the continuing trial of Nofemela, Ntamo and a third youth, Mongezi Manqina.

A fourth suspect, a 15-year-old who was not arrested until months after the three now on trial, will be tried separately.

In one of the statements admitted by Judge Gerald Friedman, Ntamo told authorities that Manqina wielded the knife, which he had borrowed from a friend.

“Mongezi got a knife and he stabbed the white woman,” Ntamo told authorities in the statement. “He was on his knees over the woman when he stabbed her. . . . He said he was proud to have killed a white woman.”

A 26-year-old student activist and Fulbright scholar, Biehl was concluding a 10-month research fellowship at the mainly black University of the Western Cape when she was murdered. She had also been helping to develop voter registration programs for the national elections that would put an end to apartheid and install Nelson Mandela as South Africa’s first black president.

On Aug. 25, 1993, the day she was stoned and stabbed to death, she was driving some of her fellow students home to the black township of Guguletu when her car was stopped by a band of youths looking for whites to attack.

In his statement, Ntamo told how he and the group of black youths went to Guguletu after a meeting of the militant Pan Africanist Student Organization and came upon the car carrying Biehl and her friends.

“We went to Bonteheuwel (an area of Guguletu) to destroy the boere stuff (whites),” Ntamo stated. “We met a car, and there was a white woman and two black women in it. We (tried to) stop it and when it would not stop we threw stones at it,” he said.

Biehl was fatally injured when she was pulled from the car.

“While the white woman was on the ground I threw bricks at her,” Ntamo stated. “I (hit) her about three times on the head.”

When the police arrived, the youths ran away, Ntamo said.

“Mongezi still had the knife and his hands were full of blood,” he said.

Police initially arrested seven youths in connection with Biehl’s death, but three were released on the first day of the trial last November because a state witness refused to testify out of fear for his safety.

In his statement, Nofemela admitted to throwing stones at Biehl’s car.

Judge Friedman’s ruling on the confessions ended months of deliberation over whether the statements had been coerced from the suspects during beatings by the police.

All of the defendants have since denied any role in the killing.

The judge’s ruling brought a measure of relief Wednesday to Biehl’s mother, Linda Biehl, who worried that exclusion of the statements would have left prosecutors with little evidence.

State Advocate Nollie Niehaus, who is handling the case, had said that exclusion of the statements would “virtually ruin us,” since several people who allegedly witnessed the attack have refused to talk to police or recanted their statements out of fear for their lives.

“At least now, I think there will be some accountability,” said Linda Biehl, who recently returned from Cape Town where she was monitoring the court proceedings.

“I’d like to see this resolved. I wish that these guys could be remorseful.”

Although the confessions contained graphic accounts of her daughter’s death, Biehl said Wednesday that she was anxious to review them.

Four weeks ago, Biehl said she was provided a copy of her daughter’s autopsy report in which authorities found that Amy Biehl had suffered a fatal blow to the head and a stab wound through the heart.

“Originally, we believed that she might have survived had she been cared for more quickly,” Biehl said. “But we were told that her injuries were too serious. At least that was some relief.”

Biehl’s murder was condemned at the time by Mandela, who was elected to the presidency in April, nearly eight months after the widely publicized killing.

The trial was scheduled to continue Thursday, but may be postponed due to a strike by court interpreters who translate the proceedings into Xhosa, English and Afrikaans, three of the nation’s official languages.

The Associated Press and Reuters news services contributed to this report.