Accused Steven Fortune pleaded guilty in the Western Cape High Court to raping and murdering 12-year-old Michaela Williams. (Photo: Vincent Cruywagen)

Fortune told the court Michaela regained consciousness while he was raping her and that he ripped off her skirt and choked her while he continued raping her.

On Wednesday 2 December he pleaded guilty before Judge Robert Henney on two counts of rape, murder and kidnapping. A small crowd including Candice van der Rheede, the director of the Western Cape Missing Persons Unit, supported Michaela’s parents, Beatrice Adams and Mogadien Loggenberg, at the Western Cape High Court.

Beatrice Adams, mother of murdered Michaela Williams, still struggles to come to terms with her daughter’s death. (Photo: Vincent Cruywagen)

Before the court proceedings commenced a distraught Adams told Maverick Citizen: “My stomach is turning and I don’t want to talk about the incident that claimed the life of my child.”

The 12-year-old girl went missing on 7 January from her home in Pelikan Park, Cape Town. A frantic search failed to deliver any success but the following day Fortune, a convicted rapist who was out on parole, after admitting to police that he had killed Michaela, took investigators to a vacant plot on the corner of 9th Avenue and Schaapkraal Road, where he had dumped her body and covered it with a blanket and leaves.

Supporters protesting outside the Western Cape High Court demanded a tough sentence for the accused, Steven Fortune. (Photo: Vincent Cruywagen)

Michaela’s parents and supporters listened attentively as Fortune recounted the horrific events that unfolded on the day of the murder. He told the court the first time he spoke to Michaela on that fateful day he made up his mind that he was going to rape and murder her.

“I lured her away by telling her that I will be buying her cake. We walked till 9th Avenue, when she refused to walk further. I grabbed and pulled her against her will across the main road. I took her to the back of the vacant plot and wanted to talk to her. She screamed and I then placed my hand over her mouth,” he said.

Fortune said Michaela struggled with him and she fell to the ground. He tore off the orange top she was wearing and choked her with his hands. Michaela fought back and hit his glasses off his face, causing the top of his nose to bleed.

He choked her with the orange top until she lost consciousness and then raped the defenceless girl. While raping her she regained consciousness.

“I pulled off her skirt and tied it around her neck. I used the skirt to choke her and continued to rape her until I was done,” his plea explanation reads.

His barbaric actions didn’t stop there and Fortune said he saw two concrete blocks and threw them on to her head to make sure she was dead. He covered her body with a blanket and tree branches. He joined residents in the search for the missing girl after the murder.

A day after the murder Fortune asked a family member to call the police. He handed himself over to police, admitted raping and murdering Michaela, and took police to the gory scene. Fortune had been released from prison a year before after being convicted and sentenced for rape.

In February 2005 he raped and stabbed an eight-year-old girl and left her for dead. He stabbed the girl in the heart and was under the impression she was dead but she miraculously survived. It was her testimony that secured a 20-year sentence for Fortune. But he was released in 2018 after serving 13 years.

The girl, now 24 years old, has written a letter to the court which will be read out in mitigation of sentencing on Friday 4 December. In her letter, she states that she and Michaela were failed by the justice system when Fortune was released in 2018.

“I am lucky to be alive, but not Michaela. Had he stayed in prison then Michaela would have been alive today. He stabbed me in the heart and I have scars on my body because of the operations I underwent. Every time I look at my scars it reminds me what he has done to me,” her letter reads. DM/MC