After a two-year silence, Neil Wilson, father of murdered six-month-old baby Jordan Norton, has spoken out for the first time, saying he still does not know why his former lover, Dina Rodrigues, killed his baby daughter.
Wilson was speaking on the investigative television programme Carte Blanche on Sunday night. Rodrigues was sentenced last week to life imprisonment for hiring four men to kill the baby at her Lansdowne home on June 15, 2005.
Two of Rodrigues's henchmen, Sipho Mfazwe and Mongezi Bobotyane, were also sentenced to life, while Zanethemba Gwada and Bonginkosi Sigenu got 15 years each for the murder.
On Sunday night teacher Wilson said he had only one question to ask Rodrigues, whom he had "loved with all my heart" and whom he had not spoken to since her arrest. He wanted to ask her why she had planned Jordan's murder.
Wilson said that when Rodrigues found out he had had Jordan by Natasha Norton, she had cried "and there were lots of tears". "It was a huge shock to her and if I put myself in her shoes, I can understand how she felt. I told her we could work out something that would include Jordan in our lives."
Wilson met Rodrigues at a Claremont nightclub. His first impressions were that she was beautiful, loving and caring.
He said Rodrigues "had a bit of a temper", which "she made known when something didn't go the way she wanted it to".
Wilson recounted how he found out Rodrigues was behind his daughter's murder.
"Later (on the day of the murder) she phoned me and told me she had paid R10 000 "for it all to go away". I did know what she was talking about. I was angry and said I couldn't forgive her. I told her I hated her and hated what she had done," he said.
Asked why he had at first protected Rodrigues and had not gone to the police, Wilson said it was because he had loved her.
Wilson said Rodrigues had later broken down outside investigating officer Esmerald Bailey's office and said: "What have I done? What have I done? I'm going to jail." "It was a big shock to me to see her like that."
Wilson said that when he testified in the Cape High Court, he had decided beforehand he would not look at Rodrigues in the courtroom because "then emotions would start flying".
Wilson said his "life had changed forever".
His mother, Sandra, said of Rodrigues: "I loved her like my own daughter. It's hard to know that while she was visiting here, she was planning something like this."