Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 2000-07-21

STEPHANIE MILLER: No, I don't think that's a fair statement, I think I would have looked at all of the mortuary records, with a view to all of the cases.  I could not be certain at any stage that all of the matters were truthfully told to me, I could only presume that.

MR VISSER: And if you tell this Committee, Mrs Miller, that in the Gale Street mortuary records you didn't find a single body that matched what you understood from Mrs Kubheka, how she looked, can we accept that as being absolutely not only truthful, but correct?

STEPHANIE MILLER: Mr Visser, what you're attempting for me to say, I can't say, I can say that there were women brought in to the Gale Street mortuary who would be of the same age but not of the same height, who would have been not of a correct level of decomposition for the period of time when they were found and from when we know she died.  So yes, whilst there are women who are listed there, unknown women who were brought in and whose bodies were disposed of in paupers' graves, in terms of the criteria that I was looking for, I didn't find one that was as good a match.

MR VISSER: Oh, were there possibles?  Matches.

STEPHANIE MILLER: There were bodies that were brought in, but invariably not appropriate.

MR VISSER: Right.  And can you just answer my questions, can the Committee and ourselves then accept the correctness of your investigations and research?  Can we trust that as being correct, so we don't have to go and look at the records?

STEPHANIE MILLER: I would certainly hope so, Mr Visser.

MR VISSER: I'm sorry, I didn't hear that.

STEPHANIE MILLER: I said I would hope so, Mr Visser.

MR VISSER: I think ...(intervention)

STEPHANIE MILLER: I am under oath, so I will tell you the truth.

MR LAX: ...(indistinct)

MR VISSER: Oh, is it me, I just couldn't understand what is going on.

MR LAX: ...(indistinct)

MR VISSER: Thank you for pointing that, because I was hearing half the sentence every time.

MR LAX: Can I just say this, that there has been a slight cutting in the sound system from time to time, perhaps the technicians can just be aware of that.  What happens is that the voice tends to cut a little bit and then come back on, not sufficiently to actually deter probably the recording, but just to be aware of it.

CHAIRPERSON: Mrs Miller, could you just repeat your answer to Mr Visser's question about, which was "Can we accept that the investigations carried out by yourself and what you've told us about them, is not only truthful but correct?"  If you could just repeat your answer please.

STEPHANIE MILLER: I'm under oath, Mr Visser, you can accept that.

MR VISSER: Thank you.  We will a little later come back to this.  Now are you saying that you were told that Dr Chetty, when he received the body with a bullet wound in the skull, had the practise of saying "Well, the cause of death undetermined"?  Is that what you said?

STEPHANIE MILLER: Why would you presume that, Mr Visser?

MR VISSER: Well that's what I wrote down here, my note says, and please tell me if I'm wrong, you made enquiries, you were told that it is difficult to do a post-mortem with that level of decomposition and then you said that you were told by Mr Ismail, who worked with Dr Chetty in the mortuary, that when he received a body that was decomposed, with a bullet wound, he would say "Cause of death undetermined."

STEPHANIE MILLER: I never said that, you misunderstood.

CHAIRPERSON: My note is, if I can read it out, I can't recall the bullet wound being mentioned ...(intervention)

MS THABETHE: Can I be of assistance, Mr Chair, because I was reading straight from his statement?

CHAIRPERSON: No, if I can just get my note.

STEPHANIE MILLER: Paragraph 3.

CHAIRPERSON: Paragraph 4, I think it was.

MS THABETHE: It's paragraph 4.

STEPHANIE MILLER: But paragraph 3 ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: You see mine is "Mohammed Ismail advised me that it was common practice to do what is stated in paragraph 4 of Exhibit L.  But anyway you can look at the record, but I can't recall her saying that, you know, if they got a body with a bullet wound, that he would say "undetermined."

MR VISSER: Chairperson, I'm quite willing to accept that, because the reason why I asked the question is because it sounded strange to me, because paragraph 4 of Exhibit L says something slightly different to what I thought I heard you say.

STEPHANIE MILLER: Absolutely.

MR VISSER: And that is that when a body was brought into the,
"... a body was brought into the mortuary in a decomposed state and there was no indication by the documentation accompanying the body that the person was shot or murdered, the district surgeon or doctor would often not do a post-mortem, but would view the body and the cause of death was often notes as undetermined."
Is that what you intended to say?

STEPHANIE MILLER: That is what was intended.

MR VISSER: And that I obviously heard incorrectly.  Now the point here is this, is it not, that if this body which you are convinced was Mrs Kubheka, had a bullet wound when she was on the table before Dr Chetty, what do you think are the chances of him having missed the bullet wound?  Just as a - just like me, not a professional in the science.  What do you think?

STEPHANIE MILLER: Well it would depend largely on whether he looked at the top of her head.  If the body is brought in and laid out on a table or in whatever format it's put out, and he didn't look at the top of the head, I'm not sure what he would have seen.

MR VISSER: Yes, well I will ask Dr Naidoo if we are entitled to assume that because of the unpleasantness of a post-mortem on a decomposed body that - I'm sure he would have known Dr Chetty, whether Dr Chetty would have shirked from his responsibilities.  So I don't think there's going to be much point in us debating that matter any further.

CHAIRPERSON: Ms Miller, did you see the body, the head?

STEPHANIE MILLER: I saw the skull after the second post-mortem, yes.

CHAIRPERSON: Okay, but you can't say whether at the time, if there was any hair on the skull or not?

STEPHANIE MILLER: At the time when I saw the body being disinterred there was a covering over the skull and I don't recall seeing any hair.

CHAIRPERSON: So you can't say whether it had hair or not?

STEPHANIE MILLER: There might or might not have been.

MR VISSER: And perhaps I should ask you the obvious, the answer would be obvious I suppose, but let me ask you, that cloth was not removed at the grave site where it was exhumed from ...(intervention)

STEPHANIE MILLER: No, it wasn't.

MR VISSER: And your impression, while we're on the subject of the skull, was that the skull was wrapped in it, is that your impression?

STEPHANIE MILLER: It certainly - I looked at it from the top looking down, and it was certainly over the top section of the skull.  I don't know that it was wrapped, I just saw it over the top section.

MR VISSER: Yes.  We have asked, Chairperson, for copies of the colour photographs that were taken of the remains, to be provided not only to ourselves but also to you, because a lot of things appear from that, which you will not observe from the photocopies which you have.  I was told that Ms Thabethe was going to attempt to reproduce some copies of those photographs themselves.
	You see the point here is that on one of the photographs, and I haven't got a copy of that set of photographs from the docket before me, it appears that the lower jaw quite separate from the skull itself, and I'm going to ask you this, did you notice that at all, that the lower jaw was separate from the skull?