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CALITZDORP murder accused Jaftha Andries changed his testimony yesterday for the third time when recalling the details of the last time he saw his niece, eight- year-old Charmaine Conradie.

Andries is accused of abducting, raping and murdering the child in February last year. She disappeared on February 8 and her decomposed body was found a week later at the Calitzdorp rubbish dump. He has denied the charges.

After Judge Burton Fourie refused an application by the defence to have statements by Andries and scenes he pointed out to police ruled as inadmissible, Andries was asked to detail his activities from the day Conradie disappeared until his arrest two days before her body was discovered.

The judge said he would make his reasons for the ruling known at the end of the trial.

“The last time I saw Charmaine alive was the Wednesday before her disappearance, your honour,” Andries said.

Asked why he had made a written confession to Superintendent Thys Viljoen on a box of matches, he said: “I had no choice because of all the threats. That was not really the truth.”

He later admitted that Viljoen and Captain Geoffrey Gordon did not threaten him.

Andries repeatedly said he did not know what to say to questions from the judge and during cross-examination. Asked if statements he had made to Kannaland mayor Nicky Valentyn, prisoner Owen Ryneveldt and the police were lies, Andries said they were.

The court has heard various versions of what happened to Conradie. On Wednesday, Andries said he had seen her at the rubbish dump on the Friday she disappeared and that she had been waiting to be paid R10 by an “Uncle Gert”.

The day before, he said he had been with her at the sewerage dam and had walked with her into the mountains, where he left her.

The court also heard alleged confessions to Ryneveldt, Valentyn and police that he and a friend, Isak van Rooyen, had raped and then bludgeoned Conradie to death, that only he had raped her and pushed her into the sewerage dam where she drowned, and that both men had raped the child but only Van Rooyen had bludgeoned her.

The State closed its case yesterday. The trial continues.