Court hears accused were in park where Saunders were last seen
The Durban High Court has heard from a park ranger who encountered murdered elderly couple, Rodney and Rachel Saunders, days before they went missing.
The botanists had been filming a documentary in northern KwaZulu-Natal when they were killed in February 2018.
A Ngoyi Forest park ranger told the court on Monday she met Rodney and Rachel inside the forest.
They asked her about park fees and removing seeds.
She said a few days later, detectives arrived at the park with photos of the couple and questioned her.
State Prosecutor Mahen Naidu also probed about accused one and two, Safydeen Del Vecchio and his wife, Fatima Patel.
The ranger told the court she had seen the two suspects in and around the park several times, adding it was known that they lived on the outskirts of the forest.
Another state witness, a trolley porter from a Superspar in Waterloo, north of Durban, told the court the accused shopped at the store on at least two consecutive days around the time the Saunders disappeared.
The trial heard they parked in isolated spots at the supermarket and bought a trolley full of groceries on both days.
The porter told the court they paid with a bank card believed to belong to the missing couple, punching in a pin read from a piece of paper that Patel carried.
