JUSTICE DELAYED: Five years, a murder charge and no trial: The questions over Sheri-Ann’s death

In KwaZulu-Natal, Steven Jacobs, the father of murdered Sheri-Ann Pretorius, was left to confront the devastating reality that, after almost five years of waiting, he would not see the case against the man accused of killing his daughter tested in court.

Sheri-Ann’s body was found at the couple’s Somerset West home on 20 November 2021. Her death was initially treated as a suspected suicide. Police later concluded that she had been murdered and that the scene had been staged.

But in Court 1 on Monday, the murder case against her husband, former Absa executive Jacques Pretorius, was withdrawn, bringing the trial to an end before it had even begun. 

On 11 March 2025, Pretorius was arrested and charged with premeditated murder and defeating the ends of justice. He pleaded not guilty and was granted R5,000 bail.

Now, with the murder charges withdrawn, the family has been told that another legal route needs to be taken.

Judge Robert Henney indicated that the next step would be to place the matter before a magistrate for an inquest, leaving the circumstances surrounding Sheri-Ann’s death to be examined outside the murder trial that the family had spent years waiting for.

This is the legal route taken to establish the circumstances around the death of 22-year-old chef and aspiring businesswoman Anele Tembe, who died after falling from the 10th floor of Cape Town’s Pepperclub Hotel on 11 April 2021.

At the time of the incident, she was in the company of her boyfriend, the rapper Kiernan “AKA” Forbes, who was gunned down in Durban in February 2023.

The cases differ, but the inquest asks the same question: what happened, and can the evidence establish how the deceased died?

In Sheri-Ann’s case, she was initially believed to have died by suicide. Subsequent forensic findings and other alleged inconsistencies led investigators to conclude that she had been murdered and that the scene had been staged. Pretorius was subsequently charged with murder and defeating the ends of justice.

Five years later, case collapses on the eve of trial

The trial was due to begin on Monday. Instead, the State withdrew all charges against Pretorius.

In court, State prosecutor advocate Megan September said the matter had come before the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) on 29 September 2026 and that, from that point, the prosecution had made its final decision.

The timing raises questions.

According to information given to Action Society by Sheri-Ann’s father, the NPA told him that the State pathologist was no longer prepared to testify that strangulation was the cause of death and was unwilling to testify against the defence’s expert.

That forensic dispute goes to the heart of the murder case.

The defence has consistently maintained that the postmortem and scene evidence are consistent with suicide by partial hanging rather than homicidal strangulation. But with the charges withdrawn, neither version was tested under cross-examination, and no court made a finding on how Sheri-Ann died.

For Sheri-Ann’s family, the question is no longer simply why the prosecution was withdrawn, but what changed — and why only days before the trial was due to start.

Question of how Sheri-Ann died remains 

Following the withdrawal of all charges, Pretorius’s counsel, advocate Pieter Botha SC, read a statement into the record stressing that the decision meant a court would no longer determine how Sheri-Ann Pretorius died.

Botha told the court that his client had consistently denied the charges against him.

“Mr Pretorius has consistently denied killing his wife or attempted to defeat the administration of justice. His account has been, throughout, that she strategically took her own life,” Botha said. 

The central dispute, he said, had been whether Mrs Pretorius had died by suicide or had been strangled.

Botha said the State postmortem did not conclude that she had been manually or otherwise homicidally strangled. It recorded blunt trauma to the neck, but no fractures of the relevant structures. Combined with the scene evidence, he said, the findings were consistent with ligature compression during a partial hanging, with Mrs Pretorius on her knees rather than suspended by her full body weight.

The defence’s independent pathologist, Professor Lorna Martin, later reviewed the existing evidence, including the State postmortem, and concluded that it was consistent with suicide by hanging rather than homicidal strangulation, Botha said.

Alleged farewell letters

The defence also pointed to evidence in the police docket, including three alleged farewell letters handed to a domestic worker the day before Sheri-Ann’s death, WhatsApp messages in which Pretorius allegedly reported that she had threatened suicide, and evidence that the bedroom door was locked from the inside.

Sheri-Ann was later found behind the closed en-suite bathroom door, with the rope handles of a bag around her neck.

Botha also referred to toxicology findings, including a blood-alcohol level of 0.19g per 100ml and substantial exposure to doxylamine, while stressing that a preliminary urine screen indicating morphine was not a confirmed laboratory result.

The defence argued that the evidence supporting suicide, the absence of a pathological finding of homicidal strangulation and evidence corroborating Pretorius’s movements had been available to investigators and prosecutors.

Botha said the previous prosecutor’s sudden resignation resulted in a new prosecutor taking over at short notice. She reviewed the evidence and consulted senior members of the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions before the decision to withdraw the charges was taken.

But the defence acknowledged a crucial limitation: the withdrawal was a prosecutorial decision, not a judicial finding on the cause or manner of Sheri-Ann’s death.

Call for urgent review

Action Society has called for an urgent review.

For Sheri-Ann’s father, Steven, the withdrawal of the charges felt like losing five years of hope for justice.

“I waited five years for justice, and now I will probably wait another five years for an inquest to be finalised. Today, I feel as though my daughter has been murdered all over again, and we are starting all over,” he said.

Steven said the family would obtain the police docket and hand it to AfriForum to take the matter further.

Action Society spokesperson Juanita du Preez reaffirmed the organisation’s call for an urgent review, saying the family deserved answers on how the case reached this point.

“We note the explanation given in court that the incoming prosecutor assessed the evidence and consulted senior officials. We recognise the difficult circumstances in which she assumed responsibility for the case,” she said.

“Our concern remains that, almost five years after Sheri-Ann’s death, the prosecution has collapsed on the very day the trial was scheduled to begin.”

Du Preez said scrutiny of the decision did not amount to accusing prosecutors of wrongdoing.

“Our priority is an urgent, thorough inquest, a confirmed timetable and the proper examination of all relevant evidence,” she said. DM