I Want Her to Come Home

Austin was shocked when police told him his beloved wife had been arrested for conspiring to kill him

- Charlea Sieberhagen

WHEN his phone rang he was hoping it was his wife. He’d been missing her while she was out on her morning errands and had left her a message – so Austin Coetzee smiled as he picked up his phone and heard Petina’s familiar voice.

But what she said instantly chilled him to the bone. She told him she was at the police station and needed him to get her an attorney. Austin (66) asked her what was going on but there was just silence on the other end of the line.

A police official took the phone from Petina (44) and told Austin, “Sir, go and collect your son from school and we’ll be with you at about 12.30 pm to explain the situation.”

Later, seated around the dining room table at his home in Kenilworth, Cape Town, the police explained why they’d taken his wife into custody.

“They just said to me, ‘Mr Coetzee, your wife has just been arrested for conspiracy to murder.’ ”

Austin was dumbfounded. Who’d she conspired to murder? The policeman’s reply almost made him fall off his seat.

“You,” he was told.

“It was total shock. I just sat there.

I didn’t know what to say,” Austin recalls.

They explained that Tina, as he affectionately calls her, was arrested at Lansdowne train station after police had set her up. News reports claim she allegedly wanted to pay hitmen R200 000 to have her husband killed.

Tina is now staying with family in Cape Town’s northern suburbs. According to her bail conditions she and Austin aren’t permitted to have any contact but their four-year-old son and her two sons from a previous marriage are allowed to visit her.