Guatemalan guilty of murdering girlfriend

Guatemalan Diego Novella was last week found guilty of murdering his girlfriend at their hotel in Camps Bay‚ Cape Town. According to a TimesLIVE report, Judge Vincent Saldanha, of the Western Cape High Court, found that Novella murdered Gabriella Kabrins Alban‚ an American marketing executive‚ on 29 July 2015. Earlier‚ Alban's mother Doris Weitz and stepfather Howdy Kabrins left the courtroom before Saldanha described the ‘bizarre’ crime scene. Kabrins cried while Saldanha read evidence from a post-mortem report describing debilitating injuries Alban sustained during a brutal assault which could have lasted several minutes and even hours. Novella‚ the beneficiary of a massive cement empire in Guatemala which is owned by his deceased mother's family‚ murdered Alban after ingesting various psycho-hallucinogenic drugs, including cannabis and sceletium‚ a substance derived from an indigenous plant. Although he pleaded not guilty to murder he testified that he killed Alban‚ perceiving her at the time to be a demonic entity. He said that he was in a state of psychopathy as a result of his intoxication. The state‚ however‚ argued that he acted out of anger after Alban called him an ‘idiot’ and a ‘faggot’.