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Did a heartbroken Susan Rohde end her own life in the bathroom of a fancy winelands hotel in July 2016 or did her husband Jason violently cut her life short and try to lead police off the trail?
Closing arguments for and against these scenarios will be presented in the Western Cape High Court on Tuesday when the State and Rohde's defence team face off after an almost three-month break.
The court faces a challenging task in making sense of the testimonies from four pathologists who weighed in on possible causes of death, and deciding which is beyond reasonable doubt.
The State maintains that Rohde manually strangled his wife to death and/or inflicted "other violence" that was unknown, following months of heated arguments over his affair with colleague Jolene Alterskye.
The couple had been at Spier Hotel for a weekend conference that Alterskye was also attending.
The defence maintains that Susan took her own life or died in a failed parasuicide attempt.
Defence pathologist Dr Reggie Perumal, who conducted a second autopsy on Susan, testified that suicide by hanging was the most probable cause, but he could not exclude other possibilities, such as manual strangulation.
