BULAWAYO – A man murdered his stepdaughter for wetting herself and then buried her under concrete in a kitchen hut – but the crime went undetected for a year after he swore the three-year-old’s mother to secrecy, police said.

Police are now hunting Happiness Ncube, 27, of Nyema village in Mawabeni, Matabeleland South, for the April 2020 murder of Sheamy Khanyisile Sibanda after his dark secret finally unravelled.

On a date yet to be established, but in April last year, police said Ncube’s wife Ntombizandile Sibanda, 22, was preparing breakfast when little Sheamy wet herself.

Ncube allegedly took a rubber sandal and struck Sheamy several times on the head. She apparently did not show any signs of distress until the next morning when her mother went to check on her and found her seated with her head tilted, facing down. She was unresponsive when her mother spoke to her.

Inexplicably, police say instead of taking the child to the local clinic, Sibanda continued with her house chores. Sheamy got progressively worse and she died at around 7AM of the next day.

Panicked, Ncube allegedly advised his wife that they had to inform a relative, Ndaba Dube, of Nyozane village in Fort Rixon. They left their home after covering the body and locking the door to the hut.

Ncube, in the company of Dube, allegedly returned to the crime scene where they hatched a plan to cover up the crime.

When they went back to Dube’s home in Fort Rixon, “Sibanda asked what they had done to fix the matter and the suspect answered that they had dug a pit inside the hut and put Sheamy’s body inside, and then used concrete cement to cover the pit,” according to an internal police memo seen by ZimLive.

It added: “The suspect went on to plead with the informant that she should not divulge the matter to anyone.”

For a year between May last year and June this year, police said Ncube and Sibanda decided to stay in Fort Rixon, doing piece jobs for survival.

Ncube and Sibanda finally returned to Mawabeni in June. Sibanda, according to police, visited her mother Patricia Dube and asked to use a phone to communicate with her father, Kenny Sibanda, who lives in Botswana.

When Dube asked about Sheamy, Sibanda allegedly lied that she was in the care of her husband’s relative in Fort Rixon.

Police say Sibanda used her mother’s phone to “secretly send an audio message to her father stating that something had happened to her daughter, who was now deceased.”

Dube listened to one of the audio recordings and police were called.

Police are preparing to file charges against Ncube, Dube and Sibanda. Sheamy’s body is also set to be exhumed.