A WOMAN has been convicted of hiring a hit squad to murder her lover's baby.
The verdict ended a trial that had dominated headlines for months with details of South Africa's first known contract killing of an infant.
Dina Rodrigues was found guilty of murder for orchestrating the June 2005 killing of six-month-old Jordan-Leigh Norton -- her then boyfriend's daughter from a previous relationship.
Cheers erupted as the verdict was read in the packed Cape Town court room, where Norton family supporters wore pink in sympathy with the child victim.
Jordan-Leigh's body, clad in pink, was found in a drain in Pretoria.
"We are glad for the decision," said Vernon Norton, the girl's grandfather, adding that the family hoped Rodrigues would be sentenced to life in jail at the next hearing in June.
The case has riveted people in South Africa -- where an estimated 1100 children are killed each year -- in part because both the baby and Rodrigues were white and from privileged backgrounds, whereas most cases of violence against children involve black and underprivileged defendants and victims.
High Court Judge Basheer Waglay also convicted four men of murder and robbery in the case. The four men had been hired by Rodrigues for 10,000 rand ($A1800) to kill the baby.
Prosecutors said they posed as delivery men to get into the home of the baby's grandparents.
They stabbed the little girl in the neck and tried to make the murder look like a botched robbery, the prosecutors said.
Rodrigues' lawyer said it was an attempted kidnapping gone wrong.
However, the judge noted that Rodrigues rang the father, Neil Wilson, to tell him she got rid of the baby.
According to prosecutors, Rodrigues' motive was to save Mr Wilson the financial burden of maintenance as well as jealousy and shame that he'd had a baby with another woman out of wedlock.
Cases such as Jordan-Leigh's have led to a campaign against violence against children.
Also this week five youths were in a Soweto court charged with raping, stabbing and stoning to death a 14-year-old girl whose body was found on waste land.
"We have never had to deal with this level, intensity or numbers of crime against children," said Joan van Niekerk, the head of the charity organisation Childline.
She said that her charity group received about a million phone calls from children reporting abuse each year.
The newly-formed Protect Our Children campaign donated 200 teddy bears this week to a Pretoria police station to be given to young victims.
AP
