The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (the mammoth book of ...)

by Nigel Cawthorne

  A reward of 500,000 Rand (£35,500) was offered, but Commissioner Fivaz insisted that, although the Van Dyk Mine murders may be tied to those at Atteridgeville, they had no connection to the Cleveland murders—those had been committed by David Selepe.

  Micki Pistorius called retired FBI profiler Robert Ressler, whom she had met at a conference on serial killers in Scotland, and he flew to South Africa on 23 September. Two days later, while a prayer service was being organized on the Van Dyk Mine site, they were already plying files. It became clear that the 10 women found at the Van Dyk Mine, the two others in Boksburg, the six found around Onderstepoort, the eight women and one boy found at Atteridgeville and the one found in Cleveland since the death of David Selepe were related. However, they believed that more than one killer was involved and that they may have worked together on at least some of the murders.

  As before, the victims found at the Van Dyk Mine were middle-class black women, largely in their twenties and thirties, who took pride in their appearance. They seem to have been ensnared in almost every case by the offer of a job. The killing fields were carefully chosen. The killer or killers were very familiar with them. Although they were remote enough that the perpetrator was unlikely to be interrupted, they were easily reached by road and rail. The offender was organized and intelligent, leaving few clues at the murder site. He was also growing in confidence. The bodies of the first victims at Atteridgeville were widely scattered. Those at Onderstepoort were closer together, while the Van Dyk Mine victims were practically on top of one another and he made no attempt to hide them.

  In his books I Have Lived in the Monster: Inside the Minds of the World’s Most Notorious Serial Killers, Robert Ressler said that the killer would have “a high sex drive and reads pornography. His fantasies, to which he masturbates, are aggressive, and he believes women are merely objects to be abused. He enjoys charming and controlling women. When he approaches a victim, it is done in a very calculating way, and he is very conscious that he is eventually going to kill the victim, and savours the thought while he softens her up.”

  The general theory was that the killer had been hurt and rejected by a woman. He was raping and killing her over and over again in the guise of his victims, which was why they were all so similar.

  Dr Pistorius, in her book Strangers on the Street, outlined the profile. The killer, she said, was a black male in his late twenties or early thirties. He was self-employed with access to money, possibly obtained by theft or fraud, and would drive an expensive car. He would wear ostentatious clothing and jewellery. Intellectually sharp, he would also be streetwise. Ostensibly a charming ladies’ man, he would be competent socially while, underneath it all, he would detest women. No loner, he was probably married, separated or divorced. He would enjoy socializing and would visit places where alcohol is sold. He was following reports of the story in the press and may even have told someone that he is the killer in a roundabout fashion. He would have a very high sex drive and use pornography. After the murders, he would masturbate over the crimes and collect mementoes, which he would dispose of. And he would have been exposed to sexual violence, probably when he was young.

  The problem with this profile was that it also fitted the Cleveland killer. That would not normally have mattered, as serial killers often have similar characteristics. But in this case the modus operandi were almost identical and the killers were working in the same area. Once again, it cast doubt on the guilt of David Selepe. This concerned Commissioner Fivaz, who asked Robert Ressler to re-examine the case against David Selepe. With Dr Pistorius, Ressler combed through the files and they concluded that Selepe was involved in the Cleveland killings.

  But, by now, the police had a suspect. They learnt from Amelia Rapodile’s colleagues at Johannsburg International Airport that her appointment on 7 September was with a man named Moses Sithole. Sithole had said he ran an organization called Youth Against Human Abuse. They found an application form for a job there that Amelia had completed. There was a phone number on it. It belonged to Kwazi Sithole who lived in Wattville, three miles southeast of Boksburg. She was Moses Sithole’s sister, but he did not live with her and she did not know where he was.

  Detectives’ suspicions were confirmed when Tryphina Mogotsi was identified soon after. Tryphina had been a laundry worker at an organization helping street children in Benoni, three miles east of Boksburg, called Kids’ Haven. A man who said he was from Youth Against Human Abuse had visited Kids’ Haven and spoken to Tryphina Mogotsi about a job with his organization. They made an appointment to discuss the post. Moses Sithole had made other visits to Kids’ Haven. He once delivered two destitute teenage girls to the home, accompanied by a photographer from Johannesburg newspaper, The Star. A second occasion he came with the newspaper article and said he wanted to organize a fund raiser. Soon after, Tryphina Mogotsi disappeared.

  Despite the publicity surrounding the discovery of the bodies near the Van Dyk Mine, the killings did not stop. Just a week later, Agnes Sibongile Mbuli, aged 20, was on her way to meet a friend when she went missing. On 3 October, her dead body turned up at Kleinfontein train station near Benoni. That day, a man who gave his name as Joseph Magwena called the office of The Star and spoke to reporter Tamsen de Beer who answered the phone. The man said his name was “Joseph Magwena” and claimed that he was the “Gauteng serial killer”—Gauteng means “place of gold” and is the name of the province containing both Johannesburg and Pretoria.

  “I am the man that is so highly wanted,” he said, and told her that he wanted to turn himself in. The reporter contacted the police, who recorded three more calls from the man that month. In each conversation, he gave some detailed information about the murders that could not be gleaned from the media.

  He said he had started killing because a woman had falsely accused him of rape. In jail, he suffered abuse by fellow prisoners. Now he was getting his revenge.

  “I force a woman to go where I want and when I go there I tell them: ‘Do you know what? I was hurt, so I’m doing it now. Then I kill them’,” he said. He admitted using the victims’ clothing, particularly underwear, to strangle them because there would be no fingerprints. And he confirmed what Dr Pistorius had suspected—that the women killed near the Van Dyk Mine had seen the other victims before they died.

  He accepted responsibility for the murders in Atteridgeville, Pretoria and Boksburg, but he said he had nothing to do with the Cleveland killings. He also vehemently denied killing Letta Ndlangamandla—and in particular her two-year-old son as he loved children. He convinced the police that he really was the killer when, on 9 October, he directed them to the body of an unidentified woman near Jupiter train station. Then on 11 October, he directed them to the body of Beauty Ntombi Ndabeni in Germiston, the day after she disappeared. This time he had used a comb to tighten her pantyhose around her neck.

  In co-operation with the police, Tamsen de Beer arranged a meeting with the caller at a station, but he gave the police the slip. So on 13 October they released a picture of Moses Sithole to the media, and appealed for help.

  But the killer would not, or could not, stop. The following day, the body of an unidentified woman was found at the Village Main Reef Mine near Johannesburg. Her neck had been tied to a tree by her shoelaces.

  A few days later, Sithole contacted his sister’s husband, Maxwell, who worked at the Mintex factory in Benoni, saying that he needed a gun. Maxwell arranged to meet him at the factory. The police seized the opportunity and installed Inspector Francis Mulovhedzi as a security guard, but without telling his new work colleagues.

  At 9 p.m. on 18 October 1995, Sithole arrived at the factory and asked for Maxwell. Mulovhedzi was told to go and fetch Maxwell as he was the new guy. But he was reluctant to go as he wanted to stay with Sithole. This made the suspect suspicious and he ran off. Inspector Mulovhedzi gave chase and cornered him in an alley. But it took gunshot wounds to the legs and stomach, before he could arrest him. Sithole was rushed
to the Glynwood Hospital in Benoni, with the police terrified that, in a repeat of the David Selepe case, he would die before he could be convicted.

  Operated on the following day, Sithole survived. Two days later he was taken to the Military Hospital in Pretoria, where security was much tighter even though Sithole was in no condition to escape. He was not even well enough to appear in the magistrates’ court in Brakpan, five miles south of Benoni, on 23 October, where he was charged with 29 murders.

  He was born in 1964 in Vosloorus, a black township ten mile south of Germiston. The deprivation he experienced as a black man in apartheid South Africa was exacerbated by the death of his father. His mother, Sophie, was unable to support their five children and abandoned them at a local police station, telling them that they were not to tell the policemen that she was their mother. He was sent to an orphanage over 300 miles away in the homeland of KwaZulu, Natal. There he suffered systematic abuse. After three years, the teenage Sithole ran away, first seeking refuge first with his older brother Patrick, before going to work in the gold mines of Johannesburg.

  A handsome and charming man, Sithole was sexually precocious from an early age, but his relationships were short-lived. There is speculation that his mother’s abandonment of her children might have sparked his aggressive attitudes towards woman. However, he told some of his rape victims who survived of bad experiences he had had at the hands of a girlfriend.

  It is not recorded when Sithole raped his first victim, but his first known incidence was in September 1987. The victim was 29-year-old Patricia Khumalo, who appeared as a witness at his murder trial. Three other surviving rape victims came forward at that time. They included Buyiswa Doris Swakamisa, who was attacked in February 1989. She reported the assault to the police, Sithole was convicted and sent to Boksburg Prison for six years. Even though he maintained his innocence, he was released after four years for good behaviour. It is thought that his imprisonment taught him a brutal and perverse lesson—in future he would leave no victim alive to testify against him.

  While Sithole was in jail, he met a woman named Martha who was visiting one of her relatives, another inmate. They began writing to each other and, when he was released in 1993, he moved in with her in Soshanguve. But when Martha fell pregnant, she returned to her parents in Atteridgeville. Sithole followed some months later. On 5 December 1994, Martha gave birth to a baby girl they named Bridget. In February 1995, after his killing spree had started, Sithole paid lobola—the traditional bride-price—for Martha. But soon they separated, leaving Sithole apparently to sleep at railway stations.

  Nevertheless, Martha had visited her husband three times after he was arrested. But then on 28 October, it revealed that Sithole was HIV-positive. He had probably contracted the disease from one of his victims. After that, Martha would have nothing further to do with him. The police were lambasted for not telling Martha of his condition.

  Meanwhile, the detectives began the laborious and unpleasant business of questioning Sithole in his hospital bed. Both Captains Frans van Niekerk and Vinol Viljoen visited Sithole in the Military Hospital, but Sithole was unforthcoming. It was only when a female detective was brought in that he began describing his crimes, masturbating while he did so.

  According to The Star, Sithole told detective: “I can point out the place in Atteridgeville, as well as in Hercules. That’s where I started. Nearer to Johannesburg I did not kill people, because that’s where I stayed. I did not even count… Atteridgeville I killed many about 10. I caught them with my hands around the neck and strangled them. I thought of something to tie them up… I used stockings. I placed it around their necks.”

  He chose the locations before the victims and claimed he raped only the pretty ones. He also said that he killed only during daytime, though he did not like the sight of blood.

  According to the Beeld, he also said: “I heard fuck-all if they spoke to me and thought about other things.” And he forced the women to look down while he raped and killed them and he would masturbate while he watched them die.

  There were certainly glaring disparities between Sithole and the profile of the killer Ressler and Pistorius had come up with. Sleeping on railway stations, he did not have an expensive car like David Selepe. And he denied working with an accomplice as they had speculated, though he claimed that some of the killings he had been accused of had been committed by copycats.

  In court, all the confessions he was supposed to have made were disputed. Sithole’s lawyer said that he had been provided with a list of victims’ names and other details, then been forced to confess his “guilt” in interviews that were recorded. This is hardly an unusual courtroom ploy but, in this case, the police were their own worst enemies. According to the detectives, Sithole had waived his right to legal representation during the questioning. When public defender Tony Richard arrived at the hospital he was told this, but he insisted on speaking to Sithole himself, who told him that his wife was getting a lawyer for him. Nevertheless the police continued to question Sithole without a lawyer being present. The police then brought in a magistrate to record Sithole’s confession. However, Magistrate Greyvenstein noted that Sithole was in pain and, when she asked him why he had no lawyer, he said he had been not been able to get one because the police had not allowed him to see anyone. Consequently Greyvenstein refused to take his confession. At the trial Sithole claimed that the police were infuriated by this and told him that he would “see shit” if he did not give his confession to a second magistrate—which he duly did.

  On 3 November, Sithole was moved to a solitary cell in Boksburg Prison. When he was taken out to identify the crime scenes, he complained of pain due to his injuries. He took the detectives to a number of locations where bodies had been left. And on 6 November, he took them to the Gosforth Park mine slag heaps west of Germiston, where they found the body of another unidentified—and, as yet, undiscovered—woman who would go to an unmarked grave.

  On 13 November 1995, Sithole appeared on crutches in Brakpan Magistrates’ Court which was guarded by heavily armed police officers and sealed off with razor wire to protect him from relatives and other outraged members of the public. For further security he was shuffled through at 7.30 in the morning. On 5 December, he was transferred to the Krugersdorp Prison, so a psychiatric report could be prepared at the nearby Sterkfontein Psychiatric Hospital. It was determined that he was fit to stand trial.

  In September, Sithole was provided with a new attorney named Eben Jordaan, a private practitioner whose discounted fees would be picked up by the state. Then it was finally announced that Moses Sithole would stand trial for 40 counts of rape, 6 counts of robbery and 38 counts of murder. As part of that total another murder had been added to the charge sheet. The new victim was 22-year-old Rose Rebothile Mogotsi. She had last been seen on 15 September when she went to look for work. Her body was found in Boksburg three days later.

  Controversially, four of the murders were slayings Cleveland killer David Selepe had been charged with. The victims were 18year-old Maria Monene Monama, 24-year-old Refilwe Amanda Mokale, 32-year-old Joyce Thakane Mashabela and 26-year-old Amanda Kebofile Thethe—whose murder scene Selepe had been visiting when he had been shot. The newspapers, who had never accepted the police account of Selepe’s death, went wild.

  Asked any of these four were included in the six victims police claimed were positively linked to Selepe at the turn of 1994, they refused to comment “as the Sithole case is considered to be sub judice,” according to the Cape Times. The names of the six supposedly connected to Selepe have never been released.

  Sithole’s trial eventually began on 21 October 1996. He was now being called the “ABC Killer”—A for Atteridge, B for Boksburg and C for Cleveland—and pleaded not guilty to all of the charges with a grin on his face.

  The first three charges to be heard concerned rapes that occurred in 1987 and 1988. Although the names of rape victims who survived to testify are usually suppressed, these brave wome
n identified themselves in court in the hope that their attacker would be locked away forever.

  Twenty-nine-year-old Patricia Khumalo was the first to testify. In September 1987, she was looking for work and her sister introduced her to a man named “Martin” who they both identified as Moses Sithole in court. Martin said he had work for Patricia and on the 14th she got on the train with him in Boksburg. Alighting at Geldenhuis station, Martin said that he knew a short cut through the veldt. There he attacked her.

  “He grabbed me by the clothes in front of my chest,” she said. “I was frightened. He ordered me to lie on the ground and raped me.” He raped her more than once. “I pleaded and cried and asked him not to kill me. He said he wouldn’t, because I have the kind of eyes that makes him feel sorry.” It was the day before her daughter’s birthday.

  Her attacker had tied her hands with her bra and pulled her dress over her head, then ordered her to stay there while he made his escape. Patricia Khumalo cried as she related this ordeal. In the dock, Sithole smiled.

  Sithole’s attorney Eben Jordaan asked Patricia Khumalo whether her attacker had not rather been David Selepe. She said no. She had recognized the picture of Sithole in the newspapers after he had been arrested and she recognized him here in court.

  In September 1988, Thembi Ngwenya was working in a clothes shop when she met a man who offered her a job that paid better. But before she handed in her notice, she thought of her friend 26-year-old Dorcas Kedibone Khobane, who was unemployed, and she put them in touch. On 28 September, Dorcas Khobane accompanied the man, who identified himself as “Samson”, to Cleveland. Again they stopped at Geldenhuis station and took a shortcut through the veldt. There he hit her and pulled a knife.