been two similar cases in Pretoria West, some 30 miles to the north. A woman’s body had found by a cattleman in a patch of open field on 19 August. The same man found a second body about 330 yards from the first on 7 October. Both women were black and neatly dressed. They had been strangled with their stockings and left partially clothed. Once again they had no possessions that could aid identification. One of them was later exhumed in the hope of finding evidence that would tie their cases to the Cleveland murders. Pretoria and Johannesburg are more than 30 miles apart. This reinforced the idea that the killer had a car.
Then two more victims were identified. One was 28-year-old Dikeledi Daphney Papo, whose body had been found in the search of Heriotdale on 21 September. It could not be established when she had gone missing or what she had been doing beforehand. The other was 25-year-old Dorah Moleka Mokoena. She had been found in Heriotdale on 19 September. Interestingly, she worked as a cashier at the Danville toll booth to the west of Pretoria and she had left home on the morning of 9 September to take a taxi to work, but had never arrived.
Three days after Dorah Mokoena disappeared, a man had phoned her boss, saying that Dorah had been in an accident and would not be returning to work. He asked for her salary to be paid into her account, as she was in a critical condition and needed money. Her boss then asked the man who he was. He fell silent for a minute, then said his name was “Martin”.
Then the body found on the M2 freeway in Heriotdale on 7 September was identified. This was 24-year-old Refilwe Amanda Mokale who went missing on 5 September. Her body was found two days later next to the M2 freeway in Heriotdale. She had been studying fashion design at Intec College in Pretoria. The day she disappeared, she was seen on Church Plain in Pretoria, talking to a man who, she said, offered her a job selling mobile phones. She had an appointment to meet him again the following day. The eyewitnesses said that he was a black man between 25 and 30 years old, who spoke Zulu. Other women who had been offered jobs by the man came forward. An identikit was drawn up and published on 10 November.
Meanwhile, the identification of the two victims found in Pretoria West lent more clues. One of the women was 30-year-old Peggy Bodile. She had an appointment with an unknown man on 4 October at the Paul Kruger statue on Church Plain in Pretoria, echoing the case of Refilwe Mokale. Her body was discovered three days later.
The other was 32-year-old Joyce Thakane Mashabela. She left home to visit her sister by taxi on 9 August. Her body was found on 19 August. But on 14 August, a man calling himself “Moses Sima” phoned Joyce’s employer, claiming he had found her identity papers while walking through a patch of veldt on his way to work. He handed them over to the family the next day, insisting that he had found only the papers and knew nothing more. But that begged the question: how did he know where Joyce worked or what the number was?
On 10 November the police identified the body of the girl found on 16 July, which they believe was the killer’s first victim. This was 18-year-old Maria Monene Monama, who was still at school. She was last seen on the morning of 14 July when she left home on her way to Pretoria. Although her body was found two days later, her parents did not discover what had happened to her for four months.
Then the last body, that of 24-year-old Margaret Ntombeni Ledwaba, was identified.
By 18 November, the police were closing in on a suspect. He was a 31-year-old black man, living in a house in Boksburg, east of Johannesburg and some 12? miles from Cleveland. Although he was married, he did not live with his wife and he was often seen in the company of other women.
A suave and a flashy dresser, he drove a Mercedes-Benz, fitting the profile. He was also self-employed, owning and running a women-only computer school called the Vision English Girls College from offices he rented in Pretoria. And, like many independent businessmen in South Africa, he owned a number of taxis. But things had been going badly. The college’s four employees had not been paid their salaries. He owed 50,000 Rand (?3,500) in rent and utility bills. The Mercedes was not registered in his name, but that of a black woman. Although he was paying the instalments on the car, he was 20,000 Rand (?1,400) behind on the payments. He had come to the attention of the police when a woman had contacted them, complaining that the suspect had offered her a job, but had then tried to rape her.
The suspect’s name was David Abraham Selepe. The problem was that he had fled his creditors two weeks before, supposedly going overseas on business. He had not gone that far. On 15 December, he was arrested trying to sell the Mercedes in the port of Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, 280 miles to the east. Detectives found newspaper clippings of the Cleveland killings in the boot. There were also footprints on the lid, suggesting that someone had been locked inside.
Returned to South Africa, he was questioned for the next four days. Apparently, he waived his right to legal representation. The police said that he confessed to the murder of 15 women in the Cleveland area—four more than they were investigating. They did not get around to questioning him about the women found in Pretoria West. While he was happy to make a verbal confession, the police said, he refused to sign a written confession.
The police also say that Selepe agreed to take them to the places where he had left the bodies. On 17 December, he took them to three places where bodies had been found. He then showed detectives the four previously unknown sites where he had said he had dumped bodies.
The following day, Selepe agreed to go to the place where Amanda Thethe’s body had been found on 6 August. Three officers investigating the case—Joseph du Toit, Timothy Mngomozulu and Felix Tiedt—accompanied him. From Geldenhuis station, they had to cross rough terrain so Selepe’s ankle chains were removed. The police said they did this to prevent Selepe from being injured—and later accuse them of brutality.
After Selepe had pointed out the place where Amanda Thethe’s body had been found, he told them that he had hidden her underwear in a plastic bag which had been shoved underneath some bushes nearby. His handcuffs were removed so that he could search for the bag. When he found the bag, Detective Tiedt bent down to recover it. He was then hit across the back with a stout branch, knocking him down. Detective Mngomozulu yelled, “Stop! Stop!” Then a gunshot rang out. Selepe fell to the ground. Bleeding profusely from a head wound, he was rushed to Johannesburg Hospital, where he died that evening.
The police claimed that this was a tragic accident that marred an otherwise brilliantly successful investigation. Since Brixton Murder and Robbery had taken over the investigation, only two months had passed before they identified the suspect and in another month they had arrested him, even though he had fled the country.
But there was a furore in the press. The
On 20 December, the police were forced to issue a statement saying that Selepe had not admitted “in so many words” that he was the Cleveland strangler. However, he had “said things which strengthened our suspicion”. This cast doubt on Selepe’s so-called verbal confession. One of the Brixton police’s media officers, Lieutenant- Colonel Eugene Opperman, first told reporters that Selepe had been handcuffed at the time of the attack, and later changed the story. He was suspended in an effort to salvage the police’s image, which was further damaged when it came out that the police had failed to notify Selepe’s widow of her husband’s death. Linda Selepe had found out about it from neighbours who read about it in the papers. Although the couple had been estranged for more than a year, she said: “They killed the truth when they killed my husband. Had they brought him to court then, the South African public would have known the truth that David was not a killer.”
Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi tried to retrieve the situation. He held a press conference, stating that Selepe’s death did not mean the case was now closed. Then he spent four hours with the relatives of the Cleveland victims, assuring them that both the murder of their loved ones and Selepe’s death would be thoroughly investigated.
During Selepe’s “confession”, detectives said that there were two men—accomplices—named “Tito” and “Mandl” they should talk to. This became the investigators’ top priority. They located a man they thought to be Tito. He was questioned at length and volunteered to provide blood and hair samples for forensic examination, but he was cleared of any connection to the murders. The man identified as Mandl had been in jail awaiting trial when the murders took place. Even so he was questioned, then dismissed from the enquiry.
Even though this line of enquiry drew a blank, the police continued to insist that David Selepe could be tied to at least six of the Cleveland victims. Blood said to be Selepe’s was found on one of the victims’ panties. And human blood, supposedly from one of the victims, was found in Selepe’s car. But the police would furnish no further
