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,
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
“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
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.
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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.
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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
