The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (70 page)

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 women 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.

“He threatened to kill me with it and to cut me into pieces unless I did as he asked,” Dorcas said the court. “He pushed me on the ground and took my panties off. He dropped his pants to his knees and he raped me.”

Then he engaged her in conversation.

“He told me he had a girlfriend in Vosloorus named Sibongile. He said he wanted me to go look for him at her home because she had stolen some things from him, but did not say what. He then asked if we could sleep together again.”

When Dorcas Khobane refused, he raped her again. Even then he was in no hurry to leave, but someone was coming and he fled. In court, Dorcas Khobane identified Moses Sithole as Samson, the man who raped her.

Again, in the dock, Sithole seemed amused, but he buried his head in his hands when Sibongile Nkosi took the stand. She was 17 years old in 1988 when she got involved with the 24-year-old Sithole, who then called himself Martin. Sibongile told the court that she had been afraid of him then and was still afraid now. He had often hit her and had threatened to kill her family if she left him. She said he beat her in private, then when someone visited he would put on a show of affection. Eben Jordaan suggested that his client would deny that he ever laid a finger on her. Sibongile Nkosi asked if she should strip naked so that the court could see the scars.

Sibongile’s younger sister Lindiwe Nkosi then testified that, in October 1988, “Martin” had invited her to visit her sister in Soweto. She was 15 at the time. On the way, they got off the train at Geldenhuis station. Luring her into the veldt he asked Lindiwe if she wanted to have sex with him. When she said no, he pulled out a bottle of petrol and said he would kill her and burn her body if she did not have sex with him. Then he beat her, raped her and throttled her until she lost consciousness. When she came round, he said he would kill her and her niece if she told anyone what had happened.

Although the rape of Buyiswa Doris Swakamisa had been dealt with in 1989, she appeared in the 1996 trial to testify about his modus operandi. Her presence in court reinforced the point that Sithole’s subsequent victims seem to have been selected for their resemblence to Buyiswa Swakamisa and explained why there had been no crimes between 1989 and 1993, when Sithole had been in prison for her rape.

Buyiswa Swakamisa testified that she had met a man calling himself “Lloyd Thomas” in February 1989. He offered her a computer job and said he would take her to his business. Walking through the veldt near Cleveland, he produced a
panga
from a rolled-up newspaper he was carrying under his arm and said he was going to have sex with her. Then in a dramatic gesture he “threw the
panga
to one side and said if I did not want to have intercourse with him, I could run away, but had to make sure that he did not catch up with me or he would kill me. I just stood there. He came towards me and slapped me and ordered me to take off my clothes. When I did not he slapped me twice with his open hand.”

In the event, he could not get an erection. So he forced her to kiss his neck and stick her fingers in his ears. And when he was ready, he raped her. Afterwards he was in the mood for conversation again. This time he said that “he hated women because he once had a child with a girlfriend in Alexandra and that his girlfriend had poisoned the child”. Then he tied her up, took her money and left. Once freed she went to the police, but nothing happened until, months later, she saw him in the street. She called the police and he was arrested. Only then did he give his name as Moses Sithole.

This was apartheid South Africa and Buyiswa Swakamisa was forced to travel to the police station in the police vehicle with her rapist. He cursed her and himself for not having killed her.

The most controversial charges levelled again Sithole were the murder of Amanda Thethe and the theft of her cash card. David Selepe been charged with her murder and pointing out where it had happened when he was killed. Amanda’s cash card had then been used to withdraw money from a cashpoint three times after she was dead. The man using it had been photographed by a security camera. Earlier the police had identified the man in this photograph as David Selepe. Now they charged Sithole with the robbery as well as her murder.

Four weeks into the trial Siphiwe Ngwenya took the stand. She had worked at Kids’ Haven with Tryphina Mogotsi and identified the man on the security camera photo as the man who had offered Tryphina a job when she went missing. This was Moses Sithole who, for once, was not using an alias.

Even more damning was the testimony of Kwazi Sithole, Moses’ sister. She also identified the man in the photograph as her brother. What’s more, she said that women often phoned her house about jobs her brother had offered them.

It then came to light that Sithole had known Amanda Thethe. When he had visited her father’s home some months before she went missing, she introduced him as her boyfriend “Selbie”. In early August, the prosecution contended, her boyfriend had raped her, stuffed her underwear into her mouth, tied her blouse around her neck and strangled her. Amanda’s aunt saw “Selbie” again. He attended her niece’s funeral. This is not uncommon among serial killers, who like to relive the moment of killing.