Nigel Cawthorne: The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large

Early on, the victims had not been not tied up. Next, their hands had been tied in front with a part of their own clothing. Then, their hands were tied behind their backs.

Unfortunately Dr Pistorius would have ample opportunity to discover whether the killer’s sadistic techniques would develop further. On 8 August 1995, the body of 25-year-old Elsie Khoti Masango was found at Onderstepoort. Missing for three and a half weeks, she was identified from the contents of her handbag. Another body was found nearby the following day. The woman had been burnt beyond recognition and she was never identified. It does not seem that the incineration was deliberate and was probably the result of a veldt fire. It was not known how long the body had been there.

The killer then returned to Boksburg. On 23 August, the body of 30-year-old Oscarina Vuyokazi Jakalase, who had gone missing on 8 August, was found there. But there were more victims scattered around Onderstepoort. On 28 August, a woman’s body was found at the Bon Accord Dam. Two days later, a second body was found nearby, which seemed to have been there for some months. Neither could be identified.

The police were now crawling all over Onderstepoort, so the killer left his next victim in the Cleveland area. Another unidentified body was found there on 12 September.

Then on the evening of 16 September, a police reservist taking his dog to hunt rabbits in the veldt stumbled across a body at the Van Dyk Mine near Boksburg. Over the next two days, nine more bodies were found within a radius of some 900 feet. In her book, Catch Me a Killer , Dr Pistorius describes this as “one of the most horrific crime scenes I had ever seen”.

“Decomposed bodies were strewn over the veldt,” she says, “some only metres away from others. Maggots were feasting and the stench penetrated our nostrils and clung to our clothing.”

Despite the advanced state of decomposition, it was clear that the most recent victims had been murdered where they lay and Pistorius pictured the killer leading his latest victims into the field amongst the rotting corpses, where he raped and killed them. The poor women would have been paralyzed with fear. Indeed a stain on one victim’s jeans showed she had wet herself in terror.

More than 30 members of the East Rand Murder and Robbery Unit combed the area, along with forensic experts. Dogs and a helicopter were brought in. The head of the South African Police, National Commissioner John George Fivaz, surveyed the area from the air. The police even brought in Dr Mervyn Mansell, an entomologist at the Agricultural Research Council in Pretoria, who had developed a way to use maggots to estimate the time of death.

Then President Nelson Mandela came out to view the site and meet the detectives and forensic experts. With that amount of media attention, it was clear that the strangler would find a new killing ground.

It was soon clear that the Boksburg killer was the same man who had been at work in Atteridgeville and Onderstepoort, so Captain Frans van Niekerk of the East Rand Murder and Robbery Unit, the investigating officer at the scene in Boksburg, contacted Captain Viljoen in Pretoria to share information.

The multiple-murder scene itself yielded a number of clues. First, it was little more than three miles from Boksburg Prison where violent offenders were kept. There was a railway line nearby, as in the Cleveland murders. And between ant heaps across the nearby veldt, the police found knives, mirrors, underwear, feathers, black and red candles, and other objects related to traditional healing call muti . Particularly powerful in muti is the use of human body parts, especially the internal organs, the tongue, eyes and genitals hacked from a live victim. Over the years there have been numerous “ muti -murders” in South Africa. Usually the victim is throttled until they are unconscious, the body part removed, then the victim is left to bleed to death.

But these were not muti murders. Dr Pistorius saw the hand of the Atteridgeville killer on every victim. Worse, his method of killing had developed again. The four last victims found at Boksburg were tied so that, as they struggled, they would strangle themselves.

Those found at the Van Dyk Mine included 26-year-old Makoba Tryphina Mogotsi, who went missing on 15 August, and Nelisiwe Nontobeko Zulu, also 26, who disappeared on 4 September on her way to look for a job. Forty-three-year-old Amelia Dikamakatso Rapodile was identified by the contents of her handbag, which was found on the murder site. She worked at Johannesburg International Airport and last seen alive on 7 September when she left work to see a man who had promised her a better job. Her cash card had been used at ATMs in Germiston three times later on the night she disappeared. Her hands were tied behind her back and then to her neck with her pantyhose. There was 31-year-old Monica Gabisile Vilakazi, who left her four-year-old son with her grandmother on 12 September when she went to look for work. Last seen by her parents in Germiston, 21-year-old Hazel Nozipho Madikizela was also found with her hands tied to her neck with her underwear. Forty-five-year-old Tsidi Malekoae Matela was only identified over a year later, in November 1996. She was originally from neighbouring Lesotho. The other four women remained unidentified.

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.