Nigel Cawthorne: The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large

“Nothing can be said in favour of Sithole,” said Justice Curlewis. “In this case I do not take leniency into account. What Sithole did was horrible… I want to make it clear I mean that Moses Sithole should stay in jail for the rest of his life.”

Sithole listened to the sentence without emotion. He was taken to C-Max, the maximum security section of Pretoria Central Prison and the highest security cellblock in South Africa which each prisoner is allowed one hour a day outside his cell and three visits a month. One of the other 93 prisoners there is Eugene de Kock of the apartheid government’s Counterinsurgency Unit, who was sentenced to 212 years for crimes against humanity.

Sithole has AIDS but, in prison, he has access to excellent medical care and his life expectancy is now longer than if he had remained outside.

The problem here is that there were more murders than Moses Sithole and David Selepe can account for. Sithole, in his video account, which there is no reason to doubt, denied nine of the murders he was charged with, and Selepe, presumably, was innocent of the four murders that Sithole was jailed for. And the police have never been able to link Sithole to Selepe, even though there is a strange overlap between the two cases.

There is the odd coincidence around Amanda Thethe. If the police are to be believed, David Selepe had taken them to her murder site and was revealing fresh details about the crime when he was shot. But it is undoubtedly true that Sithole knew Amanda. One or other of them used her cash card and Sithole was linked to her by DNA evidence.

A man phoned murder victim Dorah Mokoena’s employer three days after she went missing, giving his name as “Martin”. Although Sithole regularly used the alias Martin, he was not charged with Dorah Mokoena’s murder.

Five days after Joyce Mashabela disappeared on 9 August 1994, a man phoned her employer, giving his name as “Moses Sima” and saying that he had found her identity papers. DNA linked Sithole to her body and he was charged with her murder. But Peggy Bodile’s body was found in the same patch of veldt two months later. Sithole was not charged with her murder. It was attributed to Selepe. Then there is the name “Mandla”, fingered by Selepe an accomplice but also used by Sithole the third time he called Monica Vilakazi’s grandmother.

The police have never revealed whether any of the four murders initially attributed to Selepe which Sithole was charged with were among the six “positively” linked to David Selepe. FBI profiler Robert Ressler and Micki Pistorius concluded that the evidence indicated that Selepe had been involved in the Cleveland murders in some way; that it was likely that the Atteridgeville killer was working with an accomplice; and that it was possible that Selepe and the Atteridgeville killer may have known each other and may even have worked together. But if Selepe was telling the truth about “Mandla”, why would he have lied about “Tito”? He may well be responsible for the murders not attributed to either Selepe and Sithole. And he is still at large.

While the trial of Moses Sithole was still underway, another serial killer was on the loose three hundred miles to the south in Transkei. Local people blame a Mamlambo —a legendary creature that is “half horse, half fish” from Xhosa tribal myth that inhabits the Mzintlava River near Mount Ayliff in the Eastern Cape. The creature is said to be 67 feet long, with short stumpy legs, a crocodilian body and the head and neck of a snake with a hypnotic gaze that shines at night with a green light. It drags human and animal victims in the water, drowning them, and sucking their blood and brains out. According to Xhosa tribal legend, Mamlambo brings great wealth to anyone brave enough to capture it.

Official sources say that seven human victims, along with several goats, were attributed to the creature in 1997 alone. But freelance journalist Andite Nomabhunga, says that nine human deaths have been blamed on the Mamlambo , including a schoolgirl. Mount Ayliff police claim that most of the alleged victims which have been found had simply drowned. Sometimes, crabs have eaten away at the soft tissues of the face and throat. Despite police explanations for the deaths, villagers claim that they are not just superstitious tribe people. There is a genuine fear that a real killer is at work under the guise of the Mamlambo .

Constable & Robinson Ltd

3 The Lanchesters

162 Fulham Palace Road

London W69ER

www.constablerobinson.com

First published in the UK by Robinson,

an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2007

Copyright © Nigel Cawthorne, 2007

All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-84529-631-5

eISBN: 978-1-78033-362-5

Printed and bound in the EU

1 3 5 7 9 1 0 8 6 4 2