Victims 38+ Span of killings 1994–1995 Date apprehended August 1995 | Name Moses Sithole | |
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Criminal penalty 2,410 years' imprisonment Parents Sophie Sithole, Simon Tangawira Sithole Similar Marlene Lehnberg, Samuel Sidyno, Norman Afzal Simons | ||
Moses Sithole - The ABC Killer - Serial Killer
Moses Sithole (born 17 November 1964) is a South African serial killer and rapist who committed the "ABC Murders", so named because they began in Atteridgeville, continued in Boksburg and finished in Cleveland, a suburb of Johannesburg.
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Early life
Sithole was born in 1964 in Vosloorus, a poor township near Boksburg, Transvaal Province. When he was five, his father died, and his mother abandoned the family. Sithole and his siblings spent the next three years in an orphanage, where he later said they were mistreated. By his own account, he was arrested for Rape in his teens and spent seven years in prison. He later blamed his stay in prison for turning him into a murderer. He explained his crimes by saying that the women he murdered all reminded him of the women who had falsely accused him of rape many years before.
Murders
To the people around him, Sithole appeared to be a mild-mannered individual. At the time of his crimes, he was managing a shell organization, Youth Against Human Abuse, ostensibly devoted to the eradication of child abuse. All of his victims were females interviewing for positions with Sithole's ersatz charity. He would take them to remote fields, and proceed to beat, rape, and murder them. They were generally strangled with their own underwear. He would then write the word "bitch" on their dead bodies before dumping them. The first set of murders took place in the township of Atteridgeville, near Pretoria.
After a while, Sithole moved his focus to Boksburg and eventually to Cleveland. By 1995, he had claimed over 30 victims, sparking nationwide panic. In some cases, he would later phone the victims' families for no other apparent reason than to taunt them. At one point, President Nelson Mandela visited Boksburg in person to appeal for public assistance in apprehending the killer.
Capture
In August 1995, Sithole was identified as having been seen with one of the victims; SAPS investigators soon unraveled details of his previous rape conviction. Sithole quickly disappeared. In October 1995, he contacted South African journalist Tamsen de Beer and identified himself as the wanted murderer. During a phone conversation to de Beer, he indicated that the killings were carried out in revenge for his unjust imprisonment. He went on to claim 76 victims, twice as many as those reported. Finally in order to prove that he was the killer, he gave directions to where one of the bodies had been left. Local authorities subsequently cornered Sithole in Johannesburg and confronted him. The suspect was shot while attacking a constable with a hatchet and driven to the hospital, where he was found to be HIV positive.
Trial and imprisonment
On 5 December 1997, Sithole received a sentence of 50 years for each of the 38 murders, 12 years for each of the 40 rapes, and five years for each of the six robberies, with the sentences to be served consecutively, amounting to a total of 2,410 years in prison. Justice David Carstairs stipulated that Sithole must serve a minimum of 930 years before becoming eligible for parole. The judge also told Sithole that had capital punishment not been abolished, he would have sentenced Sithole to death. He was incarcerated in C-Max, the maximum security section of Pretoria Central Prison. Moses Sithole is currently incarcerated in Manguang Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein, Free State, South Africa.
