Three years ago 32-year-old Thapelo Motseki was let off the hook for murder and rape, but since then he has taken at least three other lives.
Police are now investigating the possibility that Motseki could be linked to more murders and rape cases that date back to 2012, which would bring his tally to seven.
Relatives of the deceased are glad that Motseki finally got his day in court on Monday.
He was found guilty of murdering and raping three teenagers and an older woman.
The mother and aunt of one of the victims embraced the prosecutor after the judgment, while her grandmother did a jaunty jig outside along with other elderly community members who had filled up a combi for the occasion.
“I feel happy now. I’m free,” said Mary Mzini.
“I just want to thank all the Doornkop (Soweto) people. They spent R700 per trip to come to court every day,” said Mzini, the grandmother of murdered teenager Thembelihle Dlamini.
“I just want to thank them. They supported us with prayer, with money, with cars.”
Dlamini and her sister Gladys have lost their jobs because of their frequent absences from work to be in court.
Gladys was too emotional to speak, other than to say it was worth losing her job.
“He must get a life sentence and more,” said Lungelo Khubeka, the brother of murder victim Lungile Khubeka.
Motseki’s first known victim was 36-year-old Cinthia Setuke, who worked with Motseki at a mine belonging to platinum producer Aquarius in Rustenburg.
Setuke was murdered on October 9, 2013, while working on the night shift.
Motseki was arrested in connection with her murder a few days later.
But in April 2014 he was allowed to go free by the Rustenburg Magistrate’s Court, apparently because of a lack of evidence.
The investigating officer in the case has since resigned after authorities instituted disciplinary proceedings against him.
It’s believed that the officer lost the rape kit.
However, the law caught up with Motseki later that year when police were investigating another rape and murder in Soweto and linked Motseki’s DNA to that collected in the Setuke case.
Months after Motseki was let off the hook for Setuke’s murder, he was arrested for the rape and murder of three teenagers from Soweto and Rustenburg.
The South Gauteng High Court, sitting at the Palm Ridge Magistrate’s Court, found Motseki guilty this week on four charges of murder, two of rape, one of attempted rape and three of kidnapping.
He stood quietly in court while the judge detailed his crimes and delivered the verdict with the help of a Sesotho language interpreter.
Setuke’s family were not in court to find the justice they had been seeking since 2013.
Judge Mmonoa Teffo delivered a macabre summary of Motseke’s modus operandum:
The attacks all occurred at night in areas well-known to the victims, the girls were all similar in appearance and they were walking alone when approached.
In all cases they were strangled or suffocated.
The victims were partially clothed when found, with their pants pulled down.
Setuke’s injuries included abrasions of the soft tissue of her neck, on her face as well as on the inner lining of her lips and cheeks.
Her jeans were pulled down as were her tights, leaving her genitals exposed.
Her T-shirt and jersey were lifted to expose her breasts.
According to a doctor’s testimony, she was wearing no helmet or gloves though she was working on the night shift; her left boot had been removed.
“If you saw the devil I was facing, you wouldn’t have screamed,” another woman told Thembelihle Dlamini’s aunt, Thandeka.
The woman is a former neighbour of Motseki’s in Soweto. She told Thandeka she was 17 when Motseki raped her.
“She told me, He raped me brutally in 2001’,” Thandeka recalled outside court.
Motseki confessed to a police officer that he was not sexually turned on by penetrating his victims but by masturbating over them after they were dead, according to information gleaned by Thandeka.
He favoured intercourse after death. But this was never entered into evidence as the revelation was made before Motseki had a lawyer.
He remains in custody for pre-sentencing reports and victim impact assessment reports.
Released in 2012 for lack of evidence, three have died since.
Sunday Independent