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By Shaun Smillie and Kanina Foss
Teazers boss Lolly Jackson was shot dead last night when a gunman pumped a barrage of bullets into him in a house in Edleen, Edenvale.
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"He lived rough and he's died rough," his strip club rival Andrew Phillips told The Star.
No sooner was Jackson, 53, dead than the killer phoned the police and told them what he had done. Then he fled in the King of Sleaze's Jeep Cherokee.
Police Lieutenant Colonel Eugene Opperman confirmed that Jackson was killed between 7pm and 8pm.
He said the killer had phoned the cops at about 8pm to give them the address where they could find Jackson's body.
The suspect is a lodger at the house, but when police got there, he had fled and the house was locked. The police had to fetch the owner, who has a business in the industrial area of Sebenza, to open the house for them.
Later, Jackson's distraught wife Natasha ran up to the house screaming, and collapsed in the driveway. Paramedics took her to an ambulance, one of the many emergency vehicles parked outside the house, which was cordoned off by police.
The Jacksons' son was on the scene. The body had not been removed by the time of going to press.
The "Teazer's family" reported business as usual, and the social networking site Twitter was abuzz with the news of Jackson's murder. But Phillips, his bitter rival in the strip club industry, wasn't shedding any tears.
"The whole world is buzzing about it. It has probably been a while coming, the way he carried on. His attitude towards payment terms was 10 percent down, balance in court. You make enemies of people that way."
Phillips added: "He always threatened people; warned them they were going to end up in a coffin. I detested the man. He was trash - a bigot, racist, extortionist, megalomaniac. If there was a pie, he wanted the whole one. I won't pretend I'm shedding a tear."
Phillips described Jackson's death as "a seminal moment".
"I think the world is better off. He was pollution, there was no other way to describe him. The air has been purified. He was a nasty guy," Phillips said.
Speaking at the murder scene, family spokesman Sean Newman asked for privacy.
"We can't talk about the crime at the moment for obvious reasons," he said, his eyes welling with tears.
"Contrary to some people's belief that he was a thug, Lolly was a great man with a big heart who gave to charity. And he was loved by many," Newman told the first journalists at the scene.
He said he had heard about Jackson's death just as he was preparing to go to bed. He had last spoken to him on Sunday.
He said Jackson's staff were like his family.
Newman added it "felt surreal" to be talking about Jackson's death.
Opperman refused to speculate on the motive for the crime, but Jackson was known to have had many enemies.
He recently had a vicious public fight with another businessman, who claimed Jackson had been demanding money from him because he was dating a former stripper from one of Jackson's clubs.
The belligerent club boss, who loved fast cars and the fast life, had also had run-ins with the police, including fines for speeding, and was in and out of court on various charges and counter-charges.
Meanwhile, at least one of three Teazers clubs in and around Joburg said it was operating as normal last night.
A man who identified himself as Ernest, the manager, of the Midrand Teazers club, declined to comment on the shooting.
He said only that business was continuing as normal.
Another man, at Teazers in Rivonia, and who described himself as the standby manager, said he was in the dark about the shooting.