Johannesburg - A 29-year-old woman, her fiancée and ex-husband allegedly kidnapped a Vosloorus woman, robbed her of jewellery, strangled her and set her alight in her car.
By the time Nthabiseng Selesho’s family stumbled on the car after searching for it themselves through the night, all that was left of the 23-year-old were charred bones.
The couple and the woman’s ex-husband - who all lived in the same house in Boksburg - were arrested on Tuesday night.
The fourth man, believed to be the buyer of the stolen goods, was arrested on Wednesday.
Selesho worked for a jewellery shop, and on the day she was killed, she had gone to see a client - the 29-year-old woman - to show her some pieces she might be interested in.
The store owner, Josy Vos, said Selosho had about R300 000 worth of jewellery on her.
She was to go and see another client afterwards. Vos said the woman had been a client since 2007 and it was not the first time Selosho had met her.
But when Selesho arrived at the woman’s Van Dyk Park home in Boksburg, she was strangled and robbed of the jewellery.
The trio had put the jewellery store employee’s body in the car and drove around the Grasmere toll plaza area, looking for a suitable place to dump it, according to the police.
They doused the car with petrol and set it alight, with Selesho’s body slumped on the back seat.
Selesho and Ketso Monaheng have a four-month-old baby boy, who is still being breastfed.
Last Thursday at 5.30pm, when Selesho had not arrived home, her mother Kedibone and Monaheng got worried.
“I called both her phones but they were off. The office was also calling me, wanting to know where she was because she never made it to her second appointment,” Monaheng said.
Tracker failed to locate the car, and Monaheng called a police officer friend at Douglasdale police station for help.
At the same time, Selesho’s family trawled hospitals, thinking she might have been in an accident.
The friend later called Monaheng and told him that a car had been found burnt in the south of Joburg and that he must go to Mondeor police station to get the information.
“When we got there, the police did not know anything. Someone had made an anonymous call about the car, but they never checked it out. Their (police) cars were all broken, so we had to take them in ours to search for the car.”
The entire family, with the help of a few police officers, searched for the car. It was located at about 2am in Lenasia. The police cordoned off the area when they realised there was a body inside that had been burnt beyond recognition.
On Wednesday, the family - who had not lost hope that Selesho was still alive - were planning to have flyers with Selesho’s face printed.
But the police arrived and dashed their hopes. “They said the woman had confessed (to having killed her),” Monaheng said.
Selesho’s mother cried bitterly on Wednesday.
“Why did that woman betray Nthabiseng when she trusted her so much? All this time I was hoping she had been kidnapped and that her kidnappers would ask for a ransom,” said Kedibone.
Soweto police spokesman Warrant Officer Kay Makhubela said the woman admitted that she and her co-accused had robbed and killed Selesho. The trio had booked a room at a hotel in Primrose, where they were selling the jewellery, he added.
The Star