Cape Town – Century City serial killer Khangayi Sedumedi will spend the rest of his life behind bars.
On Thursday, Western Cape High Court Judge President John Hlophe sentenced him to seven life terms, plus forty years direct imprisonment. The sentences are to run concurrently.
Sedumedi, a security guard, pleaded guilty to 21 of 23 charges which included eight of rape, four of murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances, assault and kidnapping. Two of the charges were withdrawn.
In a plea and sentence agreement, Sedumedi described how he came upon his victims, admitting most were “random”.
Many were young jobseekers, and Sedumedi approached them under the pretext that he knew of job opportunities.
That way he would obtain their contact details.
“Subsequently, he would contact them and pretend that he had secured job interviews for them on specific dates. He would then ambush them on their way to the fictitious interview. He admitted that in certain instances he used a toy gun to force them into submission and tied them up.
In the lengthy document, he claimed that his mother “disappeared without a trace” when he was 13 years old.
This, he said, caused him to feel lonely and “served as his motivation in that his aforementioned conduct made him feel better”.
He admitted that when he made contact with his victims he did so “with the intent to rape them”.
He further admitted that he killed the latter four victims so that they could not identify him.
Sedumedi’s youngest victim was a virgin, a 15-year-old girl whom he raped both vaginally and anally. He also slapped her in the face. She sustained multiple injuries in the attack.
He committed the crimes over a period of four years, from November 2011, until his arrest in January 2015.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson for the Western Cape, Eric Ntabazalila, said: “We think it was an appropriate sentence for the types of crimes he was convicted of. You must realise that most of the victims were young matriculants who were desperate and were looking for jobs, he deceived them by pretending he had arranged interviews for them, then lured them and forced them into bushy areas.
“He would rob them, rape them and some of them he murdered. It’s a very sad situation, but we hope the families will find some closure after this sentence. It’s a wound that will not be able to heal, but we did all we could to ensure a long sentence.”
African News Agency