Cape Town - An Australian pensioner is agonisingly close to finding justice for his son James Starkey, 36, the British banking consultant who was beaten and strangled to death in his Raphael Apartments suite on Nelson Mandela Square on October 8, 2016.
Still grief-stricken, all Ian Starkey needs to find closure is the help of the public to trace a sex worker who has been on the run since police issued a warrant for her arrest in October last year.
The suspect is Busisiwe Nkule Mabaso, 27, who was last seen in Newcastle where she uses the sex worker name “Melissa”. Mabaso was last seen soliciting on Gutenberg Street and at Blackrock Casino.
Mabaso also uses the aliases Yvonne Mabaso, Busisiwe Nokuthula, Yvonne Nonkululeko and Yvonne Misheal Ndoro. Another surname she uses is Nthondoza.
“Please help the police find my son’s killer,” pleaded Starkey, 64, from Sydney.
“The police have enough evidence to arrest her but they cannot find her. I’m praying there is someone out there who recognises her and knows her whereabouts.”
The breakthrough in the Starkey murder case came last June, seven months after Ian hired a second team of private investigators to assist a stalled SAPS investigation.
He did this in desperation after a two-year stalled police investigation had inexplicably failed to arrest any suspects - despite incriminating CCTV footage of two sex workers seen riding a lift with James to his flat in the days before his body was found.
Working together, SAPS and the investigators gathered enough evidence to execute the arrest of one of the sex workers who is alleged to have beaten Starkey with an iron whose bloodied cord was found wrapped around his neck.
The force of the beating was enough to break the iron’s handle which was found next to Starkey’s naked body, says a source close to the investigation.
Mabaso was traced to Newcastle where she was believed to have been living with her mother and sister.
But when cops arrived last October they found no evidence that she had been living there and that her family had in fact reported her missing to the local police in November 2018.
Since then the trail has gone cold, leaving Starkey senior feeling frustrated and dejected yet again.
“It has been three years and four months since I lost my son and best mate, to an unprovoked and brutal murder. That may seem like a long time. But to me, his mother and my daughters it’s like yesterday. The pain of missing him does not diminish. I think about my son every day. Only the hope of bringing those responsible for his brutal murder to justice has kept me going. Only once they are behind bars will we find closure.”
Starkey was murdered just three weeks after he was engaged to his Ghanaian girlfriend at a Pilanesberg game lodge. He was three weeks away from completing a three-month consultancy at Absa for his London firm, Catalyst, and going on a southern Africa safari with his dad, a retired hospital administration manager originally from Manchester.
Reliable sources say the police are in possession of CCTV footage showing Starkey, apparently in high spirits, riding up to his Raphael apartment in a lift with Mabaso and another prostitute on Thursday, October 6 close to midnight. Footage of the following day shows the sex workers moving freely to and from the floor of Starkey’s apartment using his key cards.
In one clip shortly before his murder, Starkey is seen chatting in the lift with Mabaso who is wearing his distinctive blue baseball cap.
In later clips Mabaso is allegedly seen alone in the lift leaving Starkey’s floor wearing his leather jacket and carrying his backpack.
After being alerted on Saturday, October 8 that Starkey was not replying to his fiancée’s text messages, Raphael security officers found Starkey dead in his flat. His naked, bloodied and battered body was found lying grotesquely on the floor next to an overturned, blood-smeared TV. Starkey was still gagged, with bound hands and feet and tied to an overturned chair in a bizarre bird’s nest of clothing, ties, belts and cords. The broken, bloodied iron used to beat him was found resting on his upper chest with its cord still wrapped around his neck.
Post-mortem results determined the cause of death to be consistent with blunt force trauma to Starkey’s head; smothering from being gagged with a tie wrapped several times around his head; and strangulation from the iron’s cord as well as a shirt sleeve and pyjamas pants leg which were also found tied around his neck.
Toxicology results revealed an as yet unexplained drug cocktail of cocaine, benzoylecgonine, methcathinone, methamphetamine, pseudoephedrine and ethanol in Starkey’s blood.
Gauteng SAPS media spokesperson Captain Mavela Masondo confirmed Mabaso’s arrest warrant.
“She is circulated as wanted. Anyone with information that can assist the police to apprehend the suspect should call Captain Odi Odendaal on 082 319 9514 or 08600 10111. Information can be given anonymously.”