By Anil Singh and Tasnim Langry
A picture is emerging of the serial killer terrorising the Newlands area of Durban: He is a charming and organised person with good social skills.
This is how police have described the serial killer who has so far claimed the lives of 13 women in Durban.
Superintendent Anton Booysen, the provincial co-ordinator for psychologically motivated crime in KwaZulu-Natal, who heads a team of eight from the Durban Serious Violent Crime Unit, believes the case is solvable.
Booysen, who has investigated several serial killings, has not ruled out the possibility that the killer could be the killer known as the Riverman, who murdered 13 women in the Effingham/ Greenwood Park area.
"I cannot say for sure that it is the Riverman but it is possible that it could be him. Serial killers are known to move their operations from one spot to another."
Among those detectives determined to nail the killer is no-nonsense Detective-Inspector Desiree Dudas, who is the investigating officer in the case.
She is assisted by several of her colleagues who have investigated such killings before.
Last week Dudas spent most of her days walking in the bushy terrain of Fosaville to look for clues at spots where the remains of the women were discovered.
This is her first serial killing investigation - last year she successfully completed a course on psychologically motivated crime.
Dudas is first to admit that catching the killer is not going to be easy.
"Some of the remains have been lying in the veld for a long time. What we need is a fresh body to get some sort of idea of the killer as well as DNA material," she said on Sunday.
Booysens believes with all the present media attention it would not be surprising if he kills again or just cools off.
"The killer was active until six weeks ago when a decomposing body of a women was discovered. With all the media attention and police activity in the area, the killer may have 'cooled off'.
"He could be in the area and watching us work.
"The person we are dealing with is intelligent, convincing and appears to his victims to be very trustworthy," said Booysen.
He said in most serial killings there appeared to be some sort of sexual connotation.
Describing a possible modus operandi, Booysen believes that the killer promises his victims employment and is able to convince them to accompany him.
"There is no doubt that all the victims were killed where their bodies were discovered. It seems that he gets satisfaction after murdering his victims," said Booysen.
Last week police using tracker dogs found five skeletons. These remains could be from crimes committed more than two years ago a state pathologists said.
All the victims had their hands tied behind their backs.
Booysen said the community could play a big role in assisting police in their hunt for the killer. They needed to come forward with information.
Characteristics of a serial killer:
- Killings are separate and can often escalate over a period of time.
- In normal homicides, killings tends to be one on one, but there are instances where the killer has killed more than one victim in a single incident.
- There are no (or very little) previous relations between the perpetrator and the victim.
- Although there may be a "pattern" or "victim trait", individual murders within a series rarely display a clearly defined or rational motive.
- The victim is usually subjected to a disproportionate level of brutality.
- A serial killer's main motive is sex (even though it may or may not take place), power, manipulation, domination and control.
- Sex is usually rape for an organised killer and sadism for a disorganised one.
- They can go on for months or years before they are caught. Victims are usually similar - prostitutes, hitch-hikers and job seekers.
- The victims may have similar attributes such as gender, race, general look, residence and so forth.
- They have a sex-murder fantasy based on control.
- As each murder takes place, he/she may be disappointed about the outcome of their previous one, and to gain satisfaction he/she acts it out again to achieve their goal.
Sub motives:
- Visionaries: they act in response to voices and are usually schizophrenic and psychotic.
- Missionaries: think it is their responsibility to rid society of unwanted elements.
- Hedonists: kill because murder is pleasurable.
- Lust killers: for sexual gratification.
- Thrill killers: kill because of the desire for a thrill or experience.
- Gain killers: kill for personal gain. The killer premeditates the act to require financial gain or materialistic goods.
- Power seekers: kill in the desire to have control over the life and death of others.
The FBI and profiling:
The term "serial killer" was coined in the mid-1970s by an FBI Behavioural Science Unit agent, Robert K Ressler. Before that it was referred to as a "stranger killer" because the killer's victims were unknown to him.