The Ted Bundy of South Africa | Moses Sithole
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Four years. That's how long it took Democrats to ruin our economy and plunge our southern border into anarchy. Who helped them hurt us? Ruben Gallego. Washington could have cut taxes for Arizona families, but Ruben blocked the bill. And his fellow Democrats gave a bigger break to the millionaire class in California and New York. They played favorites and cost us billions. And Ruben wasn't done yet.

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July 17th, 1995. Voxburg, South Africa. Absalom Sangweni had lived in Bayers Park all his life. The small neighborhood sits about 20 miles east of downtown Johannesburg. While on his porch in the summer of '95, he saw a man and woman walking toward an open field near his home. Absalom called to them, warning them about a fence around the field. They'd be trespassing if they crossed it.

The man called back, telling Absalom not to worry. Moments later, they vanished from sight. But something about them rubbed Absalom the wrong way. He kept watching the horizon, waiting for the couple to return. But sometime later, only the man came back. It was hard to tell, but Absalom swore he saw the man slip something shiny into his pocket. The man seemed anxious, as if he wanted to escape Bear's Park without talking to anyone.

Absalom could tell something was wrong. He walked into the field, where he quickly found the woman from before. She was still as stone, with her belt wrapped tightly around her neck. She'd been raped and left for dead, and Absalom knew who did it. Unfortunately, he never saw the man's face. He could only describe him as a young black man of average height and build. In South Africa, that could have been anybody.

Police identified the woman as 25-year-old Josephine Melangoni. According to her friends and family, she was a mother of four who was out meeting somebody that day about a job offer. Absalom didn't know it, but he had just watched a ruthless serial killer walk by his home. They call him the ABC Killer, as he raped and killed over 30 women between the cities of Atteridgeville, Boxburg, and Cleveland, South Africa.

Some also call him the Ted Bundy of South Africa, as the pair share similarities in their upbringing, their descent into crime, and their modus operandi, or MO. His name is Moses Sithole, the most prolific serial killer in South African history. Part 1. A Wolf in Sheep's Clothes

Moses Sithole was born in 1964 in Foslerous, South Africa. The small, historically black area south of Boxburg was stricken with poverty. Jobs and money were impossible to come by. Moses was one of five children born to Simon and Sophie Sithole.

When he was five, Moses' father died of illness. His mother, unable to support herself, let alone five children, abandoned the kids at a local police station. It's unclear if Moses ever saw her again. The Sithole children were taken from the police station to an orphanage in Benoni, a small town about 25 miles east of Johannesburg.

Only the boys were transferred to another orphanage in the province of KwaZulu-Natal, closer to the southeastern coast. There, Moses claims the staff abused and mistreated him and his siblings. He couldn't take it anymore and ran away after three years, never to return. For Moses, life on the street was better than the orphanage. Lucky for him, his older brother Patrick was scraping by and could offer Moses a roof over his head.

Otherwise, the soon-to-be serial killer was on his own, to earn money. Moses took jobs in the Johannesburg gold mines. It was laborious work that didn't pay very well, but it still put him ahead of many other young black men in apartheid-era South Africa. Money made Moses something of a ladies' man. Like Ted Bundy, he was charming and good-looking. He always had girlfriends, though he saw them more as sexual objects.

Moses' life changed drastically in 1989 when a young woman accused the 25-year-old of raping her. According to Buiswa Swakomisa, she met Moses, whom she knew as Lloyd Thomas, in February of '89. He offered her a computer job and asked her to walk with him to the business. On the way, Moses insisted they cut through a field in Cleveland. That's when he pulled a machete he had concealed in a newspaper under his arm.

The deal was simple: have sex with him or die. At one point, Moses threw the machete down and told Buiswa she could run if she wanted to. But if Moses caught her, well, she knew what would happen. She relented. Moses raped her, tied her up and robbed her, all while talking about his general hatred of women. He told her that an ex-girlfriend had poisoned their son shortly after it was born.

It's unclear if this story is true. Buiswa reported the rape to the police, but they couldn't track down the alleged Lloyd Thomas. Several months later, Buiswa saw Lloyd Thomas outside her new job. She called the cops, who arrived and questioned the man, who identified himself as Moses Sithole. According to reports, police made Buiswa sit in the back seat with Sithole while they drove to the station.

She claims he leaned over and whispered that he should have just killed her. Moses always maintained his innocence. He says Buiswa made everything up, though he never offered a credible reason why. His claims didn't matter, as he was found guilty of rape and sentenced to six years in prison. Moses was released for good behavior in 1993.

And while he was a model prisoner on the outside, Moses harbored something evil on the inside. He always maintained that he never raped Buiswa Swakamisa. Her false accusation ruined his life, and now he'd have his revenge. However, he'd never go after Buiswa or have any contact with her. Instead, he targeted women who reminded him of Buiswa to relive the fantasy of killing her over and over again.

But Moses was smart enough to know he needed a cover. He needed to be cunning and clever. He'd have to abduct these women with the silver tongue instead of brute force. So, the wolf donned sheep's clothes in the form of a charity called Youth Against Human Abuse. According to their charter, their mission was to combat rampant child abuse in South Africa. Moses always had a soft spot for children, but a deep hatred for women.

Ironically, the disguise lured victims into his trap. Someone who loves kids so much could never be a serial killer, right?

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Part 2: Bodies, Bodies, Bodies It was September 16th, 1995. Police between Atteridgeville, Boxburg, and Cleveland believed they had a copycat killer on their hands.

About a year prior, in December of '94, officers in Cleveland shot and killed David Selepe, another South African killer who, they claim, murdered a dozen local women. But even with David gone, South African women between the three cities were still going missing and turning up dead. Then, in mid-September 1995, a reserve officer and his dog stumbled upon a mass grave near the Van Dyck Mine in Boxburg.

It began with one body, which quickly ballooned to three, then four, then five. By the end of the day, police had uncovered ten dead women, all in varying stages of decay. The sight was almost worse than the smell. They believed the killer had brought his victims to the gravesite. He'd scare them with the bodies before raping and killing them too. According to police, the most recent victim had wet herself in terror.

The stain was still fresh on her jeans, based on the MO. Police believe this was the same killer they'd been tracking for the better part of a year. David Celepe was long dead, so somebody either took up his mantle or this killer worked independently. The first body turned up on January 4th, 1995, half naked in a field in Atteridgeville. She was so badly decomposed that police never identified the body.

The second popped up a month later. She too was naked, but the killer had folded her clothes and placed them neatly atop her chest. Fingerprint analysis identified her as 27-year-old beauty Nuku Soto. Beauty being her name, not a description. She went missing a month prior while on her way to visit her sister in Klipkot, a small town about 30 miles north of Adderidgeville.

Police discovered their third body on March 6th, officially making it one body per month since the new year. This time, construction workers in Adderidgeville found the corpse while digging. According to reports, the woman's breasts were sticking out of the soil. She was 25-year-old Sarah Mocono, who'd gone missing three days earlier.

The last time anyone heard from her, she was heading to meet a man who'd promised her work. The body trend continued through April, with a fourth found in Adderidgeville. This time, the woman's hands were bound behind her back with her bra strap, and there were ligature marks around her neck. Her name was Leta Indlangamandla, a 25-year-old single mother. Sadly, she wasn't the only body found in the area.

The following day, police found the body of Leta's two-year-old son, Sibusiso, about 65 feet away from his mother. There was a gash on his head, but it wasn't big enough to kill him. Instead, doctors said he died of exposure. He likely sat with his mother's body in the hot South African sun until it killed him. By mid-April, police in Atteridgeville believed they had a copycat killer on their hands.

The new killer's MO was eerily similar to David Selepe's. On May 13th, police found another 29-year-old woman dead in a cornfield in West Pretoria. She was naked from the waist down, and it appeared as though the killer had strangled her with her own clothing. June proved to be the worst month of 1995, with three bodies popping up within weeks of each other.

The first was on June 13th, when police found 25-year-old Francina Sidibe sitting up against a tree. Her panties and purse strap had been tied around her neck and then to the tree. Three days later, the 19-year-old body of Elizabeth Mathetsis was found in an industrial area about nine miles northwest of Pretoria. She'd been missing since late May. Among the oldest victims was 30-year-old Ernestina Mosebo.

Police found her body west of Boxburg. Like the others, she'd been raped and strangled to death. They didn't necessarily know which came first. The last of the June bodies was that of 24-year-old Nikiwi Dikos. Like many other victims, she was last seen heading to a job opportunity in Atteridgeville. By the time police found her body, wild dogs had ripped it to shreds. Her skull was discovered about 130 feet from her torso.

They could only name her due to her wedding ring, which her husband identified shortly after. A few weeks later, police found themselves at Absalom Sangweny's home. He told them about the couple he saw walking into the field and how only the man came out hours later. August produced five more decomposing bodies. The first two came back to back on August 8th and August 9th.

One body was that of 25-year-old Elsie Massango, whom they identified thanks to the items in her handbag nearby. The other body was so severely burned that police could never identify it. It was also unclear how long she'd been there. Another body turned up on August 23rd. Then, police found two more on the same day on August 28th. Police found their first body in the Cleveland area post-David Celepe on September 12th.

Four days later, the off-duty officer and his dog would stumble upon the first of ten bodies uncovered at the Van Dyck mine near Boxburg. By mid-September 1995, police in three cities had over 20 bodies on their hands. All but one were women between the ages of 18 and 30. The only outlier was the two-year-old boy, the only man ever killed during Moses Sithole's spree.

Part 3, Profiling a Killer.

Police between Atteridgeville, Boxburg, and Cleveland knew they had a problem. Somebody was luring these women in with the promise of work and then killing them in cold blood. Police didn't know if they were dealing with one killer or several. What confused them most was the different positions and situations in which they found the bodies. The patterns didn't add up. Some were bound, others weren't. All of them were strangled, but how they were strangled differed.

Sometimes, the killer or killers tied the victims' clothes around their neck with their bare hands. Other times, they used a stick to wind the clothes around the victims' neck like a garrote. The first breakthrough in the case came when police stopped looking at the order in which the bodies were found and started looking at them in the order in which they were killed. Rearranging the photos helped put everything in perspective.

This wasn't a haphazard killer who was killing women with whatever he had available. This was a calculated individual who honed his craft over time. They were looking for one man, but that one man always stayed one step ahead. That's likely because the murders attracted significant news attention. The gravesite near the Van Dyck Mine became a media circus.

Even newly elected South African president Nelson Mandela came to meet with detectives. Moses Sithole sat back and watched the story unfold on TV and in newspapers. He thought his cover as a child-loving philanthropist would work, and it did for a while. Little did he know the police were building a profile that narrowed their investigation to someone like Moses.

The dump sites between Atteridgeville, Boxburg, and Cleveland were carefully chosen. While remote, they were easily accessible via rail or road. That means the killer knew the area well and likely grew up there. Confidence and arrogance quickly took over the more he killed. Where the bodies in Atteridgeville were spread out, those in Boxburg and Cleveland were closer together.

Sometimes, they were right on top of each other, as seen at Van Dyke Mine. As for the victims, most were attractive, middle-class women in their 20s and 30s. They were either unemployed or looking for better employment. According to many close friends and relatives, most of these women were last seen leaving for a new job opportunity. Police could assume the killer had been hurt or scorned by a woman in the past.

Therefore, he was taking his aggression out on other similar looking women. In Moses' case, everything revolved around the allegedly fake rape accusation that ruined his life. In her book, "Strangers on the Street," South African forensic investigator and author, Mickey Pistorius, wrote how the killer had the following characteristics. The killer was likely a black male in his late 20s or early 30s.

Moses was 31 in 1995. He was likely self-employed or wealthy compared to his peers. While it's unclear how much money Moses had, he certainly had more than other South African men his age. The killer likely drove an expensive car and wore flashy jewelry. According to Absalom Sangweni, he saw the killer slip something shiny into his pocket while walking back from the field. Perhaps Moses was wearing his victim's jewelry like a trophy.

The killer was friendly and most likely a ladies' man. Moses was known to have a silver tongue. He was always around women, even though he hated them. The killer was likely assaulted physically or sexually as a child. Moses and his siblings claim they were abused while growing up in the orphanage.

According to Robert Ressler, an American FBI agent and author who's often credited with coining the term "serial killer", the suspect in South Africa likely had a high sex drive and liked to masturbate to his aggressive fantasies. To him, women were objects for his pleasure. When he approached a victim, he did so cautiously and with much preparation. He won them over, lowered their defenses, and then killed them.

But, like every killer, Moses messed up eventually. Power went to his head, and he soon found himself calling his victims' families and leaving cryptic messages. Meanwhile, a handbag found near one of the bodies helped police identify the woman as 43-year-old Amelia Rapadol, the second oldest of Moses' victims. They tracked down her co-workers, who said Amelia had an appointment with a man named Moses Sithole. Part 4

End of the line. Police dug deeper into the Amelia Rapidole lead. They discovered an application she'd recently filled out for Youth Against Human Abuse. On that application was a phone number that led police to Moses' sister, Kwasi Sidhol. She was living in Watville, a village southeast of Boxburg. According to her, Moses wasn't living there, and she had no idea where he was. That was, obviously, a lie.

Soon after this visit, police identified the body of 26-year-old Tryphena Magotzi. She was a laundry worker for Kids Haven, a charity dedicated to helping children in the Boxburg area get off the street. Her co-worker said a man had visited Kids Haven recently and told the girls about a new employment opportunity at his organization, Youth Against Human Abuse. Tryphena took the bait and was excited to learn more about the job.

She vanished a few days later and turned up dead on September 17th, 1995. Among the last of Moses's victims was 20-year-old Agnes Mbouli, who disappeared while walking to meet a friend. Police found her body on October 3rd near a train station in Benoni. Later that day, a man called into The Star, a popular tabloid in South Africa. A writer named Tamsin De Beer answered the phone.

The man called himself Joseph Maguena and claimed to be the killer everyone was looking for. Specifically, he said, "Man that is so highly wanted," suggesting his crimes put him on some type of pedestal. He called De Beere several more times throughout October. Each time, she took detailed notes and contacted the police. Eventually, the caller confessed that he was killing these women as revenge for a false rape accusation.

He went into great detail about the murders, saying things that only the killer and police would know. He took full credit for the murders in Adderidgeville and Greater Pretoria, but denied any involvement in the Cleveland slayings. He also denied killing Letta Ndlangamandla and her two-year-old son, claiming he loved children and would never hurt one. Finally, to prove who he was, he told De Beere where police could find another body.

Lo and behold, he led them to an unidentified corpse near a local train station. De Beere tried organizing a meeting with this Joseph Maguena, but it fell through. Police were sick of his games, so they went with their gut feeling that Joseph Maguena was Moses Sithole. They published his picture in the paper and offered a handsome reward to anybody with information.

24 hours later, the second to last ABC victim was found by the Village Main reef mine near Johannesburg. The unidentified woman's shoelaces were wrapped tightly around her neck. After seeing his picture in the paper, Moses allegedly panicked and asked his brother-in-law for a gun. He claimed he needed it for protection as people were, once again, making false accusations against him.

He wanted his brother-in-law to meet him at a factory in Benoni to make the exchange. Thankfully, the man didn't trust Moses and told the police about his request. Police officers posed as security guards at the factory and waited for Moses to arrive. He, however, grew suspicious and fled the scene with police hot on his tail. An officer identified himself and ordered Moses to stop.

He fired two warning shots, but Moses kept going. That's when Moses grabbed an axe and turned on the police officer, who was left with no choice but to shoot. He hit Moses twice, once in the leg and once in the stomach. Fearing another David Selepe situation, police rushed Moses to the hospital, where he underwent life-saving surgery. In an ironic twist, police found themselves praying for a mass murderer's safe recovery.

Moses was rather talkative in post-op. It was either the drugs talking or he was finally willing to take responsibility for his crimes. He told officers about the murders in Atteridgeville and Boxburg, but claimed he never went anywhere near Johannesburg, as that's where he lived. All the while, Moses kept a hand under his johnny and masturbated while talking to police, especially female officers.

In fact, he refused to answer any questions until a female officer was present in the room. According to the Star, Moses preferred strangulation because he didn't like the sight of blood. He forced them to look down while he raped them and then masturbated as they died. Once he was discharged from the hospital, police had Moses take them from gravesite to gravesite. On November 6th, he led them to a dump site west of Boxburg, where they found the final victim.

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Moses Sithole's trial gave him the last laugh. It was long, expensive, and taxing on everybody involved, from police officers who investigated the scenes to the countless family members who spoke up about their lost loved ones. Meanwhile, Moses Sithole smiled and claimed innocence through the whole thing.

Among the most impactful testimonies was that of Buiswa Swakomisa, Moses' first alleged rape victim. She told the story of how he threatened her with a machete and then raped her in an open field near Cleveland. A secret video taken by Moses' cellmates in prison also helped convict the ABC killer. As the story goes, Sithole wanted to commit suicide in jail. He cut a deal with two other inmates to make a video of his confession.

Then, they could sell that video and Moses' life story to the highest bidder, splitting the funds evenly. Moses' share would go to his daughter. That's right, during his killing spree, Moses Sithole was married with a child. It's unclear if his wife ever suspected her husband. In the footage, Moses confesses to his crimes in great detail. He says he only killed 29 women and didn't know where newspapers were getting the other nine victims from.

He's quoted as saying, "If there was blood or injuries, they weren't my women." He confirmed what everyone else already believed, that he targeted women who reminded him of Buiswa Swakamisa. However, he claims he didn't rape them. Instead, he offered not to kill them if they agreed to sleep with him. He, of course, killed them anyway.

Some women he targeted but backed off, claiming they were "sincere and without pretensions." Wilhelmina Ramfisa was one of those sincere, almost victims. She met Moses in March 1995. He called himself David Ngobeni and offered her a job working for his charity. She submitted an application but never heard back. She was angry about David ghosting her until October when she saw him getting arrested on TV.

Police revealed him to be Moses Sithole and claimed he was guilty of killing over 30 women. Wilhelmina froze in her chair, knowing she could have easily been one of those victims. Despite all the evidence against him, Moses' lawyers claimed their client suffered severe head trauma as a child, likely during his stay at the orphanage in KwaZulu-Natal.

These injuries allegedly skewed his sense of right and wrong. Thus, he couldn't be held accountable for his crimes. They argued this even though Moses showed extreme cunningness and care when it came to abducting these women and disposing of their bodies. If he didn't think it was wrong, why go through the trouble of enticing them with the promise of gainful employment? Why lure them into remote fields? Why not kill them on the street in front of witnesses?

Why take their jewelry and scatter their possessions to hinder a police investigation? Nobody was buying the head trauma angle. Moses Sidhall knew what he was doing. Even worse, he liked what he was doing. For that, he was found guilty on 40 counts of rape, 38 counts of murder, and 6 counts of robbery.

For each rape charge, the judge sentenced him to 12 years in prison. For each of the 38 murder charges, he received 50 years in prison. Finally, for each of the six robbery charges, Moses received an additional five years. His sentences were to run consecutively, meaning he'd spend the next 2,410 years in prison. He won't be eligible for parole until he's 930 years old.

So, assuming Moses Sithole isn't a vampire, he'll die in a South African jail within the next few decades. Part 6: The Bundy Connection There are many parallels between South Africa's most notorious serial killer Moses Sithole and American mass murderer Ted Bundy. For starters, both were abandoned by their mothers. Moses more so than Bundy.

In Ted's case, his mom left him at a home for unwed mothers, only to reclaim him two months later. He went to live with his grandparents and grew up believing they were his mother and father, and that his mother was his older sister. Like Bundy, Moses always kept female company during his teenage years and early 20s. Both men grew up without a father figure and believed women mistreated them in some way.

For Moses, it was the rape accusation. For Bundy, it was his mother who lied to him for most of his life. Bundy was also scorned by his first love, Diane Edwards, who broke up with him while attending the University of Washington. Like Moses and Buiswa, many of Bundy's victims resembled Diane. According to Ted, Diane was the only woman he ever really loved. Both men liked to strangle their victims and attack from behind.

Bundy, however, was more violent, looked no further than his last string of murders at the Chi Omega house in Florida, where he left his victims face down in their beds with their skulls caved in. And while both men brutally murdered their victims, neither used aggressive means, such as stalking or kidnapping at knife point to obtain them. For example, Bundy would wear a cast or dress like a police officer to win a woman's trust.

Meanwhile, Moses used the promise of gainful employment to lure them in. Both men were charming, intelligent, and highly efficient despite their horrible crimes. Among the strangest similarities is their penchant for helping others. In her book, The Stranger Beside Me, author and former crisis line operator Anne Rule talks about working with Bundy at a suicide prevention center.

According to her, he helped numerous people who were thinking about taking their own lives. There's also the story about Bundy saving a toddler from drowning in 1970. On the other side of the world, Moses Sithole ran a reputable charity and helped runaway street children reunite with their parents.

By all accounts, his charity did good work, even if he did use it as a cover to rape and murder over 30 women. What makes people like Bundy and Sithole genuinely terrifying is the fact that they blended in. They could be anybody, from the guy walking his dog to the man serving food at a charity event. The only way to defend yourself is to assume everybody is a killer, and that's no way to live.

Unfortunately, that's the kind of world that people like Bundy and Sithole have helped mold. A world where everyone's a suspect, where smiles are disarming techniques, where a job interview could be the last thing you ever do. For 30 plus women and one toddler, their worlds ended the moment they met Moses Sithole, better known as the ABC killer and the Ted Bundy of South Africa.