South Africa has a dark and disturbing history of violent crime, and among the most chilling chapters are those involving serial killers.

These individuals have left a lasting imprint on the nation's collective memory due to the brutality of their crimes and the sheer number of victims left in their wake.

Often driven by complex psychological and societal factors, South Africa's most notorious serial killers have operated in different regions, targeting vulnerable members of society.

In this article, we will take a closer look at ten of the most prolific serial killers in South African history, delving into the horrifying details of their killing sprees and the impact they have had on the nation.

What makes a serial killer (often referred to as a serial murderer) different to other murders? Well, to be defined as a serial killer, a person has to kill more than three people over a period of time.

Moses Sithole

Born on November 17, 1962, Moses Sithole was not only a serial killer but also a serial rapist. The now 59-year-old terrorised Gauteng residents for two years until he was arrested in October 1995.

He got his moniker the “ABC Killer” because his killing was spread between Atteridgeville, Boksburg, and Cleveland.

On December 5, 1997 he was sentenced to 2,410 years in jail by for the murders of mostly young women and 40 rapes. Sithole used the underwear of most of his victims to strangle them.

Judge David Curlewis imposed the lengthy sentence to ensure Sithole spent the rest of his life behind bars as he would only be eligible for parole after 930 years. By the time he was sentenced, South Africa had demolished the death sentence.

Before he started his killing spree, Sithole previously served four years in jail for rape. He was released for “good behaviour” shortly before he started killing.

He committed most of his crimes in and around Johannesburg between 1987 and 1995.

The judge described Sithole as cunning, attractive and articulate.

“That he succeeded in luring so many women to a gruesome end, comes as no surprise,” Curlewis said according to a report by AFP.

According to AFP, the court heard how Sithole targeted women at a children's shelter and he even showed up at the funeral of another of his victims and gave his condolences to the family.

Sithole pleaded innocent, despite confessing to several of the murders in video-taped statements to fellow prisoners.

Sipho Thwala

Sipho Thwala was born in 1968. He was known as the “Phoenix Strangler” from 1996 to 1997, in Phoenix, north of Durban. He was eventually found guilty of 19 murders and 10 rapes in sugar cane fields of Mount Edgecombe.

On August 14, 1996, police arrested Thwala in an early morning raid by heavily-armed police in the Besters squatter camp near Phoenix.

At the time, a psychological profile described the “Phoenix Killer” as intelligent, charming to women and likely to kill again.

Nearly all of the victims were black women between 20 and 30. Like Sithole, he also used their own underwear to strangle them before burying them in shallow graves. He would lure the women with the promise of jobs.

He became the most wanted man in KwaZulu-Natal during his killing spree.

Thwala was eventually sentenced to 506 years in prison.

Cedric Maake

Born in 1965, Cedric Maake was known as the “Wemmer Pan Killer”, after he murdered 27 people. He got his moniker after the southern suburb in Johannesburg where most of the murders took place.

On March 15, 2000, Maake was sentenced to 1,340 years in prison.

During his sentencing, Judge Geraldine Borchers said he had to be permanently removed from society because he was a "a dangerous man“ who would kill other human beings without compunction.

At the time, AFP reported that she handed down a life sentence for each of the 27 murders, saying most of his victims were vulnerable and elderly men who ran small businesses such as tailors, shoemakers and fresh produce traders.

All were assaulted with a hammer and insignificant amounts of cash stolen.

Maake was convicted on 27 counts of murder, 26 of attempted murder, 41 of armed robbery, 14 of rape, one of attempted robbery, one of assault, one of unlawful possession of firearms and another of unlawful possession of ammunition.

At the time of his sentencing, he was married with four children.

He pleaded guilty to 133 charges after his arrest in December 1997.

Daisy de Melker

Documented as South Africa’s first female serial killer, Daisy de Melker was accused of killing her one son and two husbands by poisoning.

She was born in June 1886.

According to southafricafacts.co.za, she used strychnine for her husbands and arsenic for her son, Rhodes.

However, in November 1932, she was found guilty of killing her son, but acquitted of the deaths of her husbands.

On December 30, 1932, De Melker, was hanged in the Pretoria Central Prison.

Throughout her trial, her third husband Sidney de Melker maintained his wife’s innocence.

Gert van Rooyen

Joey Haarhoff and Gert van Rooyen. Picture: African News Agency (ANA) Archives

Gert van Rooyen was linked by police to the disappearance of six young girls in the late 1980s and a string of paedophile activities.

The girls were abducted in 1989 by paedophile Van Rooyen and his girlfriend, Joey Haarhoff. The couple killed themselves when police closed in on them.

On May 14, 1996, the police believed that the missing schoolgirls could still be alive.

They conducted an intensive search of South Africa's “house of horrors,” once owned by Van Rooyen.

However, the search yielded no trace of the missing girls only a pile of animal bones.

According to AFP, at the time, police theorised that Van Rooyen and Haarhoff were Satanists who killed the girls as part of bizarre rituals. They called occult expert Superintendent Kobus Jonker who said there was no proof of ceremonies having occurred at the house.

Jonker didn't rule out, however, that Van Rooyen may have been a satanic priest; if so, he would have led what appeared to be a normal life while practising rituals elsewhere, according to AFP.

An old newspaper clipping of the six girls believed to have been abducted by Gert van Rooyen and Joey Haarhoff. File Picture

Van Rooyen’s son, Flippie van Rooyen was sentenced to 28 years in jail for the murder of a young Zimbabwean girl in 1991.

He claimed his father Gert was part of a network which supplied children to cabinet ministers for sex. He claimed at least 40 children were involved. Claims that were later proven to not involve cabinet ministers.

Stewart Wilken

Stewart Wilken, also known as “Boetie Boer”, is a self-confessed serial killer who murdered his young daughter, and ate the body parts of at least one of his victims in Port Elizabeth, now known as Gqeberha.

On February 1998, Judge Chris Jansen, in sentencing Wilken, said he would have sentenced him to death if the death penalty was not outlawed.

According to AFP, he was found guilty of murdering four women and three children, including his 11-year-old daughter Wuane whom he strangled because she was “not a virgin”. He was also found guilty of two sodomy charges.

Wilken was charged with 10 counts of murder and five of sodomy. He confessed to the three murders and sodomy charges, of which he was acquitted. Jansen found that guilt could not be proved beyond reasonable doubt.

During his trial, Wilken's lawyers claimed that his reign of terror had its roots in the sodomy and abuse he suffered as a six-year-old at the hands of a church deacon.

His targets were prostitutes and street children. He killed some after they demanded payment for sleeping with them. Wilken even confessed to cutting off the nipples of one of his victims and swallowing them.

His daughter Wuane's murder was the only one Wilken committed without sexual misdeeds.

“I saw my child was not a virgin," Wilken said in a statement, according to a AFP report.

“There were allegations that she had been raped by her stepfather. I closed my eyes and said: 'God you must forgive me, but I'm sending my child's soul to you.”

Pierre Basson

Known as the “Insurance Killer”, Pierre Basson is South Africa’s first documented serial killer. Born in 1880, Basson as a young boy reportedly started acting out violent fantasies on animals.

He reportedly killed another boy with a knife when he was just 12-years-old.

His father died when he was 18 and he took out a life insurance policy on his younger brother. The duo went fishing, and he told others that his brother drowned, even though his body was never found, so the insurer never paid.

He started a money-lending scheme, where one of the conditions were that the borrowers had to name him as a beneficiary to a life insurance policy.

Basson reportedly killed them by either drowning them or strangling them in order to collect the money. He died by suicide in 1906 when police were close to arresting him.

David Randitsheni

David Randitsheni was a serial rapist and killer. In 2009, he was convicted of 10 murders and 17 rapes. His crimes involved children, and took place between 2004 and 2008, in Limpopo.

On August 18, 2009, police said that the High Court in Modimolle sentenced Randitshene to 16 life sentences, plus 220 years imprisonment for murder, rape and kidnapping.

On the 10 counts of murder, he was sentenced to 10 life sentences, on 16 counts of rape, he was sentenced to 16 life sentences. On one count of rape and one count of indecent assault, he was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for each count.

Randitshene was sentenced to 180 years imprisonment on 18 counts of kidnapping. (10 years for each count.)

He was arrested on May 16, 2008, after an intensive police investigation during which over 550 DNA samples were tested before a police forensic expert identified the suspect.

Of all 19 of his victims, only one was an adult woman, all the others were young girls. They were kidnapped and raped and 10 were murdered in a crime spree which devastated the Modimolle community.

Handing down his sentence, Judge Roger Claassen, said Randitshene could not be considered for parole for the next 35 years.

The SABC reported that Claassen said the crimes were committed in a horrific manner. Randitsheni made admissions, but by choosing to remain silent, he showed no reasons to prove his innocence.

Claassen said the State had proven beyond a reasonable doubt he committed the offences.

On August 30, 2009, Randitsheni died by suicide and was found hanging by a sheet from a window frame in the Thohoyandou prison.

Bulelani Mabhayi

Bulelani Mabhayi, a self-confessed serial killer from Tholeni village in Butterworth, Eastern Cape. File picture: Matthews Baloyi / Independent Newspapers Archives

Bulelani Mabhayi, known as the “Monster of Tholeni,” was sentenced to 25 years behind bars in the High Court in Butterworth for raping and mutilating 20 women and children. He would then beat or hack them to death.

Mabhayi confessed to murdering 20 women and children and six rapes. He murdered his victims with a cleaver or axe after breaking into their homes in a rural Eastern Cape village, in a three-year killing spree from 2007, AFP reported.

His oldest murder victim was a woman, aged 79, and the youngest was a 14-month-old baby.

He was charged with 20 counts of murder, six counts of rape, and 10 counts of house-breaking with intent to commit murder and rape. He targeted homes where only women and children stayed.

Jack Mogale

Serial rapist and murderer Jack Mogale in the High Court in Johannesburg, Wednesday, March 16, 2011. File Picture: Werner Beukes / SAPA

Jack Mogale had people living on the outskirts of Johannesburg locking their doors early in the evenings between 2008 and 2009.

Mogale was found guilty in the High Court in Johannesburg on March 16, 2011, of 52 of the 61 charges against him, including rape, kidnapping and murder.

Judge Frans Kgomo found Mogale guilty of nine kidnappings, 19 rapes, 16 murders, an attempted murder, three robberies with aggravating circumstances, a fraud or theft, an assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, a sexual assault charge and a charge of escaping from lawful custody.

Mogale had pleaded not guilty to all the charges throughout his trial.

Dubbed the “West-End serial killer” by police before his identity was discovered, Mogale lured adult black females to open areas where he raped and murdered them.

This was often at the West-End brick and clay factory near his home in Waterworks, Westonaria, and at various locations in Lenasia.

Mogale was sentenced to 16 life terms and 23 years for raping and killing 16 of his victims.

“Sentencing is a difficult thing. To look into the eyes of another human being and decide whether to send them away for a very long time is not easy,” Kgomo said at the time.

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