Tenth Woman’s Body Found in Ekurhuleni Sparks Serial Killer Fears

A woman’s partly clothed body was discovered early Saturday morning at Mooifontein Cemetery, in the Vusimusi section of Tembisa, bringing to 10 the number of women whose remains have turned up across Ekurhuleni since July. Gauteng police spokesperson Brigadier Brenda Muridili confirmed the finding on September 26, but said investigators would not be able to say much more until they had completed their preliminary work on the scene. Hours later, teams managing the scene of the crime were still working. 

The death toll across Gauteng now stands at 11 women killed in roughly three months, including a body found separately in Moroka, Soweto. This has been the pattern since July, when the first bodies were found near each other. Since then, victims have been recovered across a stretch of the East Rand, four in Rhodesfield near Kempton Park, two in Olifantsfontein, one close to the Mall of Tembisa, and another dumped outside a clinic in KwaThema, plus the ninth victim in Dawn Park and now a tenth in Tembisa.

Is a Serial Killer Operating in Ekurhuleni?

Gauteng police commissioner Lieutenant General Tommy Mthombeni told reporters at the scene his team couldn’t rule out the possibility. Describing the state of the latest victim, he said the evidence pointed to her being stoned. He did not link the Tembisa case to the others, stressing the investigation was at an early stage.

Still people are being careful but outside experts have weighed in. “Because a dedicated task team can help with any group of murders, even if they are not connected,” says psychologist Gerard Labuschagne, who has worked on serial-murder cases for the police, “the deaths should be treated as possible serial killings until proven otherwise.” He’s put the odds at roughly three in four that at least some of the bodies will eventually be linked to the same person. Retired profiler Micki Pistorius has raised similar concerns publicly.

Who is heading up the Gauteng Police Task Team investigation?

Mthombeni has taken a two-pronged approach that includes putting more resources into the affected communities and having dedicated investigators who are personally involved in the cases. The investigations are being led by Major General Kumalo. He is the officer in charge of finding crimes. He is working with Major General Lekalakala who is in charge of crime intelligence. The effort is being tracked at national level through SAPS’s core command structure, and senior crime intelligence officials, including some brought in from KwaZulu-Natal have joined as well.

Now the team has an investigative psychologist who goes to the crime scenes and makes a profile of the person who did it, then helps the detectives find out who that person is. The police have put up an R400,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

The other cases in Ekurhuleni and where they are?

Not all the threads in this investigation are jammed. Three suspects, a man and two women, were arrested by the Gauteng Murder and Robbery Unit and have appeared in court over the killing of Jabulile Ntimba, the ninth victim, found on Lama Street in Dawn Park on September 17. She’d been stabbed, and police haven’t linked her death to the other cases in the series.

Mthombeni also flagged a case from July that investigators consider close to resolved, though he gave no further detail a rare note of optimism in an otherwise grim briefing.

South Africa Declares the Killings a National Crisis

These murders have landed squarely inside South Africa’s long-running reckoning with violence against women. Gender-based violence and femicide were formally classified as a national disaster under the Disaster Management Act of 2002 late last year, and Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi has now called for a provincial lockdown in response to what he’s called a spiralling crisis. Mthombeni confirmed the lockdown is being rolled out under that same disaster declaration.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has spoken out twice in recent days. At Heritage Day celebrations in Oudtshoorn, he called the abuse and killing of women a national shame and promised to address the country within days on government’s response. Reacting to news of the tenth body while on the campaign trail in eThekwini, he went further, calling it a shame on the men of South Africa that women keep dying at the hands of men in their own communities.

What Happens Next in the Ekurhuleni Investigation

For residents of Tembisa, Dawn Park, KwaThema and the other communities named in this investigation, the question is simple: will the killing stop, and will police catch whoever is responsible. Mthombeni’s team is still trying to determine whether Saturday’s victim is linked to the other nine cases, and a post-mortem is likely to confirm the official cause of her death.

Ramaphosa should have more to say in his promised national address about what other government resources are on the table, other than the reward money and specialist investigators already there. The tip line and continued court appearances are the most obvious signs of movement in a case that has for weeks moved slower than the fear it has generated.