Did Vosloorus serial rapists and killers Moses Sithole and David Selepe know each other?

He terrorised young females around Kathorus and other areas in parts of Gauteng, earning himself a mention in the notorious hall for the world’s most infamous serial killers.

Throughout his rape and murder spree, Sithole would target vulnerable young women around Vosloorus – many of them job-seekers. He offered to place them in good-paying jobs.

To make sure his ‘job-trick’ offer was convincing to lure his victims to his lair, he reinforced the plan with credentials of his welfare organisation for abused children which he carried with him. He convinced his unsuspecting victims into believing he was a labour broker.

Once the victim was ‘hooked’, Sithole would promise that he would accompany her to job interview.

He would explain to the excited job-seeker that it would also be a privilege for him to introduce the new employer to her.

The idea of a black female worker being introduced to her white employer had an exhilarating effect on the excited victim.

Sadly, for the 38 young women who fell for Sithole’s job scam, many, if not all, realised too late how true the adage was and paid the price with their lives.

While on the way to the supposed job interview, he would politely suggest they take a ‘shortcut’ through a secluded shrubby footpath.

When the two of them were out of sight from public view, he would turn on his unsuspecting victim and aggressively attack her. He would overpower her, throw her on the ground and rape her multiple times before strangling her with her underwear until she died.

Case records indicated the first victim Sithole encountered and lured with his ‘job-offer‘ trick was a 38-year-old married housewife from Vosloorus. He met the woman who was with her sister at the Dunswart Railway station in Boksburg while they were ‘job-hunting’ on September 14, 1987.

After the attack, Sithole seemed to take a break and lie low for a while before he was to strike again in Vosloorus a year later on September 28, 1988.

Once again, he used his charm and personality to disarm the female victim. She was a young woman visiting her friend’s workplace when she met Sithole, who introduced himself as ‘Martin‘.

The two quickly struck a liking for each other and a cordial conversation developed between them. As he did with his first victim a year earlier, the man promised his 26-year-old victim a job in Cleveland.

He also assured her he would take her to the job interview and introduce her to the prospective employer – thus guaranteeing her lifetime employment.

What happened to the second woman while the two were walking through the secluded ‘shortcut’ was no different as what happened with the first victim. Sithole suddenly turned against the second victim, punching her hard on the side of the face. He raped her.

Luckily for the woman, she broke free when a stranger walking towards them startled Sithole. When the killer saw the stranger; he pulled up his pants and fled, leaving his shocked and dazed victim out of breath.

This survivor provided the detectives with crucial information that was later used by police crime experts to create a conclusive profile of the notorious serial killer.

The rapes and murder attacks did not stop with his second victim. Instead, they soon became a nightmare for women in Gauteng as the faceless perpetrator spread his reign of terror into other areas as far as Pretoria and Soweto. Bodies of dead women believed to be his victims, kept sprouting up in different towns.

By the time crime detectives finally arrested Sithole in Brakpan, investigators compiled a crime dossier linking the serial rapist and killer to:

• 40 counts of rape

• 38 counts of murder

• Six counts of robbery

More than 350 witnesses were called to give evidence against the then 32-year-old Vosloorus killer.

The trial began at the Pretoria High Court on October 20, 1996. In preparation for the case, an entire team of SAPS crime investigators and the Police Service Forensic Division came prepared to present their DNA evidence to the court in what was described as the biggest serial murder trial in South Africa.

The convergence and focus presented by these expert police departments later revealed startling details that pose questions that require answers to two of Gauteng’s most notorious serial killers, Moses Sithole and David Selepe.

Both were serial rapists who preyed on young women and both seem to have been aware of their respective killing spree.

However, what remains a mystery is that during interrogations by crime detectives after his arrest, although he admitted he was the suspect sought for the serial rapes and murders, he denied he was solely responsible for all the charges.

In a surprise statement, he told investigators: “Some (of the murders) may have been the work of copycat killer.”
The question now remains whether Sithole was aware of another serial rapist operating in the same circles around the same time as him.

Crime experts believe that even though Sithole never mentioned David Selepe by name during interrogations by the police, he may have been aware of the existence of another serial rapist and killer by the name of David Selepe.

Was the “copycat killer” a coded reference to Selepe, dubbed the Cleveland serial killer? Selepe was incidentally operating at the same time as Sithole and used the same modus operandi of luring his victims to job offers.

We are also talking about the same Cleveland industrial area, east of Johannesburg’s CBD, where Sithole would lure his victims before he raped and killed them.