South African police said on Monday they were searching for a fugitive serial killer and rapist who they believed had been dead since May 2022, and the discovery of a charred body in his Bloemfontein prison cell where he was serving his sentence.
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DNA analysis revealed the victim was not Thabo Bester, South African police said over the weekend.
“Right now, our priority is to find this fugitive and find out exactly how he fabricated his own death,” police spokeswoman Athlenda Mathe told AFP on Monday.
Nicknamed “the Facebook rapist” for luring his victims through the social network – at least one of whom had been killed – Thabo Bester was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2012.
On Sunday, police announced that the victim, found in his cell, died from a severe blow to the head before his body was set on fire, according to an autopsy. A new murder investigation has been opened.
The case has drawn attention in South Africa, where women’s rights organizations regularly criticize the government for its failure to curb violence against women.
“The scenario of this story is like a movie and sends shivers down your spine (…) I can imagine how it was received by its victims,” lamented Bafana Khumalo, co-director of the NGO Sonke Gender Justice.
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Between October and December 2022, the police registered no fewer than 12,000 rapes in the country.
It was local media, GroundUp, that first cast doubt on Bester’s death in November 2022. Photos have since surfaced showing the convict shopping at a mall in an upscale neighborhood of Johannesburg.
And several women have publicly claimed the serial rapist contacted them through social media.
Prior to his escape, Bester had reportedly managed to conduct a media scam from his cell under a false identity. A video that has gone viral shows him speaking via video conference with a company he claims to be in New York.
“Bester’s escape (…) testifies to the incompetence of the prison administration and the endemic corruption in this sector,” criticized the radical left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party in a press release.