Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz, and John Wayne Gacy are all names of serial killers we are familiar with, thanks to popular streaming services and even movies.
But who are some of the most prolific serial killers in our own backyard? IOL takes a look at some of South Africa’s most notorious serial killers.
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.
Daisy de Melker
The only woman on the list and 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.
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.
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.
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.”
IOL