The ABC Killer: Moses Sithole

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Discretion advised. This is ten minute
murder. In nineteen sixty four, Moses

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Sithole was born in Valores, a
town near Boxburg, Transfalt Providence and apartheid

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South Africa. His mother and father, Sophie and Simon Sitthole, had very

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little. With five children to feed, there was often not enough to go

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around. The sit Holes, like
many struggling South African families at the time,

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lived in poverty, a poverty that
only deepened when Simon Sitthole suddenly died.

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Moses was just five years old when
his father passed away, and the

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family was left with no income to
support themselves. Desperate and out of options,

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Sophie gathered her children together one day
and took them to a local police

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station, where she left them.
Moses and his siblings were then caught it

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off to an orphanage in Quasulu and
Detale, where life took another drastic turn.

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Moses and his siblings later claimed that
they'd been subjected to abuse while living

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in the South African child care services, and when Moses became a teenager,

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he just couldn't take it any more. He preferred risking a life on the

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streets rather than staying at the orphanage, and he took off one day,

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never to return. He reached out
to his older brother, Patrick, who

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was able to give Moses a place
to stay for a short while, but

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Patrick was also barely standing on his
own two feet and couldn't offer Moses very

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much. Moses turned to working in
the Johannesburg gold mines to support himself,

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which kept food in his belly and
a roof over his head, but it

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also gave him the opportunity to stretch
his wings a little bit. It was

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early in his teenage years that Moses'
interest in sex began. At first,

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he satiated his urges with his girlfriends, but he found that he couldn't keep

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one for very long. Maybe he
was just an ordinary teenager, or maybe

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the feeling of abandonment he felt after
being left at the police station by his

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mother had colored his opinion of women
and his ability to maintain long term relationships

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with them. In those crucial formative
years, a step in any direction can

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lead to almost anything, but one
day Moses would do something that would make

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it perfectly clear that he was no
ordinary teenager. In February nineteen eighty nine,

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Baissua Doris Swakamisa walked into her local
police station to report that she'd been

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attacked and raped. She was able
to give a detailed report of the incident

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and her attacker, and the police
were able to find and arrest him.

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The still teenaged Moses Sitthole was then
sent to court for sexual assault. All

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through his hearings, Moses claimed that
he was innocent, but the prosecution was

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able to provide enough evidence for Moses
to be found guilty of all charges.

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He was sent to jail, still
claiming that he was innocent, but otherwise

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a model inmate, and after only
seven years, he was released for good

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behavior. Moses later claimed that it
was his time behind bars that led to

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the escalation of his crimes and was
the cause for what happened next. On

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the surface, his punishment seemed to
have done its job rehabilitating the young man.

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Moses played the part of a reformed
model citizen. He got a job,

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and not just one that he had
to keep a roof over his head,

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but one that would help him change
the world around him for the better.

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Moses started running a charity called Youth
Against Human Abuse and their mission was

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to end child abuse. This was
a cause close to heart for Moses after

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his time in the orphanage, and
he seemed truly dedicated to making a difference

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for children who were going through the
same thing that he had gone through.

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Moses was warm and charismatic. He
drew people towards him and strengthened their beliefs

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in his cause. He would often
approach people on the street and bring them

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into the fold, offering protection,
a job, a way to change the

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world. But what Moses was really
doing was hunting for his next victims.

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Many of those people Moses approached were
women. He'd wave a job in their

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face and promised to get them an
interview, and for so many people trying

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to get by in such a difficult
period in South African history, a job

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was a hard, hard thing to
come by. Women would come in and

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Moses would get to know them a
little bit better. Maybe he'd offer them

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a job, or maybe he wouldn't. But for so many of those women,

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their fates had been unknowingly sealed as
soon as they'd walked into Moses's office.

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Moses' experience with the South African judicial
system and his time behind bars had

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taught him that victims could very easily
be turned into witnesses, and witnesses could

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get you into a lot of trouble. He said he targeted women who reminded

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him of Doris Wakemisa, the woman
whom he still alleged had falsely accused him

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of rape almost a decade before.
Other people, however, claimed that Moses

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targeted women who reminded him of his
mother. Whichever version is true, the

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fact is Moses would entice potential victims
with the promise of a job. The

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women would leave his office and go
about their daily lives, but Moses would

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be following. He'd then lure them
somewhere secluded field, attack them, sexually

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assault them, and then strangle them, most of the time with their own

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underwear. One of his victims,
a twenty five year old lady named Letta

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and the last name that I can't
pronounce, had her two year old son

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with her, and Moses was still
undeterred. For a man who was managing

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a charity aiming to end child abuse, Moses chose to show no compassion.

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He hit the child across the head
with a blunt object, injuring but not

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killing the toddler. While Moses was
dragging Letta away to assault and strangle her.

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The child was left at the mercy
of the Elements and would die a

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slow death of exposure. As if
his treatment of these women and in the

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child's case wasn't enough, Moses would
often phone his victims surviving families and taunt

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them. He usually gathered this kind
of contact information from his initial interviews with

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the women, or he would at
least get enough information from them that he

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could find their relatives all on his
own afterwards. With Moses's reign of terror,

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the nation was thrown into panic.
Its women were targeted by a killer

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known only as the ABC Killer,
who seemed to attack at random and at

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will. In an attempt to end
the long string of assaults and murders,

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Nelson Mandela made a public appeal for
anyone with any information to come forward,

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but it was like trying to catch
smoke with your bare hands. It was

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in August nineteen ninety five, around
thirty victims in and only two years after

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Moses's release for good behavior, that
a witness spotted Moses with his latest victim.

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He'd almost been caught once before,
when another witness had seen Moses acting

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unusually around another woman who later turned
up dead, but that witness hadn't been

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able to get a clear view of
Moses's face. This time, however,

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a witness clearly identified Moses as being
the last person one of the victims had

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been seen alive. With investigators inched
closer to finding the elusive ABC killer,

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named so because his crimes ranged from
Aderidgeville, Bocksburg, and Cleveland, they

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uncovered Moses's previous conviction for rape and
the investigation tightened around him, but Moses

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managed to escape before the police could
arrest him. By then, he'd already

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set up a house with another woman, had a daughter, and separated with

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the mother, choosing instead to become
homeless and then go on the run in

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order to continue his crime spree.
Strangely, Moses then contacted a journalist named

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Tamson de Beer and made a startling
confession. He claimed to be the ABC

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Killer and said that he'd actually killed
around seventy six women, not the thirty

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that he was wanted for. He
said he'd done all of this as revenge

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for his false imprisonment and to prove
that he was willing to tell the truth.

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Moses gave Tamson directions to one of
his victim's bodies that had yet to

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be say died. Tamson found the
remains and the police found Moses in Johannesburg.

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Instead of coming quietly, Moses violently
attacked the police with a hatchet,

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injuring one of them. Moses was
shot, but survived and was taken to

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a hospital, where it was discovered
that Moses was both HIV positive and had

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TB again, even after he'd already
confessed to Tamson to beer. Moses claimed

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that he was innocent, but the
combination of witness testimonies like those from Tamson

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and the other witnesses who'd sponted him
with victims helped put Moses behind bars yet

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again, only this time for good. Moses was charged with thirty eight murders,

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forty rapes, and six robberies,
all of which he was found guilty,

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and he received consecutive sentences for all
of them, giving him a grand

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total of two thy four hundred ten
years. He's hoping that history will repeat

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itself again and he'll get out on
good behavior. A judge ruled that he'd

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have to serve at least nine hundred
and thirty years of his sentence before he'd

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be eligible for parole, meaning he'd
have to live to the right bold age

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of nine hundred and sixty three before
he could walk the streets again. That's

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ten minute murder for today Brief and
binge able True Crime. My name is

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Joe. I'm the host, and
thank you so much for taking the time

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to listen to my podcast today,
and keep in mind, please, I

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mean no disrespect if I mispronounce a
name in a story. Obviously I'm extremely

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American, and even beyond that,
I have trouble pronouncing names. I don't

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know why. As someone that talks
for a living, you would think i'd

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be that would be right in my
wheelhouse, but it's not. I have

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trouble pronouncing names sometimes, and if
it's not a nor name to what I'm

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used to in my everyday life,
I struggle a little bit. Even though

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I look these things up, these
town names, these names of people,

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I still will get in the flow
of the thing and I think I say

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it right, and then it turns
out I don't. Just know that.

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I mean no disrespect by that.
I definitely do try to say it right,

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but I don't always do that,
especially with today being names from Africa

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I don't know. There are a
lot of vowels in there, and some

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consonants and in places that are not
used to seeing them and hearing them,

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So thank you for your patience on
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