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Moses Sithole: South Africa's 'ABC Killer'

19 hours ago
3 min read

Moses Sithole hunted with a promise that was almost impossible for his victims to refuse: a job. In mid-1990s South Africa, with unemployment rampant and a society in upheaval, he approached vulnerable women offering work at a company that did not exist, led them to isolated ground, and murdered them. Over roughly a year he killed at least thirty-eight people, earning the name the 'ABC Killer' for the trail of his crimes across three towns. His case is one of the most harrowing in South African history.

It is also a case bound up with its moment — the turbulent transition out of apartheid, when the country was contending with several serial killers at once and struggling to protect the women most exposed to them.

A hard beginning

Sithole was born on 17 November 1964 in Vosloorus, a township near Boksburg. His childhood was marked by poverty and upheaval: after his father died, his mother was unable to support the children, and they spent time in an orphanage, where Sithole later said they were mistreated. As with every such history, hardship may form part of the background, but it neither explains nor excuses what he became, and many who endure far worse never harm a soul.

Poster of Moses Sithole, called South Africa’s worst serial killer, with victim stats, warning text, and a stark background.

The 'ABC' pattern

His nickname came from the geography of his crimes, which began in Atteridgeville, continued in Boksburg, and concluded in Cleveland, a suburb of Johannesburg. Charming and articulate, Sithole approached unemployed, often desperate women in daylight, offering them jobs that did not exist. He then led them to isolated fields, where he raped them and strangled them — frequently with their own clothing — exploiting their hope of work as the bait in a lethal trap.

A country overwhelmed

Sithole operated during the fraught period as apartheid collapsed, when South African authorities were contending with multiple serial killers simultaneously and even consulted international experts for help. The sheer number of his victims, many of whom were never identified, made the investigation enormously difficult, and for a time another man was wrongly suspected of some of the killings — a confusion that, as in other cases, the real killer was able to exploit.

Identified and cornered

By August 1995, Sithole had been linked to one of the victims, and investigators uncovered an earlier rape conviction in his past. He went on the run and, in a striking move, telephoned a South African journalist, identifying himself as the killer and claiming the murders were revenge for what he saw as an unjust imprisonment. The contact helped tighten the net around him.

Arrest

Sithole was eventually confronted by police in Johannesburg. According to accounts of the arrest, he charged officers with an axe and was shot and wounded before being taken into custody. At hospital he was found to be HIV positive. By then he had claimed a far higher toll than the cases police could ultimately prove in court, and the scale of his confessed crimes shocked the nation.

Trial and a staggering sentence

Sithole pleaded not guilty, but the evidence — including testimony from survivors and a recorded admission to many killings — was overwhelming. On 5 December 1997 he was convicted of thirty-eight murders, forty rapes and six robberies. Because the death penalty had been ruled unconstitutional in South Africa, he was sentenced to 2,410 years in prison, with no possibility of parole for centuries — a symbolic figure meant to reflect the magnitude of his crimes.

Sithole remains imprisoned, a grim figure in South African criminal history. A significant number of his victims were never identified, leaving families without certainty, and his case is still cited in discussions of the wave of serial violence that accompanied the country's transition — and of how cruelly a predator could weaponise the hope of poor, job-seeking women against them.