Africa's 10 Deadliest Serial Killers - Ranked

When you think of serial killers, you would usually think of countries like the United States and maybe even the United Kingdom. You don't think serial killers when you think of Africa. You think of families, communities, neighbours who know your name because Africa is like that, isn't it? But what if I told you that some of the most disturbing killers in history walked quietly through these same African communities, smiling, blending in, being normal and no one knew until it was too late? Today we are counting down Africa's 10 deadliest serial killers, ranked by the number of victims they claimed. And trust me, the killer at number one is almost unbelievable. These stories will give you goosebumps, so please be warned. But as we go along, I want you to ask yourself one question. How does someone become this? How do people become serial killers? It shocks me too. But more importantly, I want you to learn from these stories so you don't become a victim. Let's start with number 10. At number 10, we have gracious David West. A Nigerian born in 1980, David West had a tough childhood in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where he grew up. Several individuals who knew him claimed that he was born into a polygamous household, but he and his mother lived separately from the rest of the family. He claims that his mother was poisoned and that as the only son of his father, much was expected of him. But he could not deliver. As a young man, he attended the branch of the Lord's Chosen Church in Ogwebu and he was reportedly a member of the Greenlanders, also known as the This is a mafia-style street gang that sprung out of the armed militant groups that were notorious in Nigeria for engaging in criminal acts of violence and juju, also known as voodoo. Around 2019, something strange started happening behind closed doors in Port Harcourt. Stories started coming up of women who would check into a hotel and never come out. At first, it didn't raise a because usually people disappear sometimes and if they don't have a strong network, many people would not hear of it. But then this began to happen again and again and again and again. Different women, different hotels. Nobody could really make much of it until one day when a hotel worker opened a door and found a body. Now, while all of this was happening, gracious David West was a young man in his 20s. He was quiet, calm, studious, a normal young man. The kind of person that you would sit next to and feel completely safe. But there was something strange about him. He was a calm young man for sure, but he had this hardness about him, like someone who was dangerous. He was a serial killer. But what made this case disturbing was not just what he did, but how he did it. We will talk about how he was apprehended later, but when he was caught, he confessed that he had an irresistible urge to kill and every night from June 2019 to when he was captured in September, he would drive on the streets of Port Harcourt in his vehicle looking for women. Usually women were selling something. He would be very nice to them, but in the middle of the night, David West would wake up the victim and threaten her with a knife. The calm man would disappear and he would turn to something else. I can just imagine those women pleading with him for their lives, but he wouldn't listen. And before killing the women, he robbed them of money, ATM cards, and other valuables that he had. Then he would turn the television on or the radio on high volume and using strips of clothing that he had caught from clear cases, he would tie up the victim before manually strangling her slowly and deliberately. And when it was done, he would leave just like that. He would walk out, blend back into the city, into the crowd as if nothing had happened. The victims were often found naked, bound with a wide strip of cloth on their ankles, arms, and their neck. Then he would walk out of the hotel, leaving the victim. And he has done this severally and no one knew it was him until one day. Now on this fateful day in the early morning of 19 September, 2019, something happened that changed everything. That day, he had picked up a woman and taken her to the hotel as usual. They both had fallen asleep, but this woman suddenly woke up to David West tying her up and preparing to suffocate her. She begged like the others before her, but he did not listen and he proceeded to strangle her. But she survived. Like no one knows exactly how. One interview said she begged him and he left her alive, that he left the room with her phone and he never returned. Hotel staff found her the next day after she had somehow managed to force the gag out of her mouth and screamed for help. Maybe he made a mistake. Maybe there was something about this particular woman. Maybe something interrupted him. I don't know. But that woman got out and she reported. And now there was a face to connect all of these crimes to. Police began to trace him. Piece by piece by piece. Movement by movement. Until it all led back to one man. Gracious David West. It is said that security agents found him in a commercial bus travelling to Uyo in Akwa Ibom State in Nigeria, 45 minutes away from Port Harcourt where he lived. By the time they connected the dots, 15 women were already dead. 15. But thankfully, one day, he was arrested. There was no struggle. He went with the police quietly, as quietly as he had murdered those 15 women. He was due for arraignment on 22nd of October in 2019 but the absence of his lawyer frustrated his arraignment. However, when the case was called up the following day, David West pleaded guilty to 9 murder charges against him but he pleaded not guilty to the charge Like how? But the most surprising shock is that on 23rd March of 2020, David West shocked people in court when he denied he was the person in any of the images on the front page of the newspaper and on a short CCTV video clip of him in a hotel with his alleged last victim. Adding that he did not know what the prosecuting state council was talking about since he had not committed any offence. What? No one saw that coming. He wanted to derail the case but in October of 2020, he was found guilty of murder and attempted murder and he was sentenced to death by hanging. Do we say good riddance? Because today, he's still alive, sitting in prison, waiting. And maybe the most disturbing part of this story is that if you saw him today, you still wouldn't be afraid because and that's exactly why he was so dangerous. This next killer didn't hide behind silence, he hid behind something people trust without question, faith. At number 9, we have Jack Mogale, also known as the West End Killer. Jack Mogale was born September 1968 in South Africa. How did he get his victims, you might ask? Well, he targeted women that society often ignores, sex workers, women already living on the edge, women whose disappearances don't always make the headlines and that's exactly why he chose them. Jack Mogale did not look like a threat at all. In fact, he looked like the opposite. He presented himself as a preacher, a man of God. He had claimed to be a Zion Christian church preacher and a prophet. He was soft spoken, calm, very, very convincing. He was the kind of man that people would trust without thinking twice and that was the first layer of his deception. He would approach his victims slowly, there would be no pressure, just another man of God having a conversation, right? Sometimes he would offer help, sometimes he would offer prayer, sometimes he would offer just his company, an ear to talk to. And in those small moments, he started to build trust because when someone believes that you are close to God, they lower their guard, right? These people will stop questioning you. They will stop protecting themselves and that's when he would strike. He would take them somewhere quiet, away from people, away from the crowd, places where no one would interrupt him. And once they were alone, the mask would drop. The man that he trusted would disappear and something else would take over. He attacked these women without warning, he would overpower them, then he would strangle them. Sometimes he would use his hand, sometimes he would use different kinds of objects and just like that, another life was gone. He killed 16 people in 2008 and 2009. On 17th February 2011, he was convicted on 52 of 61 charges related to 16 murders, 19 rapes and 9 kidnappings, one man. And what made this case even more disturbing was that for a long time, nobody connected the dots until the police began to notice similarities. It was the same type of victims, it was the same method of killing and slowly a picture started to form. And that picture led to one man, Jack Mogale. When he was arrested in 2009, the truth began to unfold and it began to unfold in court. It was an image of a man of God that began to collapse completely. He couldn't fool anybody anymore and of course he was convicted and he was sentenced to 16 life sentences. Today, he remains in prison. This next case is different because this time it wasn't one killer, it was two people and they didn't haunt strangers in the streets. They invited them in, fed them, smiled with them and then they killed them, buried them inside their own home. Gosh! Now these people were Raya and Sakina. These were two Egyptian women who became known as Egypt's most infamous serial killers in early 20th century. Raya and Sakina were siblings and along with their husbands and two other men, they began killing women in the Leban neighborhood of Alexandria in the early 1900s. Very little is known about the two sisters' childhood. It is believed that the older sister Raya was born around 1875 in a village in Upper Egypt. Sakina was born 10 years later around 1885. It was a normal family. The family moved around a few times until Sakina moved to Alexandria in 1913 and her sister followed her three years later. Raya got married but her first husband died while she was pregnant with her first child and she remarried her husband's younger brother. Raya had six children but all except one died in infancy. That must have been very difficult for her. Sakina also got married but her first husband divorced her two years into their marriage after the death of her daughter. She later remarried. Now the two sisters and their husbands were involved in running brothels and they had two bouncers in their employment, Al Razik was known to have an extensive criminal history. Now because it was after the war, their business had begun to dwindle due to the outbreak of revolution against the British and so they got desperate. They attempted to hire teenage girls as sex workers and participate in trafficking some of these girls to make up for their lost revenue. They also had women who worked at their brothel as prostitutes and while on the surface everything looked okay, these women started disappearing. Raya and Sakina would bring these women into their house. They would make them feel comfortable because of course they are working for them. These women would have no reason to suspect anything until it was too late. But these sisters did not act alone. Like I said before, their husbands were involved and together they would overpower the victim. They would strangle her and then they would steal whatever valuables she had. But what they did next is what shocked the world. After killing them, the men would remove the towels from the floor, dig a hole, bury the cups in it and reset the towels. They buried the bodies inside the house under the floor, hidden beneath the very place where they slept. It is unbelievable. They had 17 victims all together hidden right beneath their feet and for a long time no one knew. Life continued above ground as usual while death was buried below. The two sisters stole the stolen jewelry to a local jeweler and they all divided the money among themselves. They were doing this continuously until one day when everything changed. It was November of 1920. Workers nearby began digging because they were installing running water in that place. It was just routine work. It was nothing unusual. Raya and Sakina were previously renting that house so they probably had no idea that the digging was happening. These men had the authority to dig. So they were digging until they hit something. At first they thought it was just normal concrete that is usually under a building but as they began to dig they found a body believed to be one of their victims who was killed three months earlier. This prompted the police suspicion and all of Raya and Sakina's houses were investigated and this resulted in discovery of 17 total dead women. Many of these women were tied to the large amount of missing person report that the police had been receiving. Raya and Sakina were arrested of course and their story spread quickly. Raya was the first to confess though she tried to play down her own connection to the murder. Sakina followed shortly with her own confession where she did take responsibility but she attempted to protect her husband. Raya, Sakina and their husbands were tried for murder alongside Orabi Hassan and Ag Erasek Yusuf and all six of them were convicted and sentenced to death on 16th May 1921. Also the goldsmith who helped the gang to sell the jewelry of the dead women was sentenced to five years imprisonment. Good for them. Raya and Sakina became the first women to be executed by the modern state of Egypt with their hangings taking place on 21st of December 1921 and even today their story still lingers because it forces a question that people don't like to ask. What are the people you trust the most and the ones you should fear the most? At number seven we move into something even more darker because this next killer didn't just attack people, he hunted them. His name is Christopher Malengwa Zikode also known as Between 1993 and 1995 a rural town called Donnybrook in South Africa in KwaZulu-Natal experienced the horrifying sexual assault and killing sprees of Christopher Zikode. He was famous for his elaborate entrances to his victims homes where he would kick down the door and immediately shoot all the men in the household many of whom were not expecting him and this was his modus operandi. After he had eliminated all the men he would proceed to drag any and all women in the house to a field or plantation in the rural surroundings, tie them up and as they are screaming for help he would continue to assay them for hours. Like but how was he able to drag multiple women? I don't know. Didn't these women struggle? Then in addition to that he also would grab young women who were walking along food paths and do the same to them. He was like a possessed man. The strange parts of Zikode's modus are his acts of necrophilia. If the women resisted or fought against him he would stop, shoot them and continue to assay their corpses. Wow! And he did this for two years. Now parents started warning their daughters don't walk alone come back early but even that didn't feel enough because Zikode didn't look dangerous and he continued to kill. That was the problem. He moved like someone familiar, someone who could greet you politely, ask you simple questions, someone that you wouldn't run away from and in places like Donnybrook familiar means safe but unfortunately for them it wasn't. Now at one point Zikode was arrested in 1995 for the attempted murder of a female victim. Now people felt relief because finally it was over right? Mothers were able to sleep better at night. The young ladies began to thank God but that feeling didn't last because somehow he was released on bail. Like why? And when he came back guess what? Of course the killings continued and now the fear came back and this time around it was something else because this time people knew there was a killer out there. People could identify that there was a killer because he had already been caught once and still he was let out on bail and he just continued this crime parade committing five more offenses including sexual assault, robbery, murder, attempted murder, breaking into the home with the intent to S.A. He continued as usual of course. What was the police thinking? Zikode was eventually arrested on 29th of September 1995 for the second time and this time he was not released. He was put on trial. In January 1997 the Donnybrook murderer was sentenced to 140 years, five life sentences in prison at the conviction of 21 charges including S.A., assault, murder, and attempted murder. That punishment meant one thing. He was never going to walk free again. Today he remains in prison and his story leaves behind a hard truth that sometimes the system fails us. Imagine letting a killer out again to commit more crimes. Imagine that but when the system fails the damage cannot be undone. At number six we meet a man who turned something ordinary into a weapon. Something so simple that people never thought twice about it until it was used against them. Sifo, a South African was known as the Finnish Strangler. He is suspected of S.A.ing and strangling 19 victims with their own underwear before burying them in shallow graves. His mother described Twala as an intelligent man who could read and write even though he never received schooling beyond grade one. He was a normal child, a gentleman, and very helpful around the house. A normal child well that was until the mid-1990s when he lived in KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa. The afternoons were usually hot and people would be sweating in this place. KwaZulu-Natal also has long roads and sugarcane fields that stretch so far you could disappear inside them and this was the weapon that he used. His victims were women, young women, hopeful women, women who seem to be easy victims for serial killers like these. He apparently lured his victims to the sugarcane fields near Finnish by offering them employment. So these were women who were just looking for work, trying to survive. Some were trying to find just one opportunity to get income for themselves and he exploited them. He would approach them calmly, not threatening them, just normal calmly. A conversation would start and he would ask about how they were doing and then he would ask that question that they really wanted to hear. Are you looking for work? And for many of these women life is hard and yes of course they were looking for work. He was described as intelligent and charming to women so none of these women ever suspected anything but he was extremely dangerous. These innocent women followed him of course. They were not forced, they were not dragged. They with their own legs walked beside him believing that something good was about to happen for them. They were about to get a job. So they walked with him until they reached the sugarcane fields. The sugarcanes were tall and dense. It was a kind of place where you know you could get hidden, where if you screamed no one would hear you and by the time he took them there everything would change. The promise of work would disappear. The man that they trusted would disappear and what was left was something else. A demon. He would attack them quickly, cruelly like someone who had done this before because of course he had and then after attacking and subduing them he used something no one would ever expect. He used their own clothing. Usually their underwear would be turned into a weapon used to kill them. He would strangle them slowly and deliberately and when it was done he left them there hidden in the same fields and he did this again and again and again. He had 19 victims in just about one year. 19. And of course with all these disappearances there was fear in the community. Mothers became afraid for their children. Women became afraid to go out in the night because there was someone out there killing women. The police launched a manhunt. They started to investigate these disappearances but you see he was always one step ahead of them because nobody had any idea who he was or that he was the one committing these crimes and for a while it felt like he couldn't be caught. But no one is perfect and mistakes happen. I mean even the smartest serial killers make mistakes and get arrested and eventually Twala was arrested in 1997 after South Africa police matched DNA found on the victim to DNA taken from him in 1994 when he had been arrested and acquitted for a sexual assault case. The evidence was strong. It was too strong to deny but you see this man he had no remorse but he was convicted and sentenced to 500 years in prison. He's never coming out. Today he remains behind bars which is where he should be and his story leaves behind something very very unsettling. Sometimes the most dangerous traps don't look like traps at all. I'm sure we know that by now. They look like opportunity. They look like a job. Please be careful out there. Be very very careful. The next cases are not just violent. They are very very disturbing because even when the signs were there people didn't understand what they were seeing. This next killer didn't just attack individuals. He attacked families. Entire families and what he did left many communities completely broken. At number five we have Bulelani Mabai, 38 years old at the time. It was eastern Cape South Africa and it was late 2000s into the early 2010s. Johannesburg for more than five years the serial killer terrorized residents at an eastern Cape village breaking into their homes at night and raping and killing women and sometimes their families. Some of the victims were people for whom he used to do odd jobs as a builder. He targeted their homes where there was no men. His youngest victim was believed to be six years old and the oldest 79 years old and his case did not begin like the others. There was no slow pattern of people disappearing. There was no mystery that took time to notice. It just began with fear because people were not vanishing. They were being found because these victims were entire families inside their own home and it usually happened at night when families have gone to bed, when everything was quiet, when their doors have been locked and they think they are safe inside their own house and I think that's the most disturbing part about this case because Mabai did not lure his victims. He did not promise them anything like the other killers that we have seen. He just went to them and he would approach homes in the dark, hiding, watching, waiting, sometimes studying the environment, making sure that no one was around to catch him, making sure that he can enter quietly and do his deed and when it comes to weapons he would use whatever he had. He used axes, matches, heavy objects, bush knife, anything and the attacks were very brutal. They were fast and overwhelming. The victims had no time to react. They had no time to understand what was even happening to them and in total he took 25 lives and I'm sure people started not trusting each other because I mean if such a thing is happening, what if it was your neighbor, right? So there was a lot of distrust in the community. The police of course launched a full investigation, moving from one scene to another, trying to just piece things together, trying to find something, anything that could help them break the case, that could help them catch who this person was but there was nothing. Nothing. But then at one crime scene, they noticed something small. It was a footprint. It was covered in blood but it was there. It was clear. It was distinct and it was different from the others that were at the scene. So they knew that this was the footprint of the killer and that footprint became the key. Investigators studied it. They measured it. They tracked it and slowly, piece by piece, it led them to one man, Elani. He was arrested in 2011. Police pounced on him while he took a nap at a house in Tuleni near Butterworth in Eastern Cape and just like that the killings stopped. In court, the full weight of what he had done became very, very clear. 25 murders. Entire families. Lives erased in moments that started like any other normal night. He was convicted of cost. He was given multiple life sentences. A punishment that was meant to ensure that he would never return to society, never hurt another family. Today, he remains in prison and his story leaves behind something that is even heavier than fear because it forces you to ask yourself one question. A question that nobody really wants to ask and that question, if your home is no longer safe, then where is safe? As we move to number four, here the killings become more calculated, more unpredictable and even harder to understand because this next killer didn't follow one pattern. He created chaos. At number four, we have Cedric Make, also known as the Wema Pan Killer. The year was 1996 in Johannesburg, South Africa. This case was confusing from the very beginning because nothing matched. There was no clear pattern. There was no clear victim type. There was no single type of victim. There was no predictable behavior of the killer but before we talk about what he did, let's talk about the person himself. Cedric Make was born in 1965 in South Africa. His father died when he was in standard eight and he decided to leave school at that time to help care for his family so he moved to Johannesburg to look for work and he became a plumber working for himself. He had a simple life. Make fell in love and got married in Limpopo and together with his wife, they had four children and everything was going well like a normal family but by the time he turned 33 years old, he was living in La Rochelle in Johannesburg and without any known trigger, he began a life of crime. I am sure something must have triggered this but nobody knows. However, things started happening. On 28 December 1996, Make entered a cafe and without warning, attacked Alfonso who was working in the cafe with a hammer. He stole 400 rands from the cash register and he fled. Alfonso survived the attack. On January 6, 1997, around 10 am, he entered and robbed a shop, striking the owner with a shifting spanner until he became unconscious. Then he stole five pairs of trousers from the shop. Two days later, he struck another shop owner with a hammer and he stole money from the till and his crimes only got worse and at this time, he hadn't killed anybody. His first murder victim was Dansu Kamal Patel who died in hospital after Make attacked him with a hammer and stole his wallet. Now, these are just a few of his escapades. There are many. However, the crimes looked like chaos because it didn't look like one person. It looked like these were different people committing these murders so the police were confused. They believed that they were dealing with multiple killers because how could one man move like this? How could one man think like this? How could one man kill like this and never seem to repeat himself? But that was exactly what made him very dangerous. Cedric Make did not follow a pattern. He broke the pattern each time he robbed, he attacked, he killed and each time it looked different. Sometimes his victims were men, sometimes they were women, sometimes they were couples and that is not how serial killers work. But as investigators looked deeper, one detail began to stand out. It was a disturbing pattern hidden inside all of this chaos. They noticed something strange. Now, when he attacked couples, he always did the same thing first. He killed the man and he always did it quickly and without hesitation and then he would turn to the woman and what followed was not just violence. It was like a ritual. It was control. It was power. It was domination. He assed them and then he killed them. In total, he had 27 victims in such a short span of time. 27 lives cut off just like that. People became very very cautious. People were afraid. They were unsure who to trust. Police investigated, of course, and slowly, piece by piece, they started to put things together and the truth started forming. And of course, they found out it was not multiple killers. This was just one man. One man moving through the city. One man changing his methodology. One man changing his modus operandi. One man adapting and staying unpredictable. It was Cedric Mackey. When he was finally arrested, the confusion, of course, ended and in court, the scale of what he had done shocked everyone. This was a murderous killer with no remorse. He was convicted, of course, and he was sentenced to over 1300 years in prison. This sentence is so long, it doesn't even feel real. Good riddance, I say. Today, he remains behind bars and his story leaves behind something very very unsettling because it forces you to understand one thing. The most dangerous person is not always the one that you can identify. Sometimes, it is the one you cannot predict. At number three, we go back in time, before modern investigations, before forensic science, which made what this next man did even more terrifying. At number three, we have Haj Mohamed Mesferi and the place was Marrakech in Morocco and it was early 1900s. This was a different world, of course. There was no CCTV at that time. There was no databases. There was no quick police response. So, at that time, if someone disappeared, they could stay missing for a long long time and often, they did. In the middle of the city, at that time, lived a man named Haj Mohamed Mesferi. He was a cobbler, a man who fixed shoes. He had a small cobbler shop where people would often bring their shoes to him to be repaired. He was quiet, ordinary, unremarkable. He was the kind of person you would just pass by the streets and never think twice about it again. But behind that quiet life, something was hidden. This was a dark, dark man. He targeted women, young women who were often vulnerable. Some were his customers who had brought their shoes for him to fix. Some had come to him to write letters and they trusted him, of course. There were some others who simply crossed his path at the wrong time and his modus operandi was very simple. He did not attack them violently at first. He did not chase them. He did not force them. Now, since these are people that trusted him, he would invite them in. He would speak quietly with them. He would make them comfortable. He made them feel safe. He was a cobbler for God's sake and that was the trap. Now, at some point, he would give them something, maybe food, maybe water, maybe a drink. I don't know. But of course, he would lace it with something to make them feel drowsy. Something that would weaken them and as their bodies started to weaken and started to fail them, as their strengths began to fade, that's when he would act. Oh, he was sneaky. He used a dagger like a simple blade. He would cut their throats and after it was done, he took all their valuables, their money, their jewelry, anything of value. Then, he would bury them under his own shop, under the very ground where he worked. I guess that was safe for him. The place where people worked every day, where his customers used to come into, not knowing what was buried beneath the ground. He had 36 victims and for years, nobody knew. Nobody suspected him until one day, something happened. Now, we are not sure exactly what happened as the accounts differ. Some say suspicion grew. Some people say authorities were led there like someone told them. One account even says he was caught after the parents of one young victim traced her movements back to his shop. Well, anyhow, the most important thing that eventually, he was caught and the ground was open and what they found under that ground shocked everybody. It was body upon body upon body hidden beneath the shop. A secret that had been sitting in plain sight. Moroccan authorities found the remains of 20 mutilated bodies in a deep pit under his shop while another 16 were discovered in the garden outside. He was arrested, tried, and convicted. The bodies of 26 women. Shockingly, he was aided by a 70-year-old female accomplice named Rahaly, also reported as Anna. He was originally sentenced to be crucified on May 2nd, 1906 but resident foreign officials opposed the crucifixion and because of that, the sentence was changed to beheading. However, public sentiment in Marrakesh at that time was for him to suffer. So every day for four weeks, he was led from his cell into the market square and lashed 10 times with a rod. It was finally decided because of the heinous nature of his crimes and as a warning to others, it was decided that he would be walled up alive in the Marrakesh bazaar on June 11, 1906. In other words, he was sealed inside the wall, buried alive. On the day his sentence was carried out, he screamed for mercy and he fought with his jailers when he was being led away. He could be head for two days before falling silent on the third day and that was the end of him. But his story leaves behind something even more disturbing than the killings themselves because it forces you to picture a man living an ordinary life, a man speaking to people, a man working every day, standing on top of people he buried. Wow, people do scare me. I don't know about you. At number two, we return to a case that feels more modern but more calculated and more manipulative because this next killer didn't use force at all like his accomplices. He also used opportunity. At number two, we have Moses Sithole. Moses Sithole was born on 17th of November 1964 in Guateng. When he was five years old, his father died and his mother for some reason abandoned the family. Sithole and his siblings spent the next three years in an orphanage where he later said He didn't have parents or anyone looking out for him so he turned to a life of crime. By his own account, he was arrested for SAE in his teens and he spent 17 years in prison. He later blamed his imprisonment for turning him into a murderer. I don't think that's a good reason. He's often called the ABC killer because of where he operated but what made him very dangerous was not just where he killed. It was how he chose his victims. He targeted women looking for jobs, women trying to survive, women trying to build a future and an income for themselves and their family and he offered them exactly that. He offered them the opportunity they were looking for. At that time, he was managing a shell organization called Youth Against Human Abuse devoted to the eradication of So of course, since he had this, he would approach these women politely as if he was helping, as if he had something to offer them and for many of these women, that was enough because when someone is desperate for a chance, they take it. Most of the victims were being interviewed for positions with his charity organization so he would take them to remote fields where he would beat them, assay them and murder them. Sometimes, he would even strangle them with their own underwear but I'm wondering why follow him to a field if he's supposed to have a charity organization? Should he not be interviewing them in an office? I don't know. I don't know. He had 38 victims in total. In some of these cases, he would later phone the victim's family for no apparent reason than to taunt them. At one point, President Nelson Mandela visited Boxburg in person to appeal for public assistance in apprehending this killer and what made this even more disturbing was how long it went on. In August 1995, Sithole was identified as having been seen with one of the victims but he disappeared shortly after. In October 1995, he contacted a South African journalist and identified himself as the wanted murderer. The journalist, of course, didn't believe him at first but during a phone conversation, he said that the killings were carried out in revenge for his unjust imprisonment. The journalist told him to prove his identity because anyone can call and make such claims. Finally, to prove his identity, he gave directions to where one of the bodies had been left and over time, local authorities cornered him in Johannesburg but instead of surrendering, he resisted arrest and in the ensuing struggle, he attacked a constable with a hatchet and he was shot. He was driven to the hospital where he was found to be HIV positive and also tested positive for TB. But how do you... I guess he wanted to be caught because how do you call the journalist to identify yourself? I don't know. I don't know. In court, the scale of his crimes shocked the nation. He was sentenced to over 2,000 years in prison. This was a sentence that was designed to make sure that he never, never came out. Today, he remains in prison and his story leaves behind a very, very harsh truth. Sometimes, the most dangerous person is the one offering you a way out. At number one, we have Collins Jumais. He's also known as Kalusha and the year was 2024 and the city was Nairobi in Kenya. Nairobi is a busy city with crowded streets, people moving about every day, living their normal lives. It is a place of contracts, busy markets, sickness to modern buildings, wealth and struggle exist side by side and because of that, it is easy for someone to blend in, easy to become just another face in the crowd. Collins was born in Vihiga County on 3rd of February 1991 to Margaret Rose Jumaisi and his father. He had a normal childhood but as life would have it, in 1995, his father died. He was only four years old. After his father died, he moved with his mother and three siblings to Migori County. I imagine they struggled a bit, single mother with four children. It wasn't easy but they managed and he grew into a man. He started working as a motorcycle taxi driver and got married to his wife, Imelda They got married in 2021 and she died in 2022 and it was said that she was killed by her husband. Talk about savage. He was arrested after 10 bodies were discovered in Nairobi. He was detained at a bar in the small hours of one morning in July of 2024 while watching the Euro final football match after 10 bodies and multiple body parts were discovered in plastic bags somewhere in Nairobi. The police displayed to the media some of the items said to have been recovered from the suspect house also close to where the bodies were found including 10 phones, a laptop, identity card and personal female clothing. The police said they had traced his whereabouts after geo-locating the mobile phone of one of his alleged victims. He allegedly confessed to the murder of 42 women including his wife Imelda Judith. But do you know what? In a twist of events on the 20th of August 2024, Kalusha escaped from Gigiri police station with 12 Eritreans who were detained for illegal immigration. They reportedly cut through wire mesh at approximately 3 a.m. They then climbed a perimeter wall and escaped. There is no way that was not an inside job. Eight officers who were on duty at the time have since been suspended. This caused outrage and the police are facing a renewed backlash over their failure to hunt down Kalusha after his escape. With regards to his crimes, Collies allegedly murdered 42 women ranging in age between 18 to 30 over a two-year period with the first being his wife Imelda. The mutilated bodies of the victims were discovered in a disused quarry that became a dump site in the capital Nairobi. No one is sure if he was re-arrested. Some stories say he was, others say he's still at large. If such a killer is still at large then I weep because this is injustice at its highest. And even now there are questions. I begin to wonder what kind of justice system we have in some countries. When you look at all of these stories, different countries, different times, different methods, it's easy to think that they are all separate but they are not. There's one thing that connects almost every one of them. Trust. People trusted these killers. People trusted them because of their appearance. People trusted them because of the occupation. People trusted them for different reasons and that's what allowed them to get close. And once they had access, the rest is history. And another pattern, I don't know if you noticed, was that many of their victims were helpless women. I wonder why the male killers didn't focus on males like them. And that leaves us with a difficult truth. So the next time you hear a story like this, don't just focus on what they did. Ask yourself, how did they get like this? How did they become serial killers? Because that's where the real story is. If you liked the story, you would like the story about the girl who could see who hated who. Imagine that. Imagine you having that kind of gift. Or is it a curse? I don't know. And the most shocking twist in the story was what she found out about herself. Go ahead and watch that video right here. 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