Nothing Confirmed, Nothing Excluded

The question I get most, in every message and every comment, is the one nobody official will answer. Is it one killer?

I don't know. I want to say that plainly before anything else, because this post is a list of what other people have said, and none of them knows either, or none of them is saying. The record holds 269 statements. I've pulled out the main ones that touch the question. The chart at the top of this post puts fourteen of them, dated from 12 September to 2 October, on one line.

Three weeks of answers

12 September. The first SAPS statement. The police had "not, at this stage, confirmed that the deaths are linked to a serial killer", but the similarities were "sufficiently concerning" to warn women publicly.¹

15 September. The national spokesperson, Brigadier Athlenda Mathe, to the BBC: it "could be that it's a copycat crime", and "so far, no linkages as yet".²

19 September. The acting Gauteng commissioner, Major-General Fred Kekana: police were "considering all possibilities, including multiple suspects or separate perpetrators".³

21 September. The acting police minister, Firoz Cachalia, after the Dawn Park arrests: "All the cases are not necessarily linked, and there is some indication of different modus operandi and motives. But nothing yet has been excluded".⁴

26 September. The Gauteng commissioner, Lieutenant-General Tommy Mthombeni: a serial killer is "not something which we can overrule", "but we cannot conclusively indicate as such".⁵

29 September. The President, in a national address: the police have not found evidence that the cases are connected.⁶

1 October. A headline had Cachalia saying intimate-partner violence was emerging in some of the cases. The record holds only that headline, from a rewrite outlet, so I note it and no more.⁷

Read those in order and you'll notice the direction. Nobody has ruled a serial killer out. But every time an official has said something specific about a case, it has pointed the other way.

The experts quoted in the record lean the other way from the officials. Professor Nirmala Gopal, a criminologist, said on 14 September that the profile pointed to a single perpetrator rather than a syndicate. Dr Gérard Labuschagne, who used to run the SAPS investigative psychology unit, said the cases should be treated as serial until the evidence shows otherwise. He also pointed out that SAPS has no profilers left, the last one having retired this year. Both are quoted on the statements page.

Three arrests

Twelve women are in the police count. Three of those cases have someone in custody. Put them next to each other and see what they look like.

	Found	Who was arrested	Where it stands
Busisiwe Mahlangu, 37	15 July, Rhodesfield, near the R21	A man described as her boyfriend, arrested two days later	Charged with murder; back in court on 28 October
Jabulile Ntimba	17 September, Villa Liza, Dawn Park	Three people, a man and two women, arrested on 19 September by the Murder and Robbery Unit	Two women charged; a relationship motive alleged. Charges reported as provisionally withdrawn; one accused next due in court on 12 October, per News24
Ntombifuthi Nxumalo, 49	26 September, Mooifontein Cemetery, Tembisa	A man arrested in Tzaneen, Limpopo, after allegedly fleeing there: at about 11pm the same night, said SAPS; on the Sunday morning, reported News24	Charged with murder; Tembisa Magistrate's Court, next date 6 October

The Ntimba line needs a word. One of the record's sources says the charges were provisionally withdrawn for lack of evidence; News24 has one accused still in bail proceedings at Boksburg Magistrate's Court, with a 1 October date that has no reported outcome and the next on 12 October. The record can't reconcile the two, so it keeps both.

Now look at them together. A boyfriend. A relationship dispute involving two women. A man who fled to Limpopo after a killing that residents say they heard happening at a cemetery the night before, after the victim had been at a tavern. Three different stories, three different kinds of suspect, and in two of them the police themselves have given a motive that has nothing to do with the others. Deputy National Commissioner Tebello Mosikili suggested the Dawn Park case may have stemmed from a relationship matter, possibly a "love triangle".

On 2 October Mthombeni said three of the twelve cases were resolved. He didn't say which. These three are the only ones with arrests, so I assume he means them. No source confirms that.

Ten without

Ten women have no arrest: nine in the police count, and the thirteenth outside it.

The nine: Itumeleng Kekana, Nomfesane Mjobo, the woman in the Clayville river, Gracious Nkomo, Elizabeth Moselakgomo, Vutomi Mathebula, Dineo Motapane, the woman in Moroka, and the woman in the veld at Springs. Three of them still have no name.

The thirteenth, Boitumelo Gift Mashita, outside the count: the man police were looking for, described as her estranged husband, was found dead in a vehicle in Midrand the same day.

In the first week, Kekana also mentioned about ten cases reported at Kempton Park police station of women lured through online dating. Nothing in the record connects any of them to a body. I note it because it's one of the few threads an official has offered, and then nobody picked it up again in public.

What the forensics said, and then didn't

On 14 September Mosikili said forensic work had found that most of the Kempton Park victims had been sexually assaulted. On 15 September Mathe said samples were being analysed and details withheld. That is the last thing the record has on forensics from the police. Two weeks later the President announced a funded plan for the forensic backlog. I don't know whether the two are related.

What I can't tell you

I'll be straight about the holes, because a record that hides them isn't one.

• Which four women the police meant on 12 September. No statement lists them.
• Which three cases Mthombeni meant by "resolved".
• Whether the charges against all three Dawn Park suspects were withdrawn, or one.
• Why the Soweto body is in an Ekurhuleni count. No official sentence says.
• What the forensic samples showed.
• Whether anyone has been charged for the other nine.

If you can answer any of these with a document or a report, write to hello@kempton.watch, as the sources page says.

So, is it one killer?

I don't know, and I'm not going to guess in public about the deaths of women whose families read this. What I can tell you is what the record shows: nothing has been confirmed, nothing has been excluded, three cases look nothing like each other, and nine are open.

That's the series. The register keeps going, every two hours, for as long as there's something to record.