Elias XITAVHUDZI
AKA "Pangaman"
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Rape - Mutilation
Number of victims: 16
Date of murders: 1960's
Date of birth: ???
Victims profile: White women
Method of murder: Beating with machete
Location: Atteridgeville, South Africa
Status: Sentenced to death. Executed
Elias Xitavhudzi was a serial killer who murdered 16 people in Atteridgeville, South Africa in the 1960s. Targeting only white females in a strictly-segregated community, his killing spree caused a tremendous sensation locally.
Prior to his capture, he acquired the nickname "Pangaman", panga being a local word for the machete with which he mutilated his victims. Upon capture, he was immediately sentenced to death and executed. However, Xitavhudzi was to be only the second in a series of at least a half-dozen serial killers to have plagued the township of Atterdgeville. (Newton 1999, p. 246).
Sources
The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, Michael Newton, p207.
Wikipedia.org
Xitavhudzi, Elias
One of half a dozen serial killers spawned by the South African township of Atteridgeville in modern times, Elias Xitavhudzi was nicknamed "Pangaman" prior to capture, after the long, broad-bladed knife he used to kill and mutilate his 16 female victims.
Occurring in the 1960s, Xitavhudzi's crimes were doubly traumatic for strictly segregated Atteridgeville, since the victims were white and their killer turned out to be black. Upon capture, Xitavhudzi was swiftly tried and sentenced to death, but his spirit lives on in Atteridgeville, which continuas to produce vicious stalkers on a regular basis-most recently, the still unidentified "Atteridgeville Mutilator."
Michael Newton - An Encyclopedia of Modern Serial Killers - Hunting Humans
