For eight months in 2005 the farm workers of Philippi, on the Cape Flats outside Cape Town, had reason to fear Friday evenings. That was when a man came down from a hill above the paths they used between the farms and the settlements and attacked them, men and women alike, with a wooden pole. From April to December he killed sixteen people there. He raped women, and some of the women he raped survived him.
Jimmy Maketta was born around 1964. South African reporting called him the Jesus Killer. The pattern held from the first killing to the last: the same ground, the same night of the week and the same weapon.
He was arrested on December 20, 2005. When his case came to court in 2007 he did not contest it. He pleaded guilty to sixteen counts of murder and nineteen of rape. A state psychiatrist who examined him described him as a psychopath.
On May 3, 2007, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. The people he killed on those Friday evenings are not named in the reporting on the case.