For most of 2005 the farm workers of Philippi, a farming area on the Cape Flats outside Cape Town, lived with a run of killings and rapes that police could not stop. The attacks began in April and went on until December. In May 2007 Jimmy Maketta, a laborer from Grabouw who had drifted to Cape Town without finding steady work, pleaded guilty in the Cape High Court to 47 counts, 16 of them for murder and 19 for rape. The next day the court declared him a dangerous criminal, a finding that kept his release in the hands of a judge rather than the prison authorities.
He was caught by a detective who took over the case in December 2005, after the first inquiry had led to the arrest of the wrong man. The detective, Captain Jonathon Morris of the police organised crime unit, needed about two weeks. A cellphone left behind at one of the scenes led him to Maketta's son, and from there to a house in Constantia where Maketta was working as a painter. Faced with the phone and with letters he had written, Maketta confessed, and he told police about killings they had not yet connected to him.
South African reporting called him the Jesus Killer. In 2022 the Weekend Argus said the name came from victims' accounts that he had it tattooed on his chest. After his arrest he told a reporter that he had given his heart to Jesus in a police holding cell. The same newspaper reported in April 2022 that he had died in prison.
Maketta came from Grabouw, in the Western Cape. His attorney, Sollie Marthinus, told the Cape High Court in May 2007 that his client was one of 15 children in a dysfunctional family. According to Marthinus, Maketta left school after finishing Grade 6, lived for a time in the bush, then left home and began stealing before he went on to more serious crimes.
He moved to Cape Town and stayed with a sister in Mitchells Plain, on the Cape Flats, but he could not find a permanent job, the attorney said. By the end of 2005 he was taking casual work; when he was arrested he was doing a painting job in Constantia. He had a wife, to whom he wrote at least one letter about the crimes, and a son who lived in Grabouw.
The state psychiatrist who examined him, Dr. Sean Kaliski of Valkenberg Hospital, gave the court an outline of his childhood: fighting, setting fires and running away from home. Kaliski described the adult Maketta as mild-mannered and soft-spoken.
His age was reported in different ways. When he appeared in the Wynberg magistrate's court after his arrest, IOL gave it as 41. In May 2007 a Sapa report gave 46, and the reporter Caryn Dolley gave 43. His date of birth was not reported.
According to Morris's evidence in the Cape High Court, Maketta watched the farm workers on Friday evenings as they finished work for the week. Sapa, reporting the hearing, said his arrest ended a period of terror for the Philippi farming community that lasted from April to December 2005. Morris also told the court that Maketta escaped police during those months by taking a minibus taxi to Grassy Park or Mitchells Plain.
The attacks were not all the same. The charges eventually brought against him covered murder and rape, but also housebreaking, assault, kidnapping and theft.
The reports of the case name only some of the people who died. When Maketta first appeared in the magistrate's court, IOL listed incidents included in the charges against him, all of them in Philippi:
In May, Nolusindiso Sono, a farm worker, was found dead.
Also in May, Mina Javas, a farm worker, was killed.
In July, Richard Cornelius, a farm worker, was killed.
Also in July, Hilton Augustead, a farm worker, was killed.
In October, a man who had not been identified was killed.
Also in October, Petrus Marks, a farm worker, was found dead.
Also in October, Magriet Koela, a farm worker, was found dead.
In November, Jennifer Petersen, a farm worker, was found dead.
Most of the victims had been beaten to death, the same report said. No ages have been reported for any of them, and little is known of their lives beyond their work on the Philippi farms. The 16 murder counts to which Maketta pleaded guilty were not published by name, so it is not known how many of the people named in 2006 were among the final 16.
Dolley's report on the plea named one more victim, Griet Koelas, whose body police found in Mitchells Plain after Maketta drew them a map. Outside the court that day a 16-year-old girl wept as she told reporters that Maketta had killed her mother two years before.
The killings went on for months before the case reached the detective who solved it. Morris told the Cape High Court that the case was given to him only after an initial investigation, which he called sloppy, had led to the arrest of the wrong person. That person has not been named, and how long he was held has not been reported.
Maketta himself had contact with the authorities before he was caught. Sapa reported that on two occasions he telephoned police radio control to say where bodies could be found, and Dolley reported that after one killing, in Claremont, he called the 10111 police emergency number twice and gave directions with a map. He also wrote to two newspapers, the Son and the Voice, claiming responsibility for murders.
Morris took over the inquiry in December 2005. He went back to the witnesses and interviewed them again, and he returned to the places where the attacks had happened. At one of them he found a cellphone that Maketta had left behind. It was still switched on, and its record showed eight calls to a single number.
The number belonged to Maketta's son in Grabouw. The son gave Morris an address in Mitchells Plain, but Maketta had moved on. Morris traced him to Constantia, a suburb in the south of Cape Town, where he was doing a painting job, and arrested him there in December 2005. Sapa's report on the sentence said the search had taken Morris only about two weeks.
After the arrest Maketta took Morris to a place near a railway station where he had been living in the bush. Police seized clothing and food he had kept there.
At Morris's office in Bellville South, Maketta at first denied everything. He changed his position only when Morris showed him the cellphone and the letters he had written, Sapa reported. He then confessed, and he described murders that police had not known about. Morris locked him in a cell, and he appeared in court the next day.
The letters became part of the prosecution's case. One was to his wife and two were to Morris, and according to the prosecutor they gave details of the rapes and killings. Letters found after the arrest said he was responsible for three murders, Morris told the court. In a later letter Maketta thanked Morris for the way he had been treated and said that he had given his heart to Jesus and turned over a new leaf.
Investigators tied him to the crimes with DNA tests, cellphone records, handwriting samples and visits to the scenes, according to the evidence summarized by Sapa.
After his arrest Maketta appeared in the Wynberg magistrate's court. At one appearance, IOL reported, the senior state prosecutor, Eleanor Mocke, told the court that DNA results that could link him to the charges were expected within days. He faced 50 charges at that stage: 13 of murder, 3 of attempted murder, 22 of rape, 1 of robbery with aggravating circumstances, 5 of housebreaking, 4 of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm and 2 of kidnapping. A team of senior state advocates in the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions in Cape Town was to review dozens of case dockets that week.
Cheryl Horne of the Legal Aid Board appeared for him that day in place of a colleague, John Vrieslaar. The magistrate, Marietjie van Eeden, postponed the case. Maketta, in a blue shirt and jeans, looked relaxed and smiled as detectives took him down to the cells.
The case came before the Cape High Court in May 2007. Before Maketta pleaded, the state withdrew seven charges, among them indecent assault and attempted murder. Asked how he would plead, he at first looked confused, the reporter Caryn Dolley wrote. Then he said he would take everything on himself and plead guilty, because that would make things easier for the court.
He pleaded guilty to 47 counts: 19 of rape, 16 of murder, 6 of housebreaking, 3 of assault, 1 of kidnapping, 1 of theft and 1 of attempted murder. Sapa reported that the plea was made before Judge Abie Motala and two assessors. Dolley's report named the judge who asked for his plea as Essa Moosa. When the court adjourned for an hour, Maketta smiled as he was led out in handcuffs and leg irons.
The prosecutor, Susan Galloway, handed in documents that included his letters. Morris gave evidence about the investigation, including how Maketta had watched the farm workers on Friday evenings.
More than 50 relatives of the victims gathered outside the court. They chanted that they wanted Jimmy, and some shouted that they wanted his blood.
Dr. Sean Kaliski, the state psychiatrist from Valkenberg Hospital, told the court that Maketta was a dangerous psychopath without remorse who should go to prison for ever. He said there was no possibility at all that Maketta could be rehabilitated, and that this was why he was dangerous. Asked how he felt, Kaliski said, Maketta had only shrugged.
Kaliski told the court he did not know what had driven Maketta to commit the crimes. Maketta said later that he did not know either. Kaliski also gave the court his working definition of a serial killer: a person who kills more than two or three victims, with a period of calm between the killings.
In a report dated May 3, 2007, Sapa said that Judge Motala had that Thursday declared Maketta a dangerous criminal on the 19 counts of rape and the 16 counts of murder. Under the order he was to be detained for 25 years. He would then be brought back before the High Court, where a judge would decide whether he was fit to be released into the community. In effect, Sapa said, he would never become eligible for parole, and any release would rest with a judge rather than with the prison authorities.
The Cape Times described the outcome as an effective lifetime in jail. Its report said he would come back to court at the end of 25 years and could then face a further 25 years in prison. TimesLIVE, in a 2014 list of South Africa's deadliest serial killers, said he had been sentenced to life in prison.
The judge praised Morris, saying that he deserved the highest praise and was a credit to the South African Police Service. Morris told the court that the case had come to him only after the sloppy first investigation, and that he had tracked Maketta down in about two weeks.
The Sapa report on the sentence described Maketta as a serial killer and rapist who had terrorised Western Cape communities for 11 years. The report did not explain that figure. The crimes to which he pleaded guilty were all committed in 2005, according to the reports of the plea.
In court Maketta read out an apology to the victims and their families. It quoted the Bible and was signed "from a person who has found God," the Cape Times reported. Many people in the courtroom muttered angrily and looked away while he read.
After the sentence, still handcuffed and shackled, he spoke to the Cape Times. He said he had understood the harm he had done only on the Wednesday, when he watched a television news report about his own case a few hours after pleading guilty. He said he was sorry and remorseful, and that he hoped the families of his victims would forgive him, however long that took.
He told the newspaper that he had given his heart to Jesus in the holding cells at the Bellville South police station after his arrest in December 2005. In prison, he said, he would do the Lord's work, and he would try to turn other killers away from murder by showing them how brutal it was and what it cost.
The Weekend Argus reported on April 2, 2022, that Maketta had died in prison. The report gave no date or cause of death.
The newspaper was writing about two killings in Philippi that week, about 12 hours apart, which had brought his case back to mind. Jannie Ruppersberg, a former Philippi police officer who had served on a farm patrol in the 1990s and belonged to the Schaapkraal Community Forum, said the community had never forgotten the Maketta case and that one of the residents had helped with his arrest. The ward councillor for Philippi and Schaapkraal, Elton Jansen, also recalled the killings. Residents asked for a specialised farm patrol to be set up again.
Several points in the record of the case remain unclear.
The number of years. Sapa's sentencing report said Maketta had terrorised Western Cape communities for 11 years. Every report of the plea places the crimes he admitted between April and December 2005.
The judge. Sapa named Judge Abie Motala as the judge who took the plea and declared him a dangerous criminal. Caryn Dolley's report on the plea named Essa Moosa as the judge who asked for his plea, and her report on the sentence called the judge Justice Abdullah Motala.
His age. Reports gave it as 41 in the magistrate's court and as 43 and 46 in May 2007.
The victims. The 16 people he was convicted of killing have not all been named. Seven people and one unidentified man appear on the earlier charge list; a further name, Griet Koelas, appears in Dolley's report on the plea. It is not clear whether that name and Magriet Koela, on the earlier list, refer to the same woman.
The sentence. Sapa described a 25-year term followed by a judge's decision on release. Dolley's report on the sentence wrote of a further 25 years, and TimesLIVE in 2014 wrote of a life sentence.
The nickname. The Weekend Argus said the name Jesus Killer came from victims' accounts of a tattoo on his chest.
April 2005: The attacks on farm workers in Philippi begin, according to Sapa and the Weekend Argus; they continue until December.
May: The charge list read in the magistrate's court includes the deaths of Nolusindiso Sono and Mina Javas in Philippi.
July: The same list includes the deaths of Richard Cornelius and Hilton Augustead.
October: It includes the deaths of Petrus Marks, Magriet Koela and an unidentified man.
November: It includes the death of Jennifer Petersen.
December 2005: Captain Jonathon Morris takes over the investigation and arrests Maketta in Constantia. He confesses at Bellville South.
After the arrest: Maketta appears in the Wynberg magistrate's court on 50 charges, among them 13 of murder and 22 of rape.
May 2007, the Wednesday before sentence: in the Cape High Court, after seven charges are withdrawn, he pleads guilty to 47 counts, 16 of them murder and 19 rape.
May 3, 2007 (Sapa report of that date): Judge Abie Motala declares him a dangerous criminal: 25 years' detention, then a High Court decision on release.
April 2, 2022: The Weekend Argus reports that he has died in prison.