Moses Sithole was convicted in the Pretoria High Court in December 1997 of 38 murders, 40 rapes and six robberies. The dead were 37 women and a two-year-old boy who was killed with his mother. The killings took place in 1994 and 1995, in the first years of South Africa's democracy, in open veld near Atteridgeville, west of Pretoria, near Boksburg on the East Rand, and in Cleveland, in Johannesburg. The initials of those three places gave the press its name for the killer: the ABC Killer.
Most of the women were young and unemployed, and many had come to the cities from rural areas. Sithole approached them with the offer of a job. He led them to open ground, raped them and strangled them, often with their own clothing. Before he was caught he telephoned reporters at The Star newspaper in Johannesburg, said he was the killer and gave directions to bodies that police then found. Judge David Curlewis sentenced him to 2,410 years in prison and ruled that he could not be considered for parole for 930 years. He told the press he had killed 76 people. That number is his own claim; he was convicted of 38 killings.
Little about Sithole's early life is on the public record. He was 31 when police announced his arrest in October 1995, according to Keesing's Record of World Events, as summarized by South African History Online. He is described as coming from Vosloorus, a township on the East Rand.
He had already served a prison sentence for rape. At his trial in 1996, a woman testified that he had been jailed for raping her, the Mail & Guardian reported. In a 2014 overview of South African serial killers, TimesLIVE reported that he blamed his later crimes on a rape accusation from 1989, which he said was false and which led to four years in prison. IOL reported in 2026 that he had served a prison term for rape before the killings began.
In July 1993, while he was held at Pretoria Central Prison, he began a relationship by letter with a woman who later became his wife. She visited him regularly until he was released on parole in November 1993, she told the court in 1996. After his release they lived together. They had a daughter, and they married in March 1995. His wife was never accused of any crime.
By 1995 Sithole was holding meetings at a school for an organization of his that campaigned against the abuse of women and children, according to his wife's testimony. SA People reported in 2025 that the organization was called Youth Against Human Abuse and that he presented himself as its manager. TimesLIVE wrote in 2014 that he lured women with offers of jobs at a children's home in Benoni. IOL said in 2026 that he posed as a businessman.
The women Sithole killed were, in the description of the Mail & Guardian in September 1995, mostly young, and many came from rural areas. The paper wrote that rural Black women were widely regarded as near the bottom of South African society, and that the new South African Police Service, which wanted to show that it served every citizen, was finding the cases hard to solve. One victim in the Boksburg series was not a woman: a two-year-old boy, killed together with his mother.
Some of the women were never identified, according to the Sunday Tribune's 2025 account of a documentary on the case, whose end credits list the victims and the dates of their deaths.
The women were promised work. In a country where very many people had none, the offer of a job interview was the bait. IOL wrote in 2026 that Sithole, like two later South African killers, Sipho Thwala and Thozamile Taki, lured victims with the promise of work. The Mail & Guardian made the same comparison in 2007 between Sithole's victims and those of Cedric Maake, the Wemmer Pan killer, who were also enticed with the prospect of a job.
Before Sithole was identified, police were dealing with what looked like three separate series of murders of young women around Johannesburg and Pretoria.
The first was in Cleveland. In December 1994, police arrested a man, D.S., for the killings of 15 young women in and around Cleveland, the Mail & Guardian reported. Many people believed the killings had stopped. D.S. was then shot dead by a policeman, who said D.S. had tried to attack him while the officer had taken him to a murder scene. D.S. was never tried, and police continued to say in 1995 that forensic evidence conclusively linked him to the Cleveland deaths. South African History Online, citing Keesing's, gives a different account: that Sithole's crimes first came to light in June 1994, when the remains of 15 women were found buried on a hillside in Cleveland. The Sunday Tribune, describing the 2025 documentary, wrote that another man had first been arrested for the crimes and had died in custody, and that Sithole contacted The Star to say the police had the wrong man.
The second series was in Atteridgeville, near Pretoria. After the Cleveland arrest, more bodies were found there. Police said this was probably not the same killer. The press called the man responsible the Atteridgeville Strangler, and by September 1995 fifteen victims had been connected to him, according to the Mail & Guardian.
The third series was near Boksburg. In the week before September 22, 1995, police found the bodies of 10 young women in a field outside the town. That brought the number of victims linked to D.S. and to possible copycat killers to 40, the Mail & Guardian wrote. The paper reported that investigators appeared to agree that all three sets of murders were sexually motivated, that police were officially silent on new developments, perhaps so as not to warn the killer and perhaps because investigators disagreed among themselves, and that rumors suggested the cases might be linked, or that the later killings were the work of a copycat. In an editorial passage, the paper argued that police had to stop the killings but must not shoot suspects before trial.
The investigation brought together the South African Police Service and its new investigative psychology unit. Micki Pistorius, a psychologist, founded that unit. The Mail & Guardian reported in 2019 that she met the FBI profiler Robert Ressler in 1995, a year after founding it, and that, during six years leading the unit, she trained more than 100 detectives in investigating serial murder. In 1997 the paper described her as head of the police service's investigative psychology unit. The Sunday Tribune wrote in 2025 that she was new to the field at the time of the Sithole case and turned to the FBI for guidance. IOL reported in 2026 that police brought in Ressler, by then retired from the FBI.
Pistorius's profile of the killer predicted that he would contact the media, the Mail & Guardian reported in 2019. He did.
In 1995 a man telephoned The Star in Johannesburg under a false name and said he was the killer. Tamsen de Beer, then a junior reporter working the night shift, took his calls. She later said she had little experience of hard news at the time, according to the documentary's director, Jasyn Howes, speaking to EWN in 2025. Her night editor, Alameen Brendan Templeton, worried for her safety, the Post reported.
At Sithole's trial in 1996 the court heard that the caller had spoken to two reporters at The Star. He gave clues to three murders, and police found the women's bodies in exactly the places and positions he had described, the Mail & Guardian reported. A voice expert, Dr Leendert Jansen, testified that there was "no doubt whatsoever" that the caller's voice was Sithole's. The defense counsel, Eben Jordaan, said he would ask the Legal Aid Board to pay for an expert from abroad to examine the tapes.
According to the Sunday Tribune's account of the 2025 documentary, the caller was frustrated by what he saw as police incompetence and said they had arrested the wrong person. De Beer built a rapport with him, he gave her details of the murders, and she encouraged him to give himself up; he seemed open to the idea. She later said she regretted becoming emotionally involved in the story rather than only reporting it. EWN reported in 2025 that he sometimes telephoned the families of the women after the killings to taunt them, and that he claimed 76 victims in all.
Sithole and his wife separated on July 31, 1995, after an argument over keys to the school where he held his organization's meetings. He had taken the keys to work, and the school wanted them back. He left, and she did not see him again until after his arrest, she testified.
On October 18, 1995, police set a trap at a factory in Benoni, on the East Rand, where they expected Sithole to meet a relative, Inspector Francis Mulovhedzi told the court in 1996. According to the inspector, Sithole refused to go into the building and ran, and Mulovhedzi shot him. Sithole then attacked him with an axe and bit him, the inspector said, and he shot Sithole again. Sithole's counsel gave the court a different account: that Sithole was walking in the street, bumped into Mulovhedzi and was shot without warning. TimesLIVE, in 2014, wrote that Sithole was trying to get a firearm from a relative when he was caught and that he was shot three times after attacking an undercover officer with an axe.
Police in Pretoria announced the arrest on October 19, 1995, describing Sithole as the most wanted man in the country, according to Keesing's as summarized by South African History Online. He was linked, police said, to the murders of at least 37 women and one child and to the rapes of 40 women in Gauteng over the previous 18 months. He was wounded and held in hospital under police guard.
Sithole was tried in the Pretoria Supreme Court, now the Pretoria High Court. By November 1996, when the Mail & Guardian reported on the trial, he was 32 and faced charges of murdering 37 women and a two-year-old child, of 40 rapes and of six robberies. The paper called him the most accomplished alleged serial killer in South Africa. His counsel was Eben Jordaan.
His wife testified for the prosecution. She identified a watch, a necklace and rings as belonging to Sithole, and the prosecution said these items had been taken from some of the murdered women. She told the Mail & Guardian that she no longer loved him. In court she refused his request to hold their baby while he sat in the dock. Sithole smiled broadly as she described their courtship, the paper reported. He had seemed unmoved until Inspector Mulovhedzi described shooting him; then he wept.
The court also heard the evidence about the calls to The Star and the voice analysis, and the evidence of the woman he had been jailed for raping before the killings.
Recorded conversations with fellow prisoners were also part of the case against him. TimesLIVE reported in 2014 that these conversations showed that hatred of Black women drove the killings, and that he traced that hatred to the 1989 rape accusation. In an interview shown in the 2025 documentary, Sithole said that women who "play with fire" by messing around with men were asking for trouble and that a man who has been hurt can "do anything," the Sunday Tribune reported. The documentary also used official footage of his police questioning in 1995.
In December 1997 the court convicted Sithole of 38 murders, 40 rapes and six robberies. Judge David Curlewis sentenced him to 50 years for each murder, 12 years for each rape and five years for each robbery. The sentences were to run one after another, for a total of 2,410 years, TimesLIVE reported. The judge ordered that Sithole serve at least 930 years before he could be considered for parole, SA People and IOL reported.
South Africa no longer had the death penalty. In June 1995 the Constitutional Court, in S v Makwanyane, had found capital punishment unconstitutional as a cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment that violated the rights to life and dignity. Judge Curlewis disagreed with that outcome and said so. A Mail & Guardian editorial on December 12, 1997, noted that his comments "in the Moses Sithole case," denouncing the government for abolishing the death penalty, had been widely reported. The paper argued that the courts had settled the question and that by intervening publicly the judge had opened the bench to political attack. The editorial made the point in a wider argument: Curlewis had also written to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission earlier that year, declining its invitation to take part in hearings on the legal system, and the paper urged the commission to subpoena judges who would not appear.
No appeal against the convictions or the sentence has been reported.
Sithole was first held in C-Max, the maximum-security section of Pretoria Central Prison, TimesLIVE reported in 2014. He was later held at Johannesburg Prison, known as Sun City, and in 2012 he was moved to a private prison in Mangaung, in the Free State.
He went to court over the move. In October 2012 he filed an urgent application in the Johannesburg High Court, jointly with a Peruvian prisoner serving 15 years for a drug offense, The Star reported. He said he had been moved without notice or reasons, that the transfer cut him off from his daughter and other family, and that a visit would now cost a relative about R3,000. He told the court that in 15 years he had never broken a Department of Correctional Services rule, that he had completed three programs, including anger management, and that he had cooperated throughout. He said the move breached his right under the Correctional Services Act of 1998 to be held near his family, cost him his place at a university, left him owing the university about R1,000 and meant he had to apply again for a computer for his studies.
Advocate Zinhle Buthelezi, for the department, called his claims baseless. She told the court that Sithole was a high-risk prisoner, that the Johannesburg prison was about 200 percent overcrowded, that such prisoners could not be held in overcrowded centers without rehabilitation resources, and that high-risk prisoners could not be told of a transfer in advance. On November 8, 2012, Judge Mathilda Masipa dismissed the application. "The application has no merit and is dismissed," she said. Sithole then asked that both men be moved back to the prison in Pretoria, The Star reported.
In November 2025, when a parliamentary committee held hearings inside Kgoši Mampuru II prison in Pretoria, SA People reported that Sithole was among the prisoners held in its C-Max section. The Post reported in 2025 that he was reportedly studying law after completing a theology degree; the Sunday Tribune reported the same.
In July 2025 Showmax released The ABC Killer, a three-part documentary series directed by Jasyn Howes, who had made an earlier documentary about the serial killer Stewart Wilken. The series follows the investigation to Sithole's capture and his trial. It drew on Tamsen de Beer's diary, transcripts of her calls with Sithole and her letters to the clinical psychologist Giada Del Fabbro, and it included an interview with Sithole recorded by an anonymous fellow prisoner, the Post reported. Former detectives interviewed for the series included Derrick Nosworthy, who called it the biggest case in the country's history at that time, and Ettiene Viljoen, Frans van Niekerk and Paul Nkomo, according to the Post and the Sunday Tribune. The former crime reporter Phalane Motale and Jodi Bieber, then a freelance photographer for The Star who went to the scenes with police, also took part. Bieber spoke of the contrast between how white and Black South Africans experienced the case.
A woman who survived an attack by Sithole also spoke in the series. Howes told EWN that she had at first been afraid and wanted to stay anonymous, and that reliving the events was painful for her.
Howes also spoke to Sithole by telephone in prison. Sithole asked whether the documentary could change the way South Africans saw him, Howes told EWN. Howes said he told him it could not.
Proven by the court's verdict, as reported: 38 murders (37 women and a two-year-old boy), 40 rapes and six robberies.
His own claim, never tested in court: that he killed 76 people. No investigation matching that figure to bodies has been reported.
The Cleveland deaths: in 1995 police said forensic evidence linked the 15 Cleveland killings to D.S., who was shot dead in custody in December 1994 and never tried. The Mail & Guardian in October 1997 described Sithole's trial as being for 38 killings in Atteridgeville and Boksburg. Later accounts, including IOL in 2026 and SA People in 2025, say the nickname came from bodies in all three areas. The reports do not say which of the 38 convictions, if any, relate to Cleveland.
Other points on which accounts differ: whether the indictment and convictions covered 37 women or 38 women (IOL in 2012 wrote "killing 37" of 40 women raped; other reports give 37 women and one child); his year of birth; how many times he was shot at his arrest; and the year of his sentencing (one 2019 TimesLIVE podcast page gives 1996, which is wrong; the sentence was passed in December 1997, after the trial that the Mail & Guardian reported as under way in 1996 and continuing in October 1997). IOL in 2026 named the sentencing judge as "David Carstairs"; other reports, and the Mail & Guardian editorial of December 1997, name him as David Curlewis.
July 1993: while held at Pretoria Central Prison, begins a relationship by letter with the woman he later marries.
November 1993: released on parole.
1994: the killings begin, according to later reports.
December 1994: police arrest D.S. for 15 killings in Cleveland; he is later shot dead by a policeman.
March 1995: Sithole marries.
July 31, 1995: Sithole and his wife separate.
September 1995: the bodies of 10 women are found in a field outside Boksburg; the Mail & Guardian reports that 40 deaths have been linked to D.S. and possible copycats.
1995: a caller to The Star says he is the killer and directs police to three bodies.
October 18, 1995: Sithole is shot and arrested in a police trap in Benoni.
October 19, 1995: police in Pretoria announce the arrest.
November 1996: trial evidence from his wife, the arresting officer and a voice expert in the Pretoria Supreme Court.
October 1997: trial still under way, the Mail & Guardian reports.
December 1997: convicted of 38 murders, 40 rapes and six robberies; Judge David Curlewis sentences him to 2,410 years, with no parole consideration for 930 years.
December 12, 1997: Mail & Guardian editorial criticizes Curlewis for his public comments on the death penalty in the case.
2012: moved from Johannesburg Prison to a private prison in Mangaung.
November 8, 2012: Judge Mathilda Masipa dismisses his challenge to the transfer.
2014: reported held in C-Max, Pretoria Central Prison.
July 2025: The ABC Killer documentary series is released on Showmax.
November 2025: reported held in C-Max, Kgoši Mampuru II prison, Pretoria.