In August 2008 Judge Godfrey Hetisani of the Thohoyandou High Court, in Limpopo province, South Africa, sentenced Mukosi Freddy Mulaudzi to 11 life terms and a further 146 years in prison. The judge had found him guilty on 26 charges, among them murder, attempted murder, rape, robbery and theft. According to the Sowetan, the crimes were committed between 2004 and 2006, after he escaped from a prison near Pretoria where he was serving two life sentences for murder. His response to the sentence, the paper reported, was two words: "It's nothing."
The judge found that he had attacked women and children and hardly ever a man. When the case first came to court in 2006, five of the seven murders he faced were of children, the South African Press Association (Sapa) reported.
Little is known of his early life. Sapa gave his age as 42 when he first appeared in court after his arrest in 2006, and the Sowetan gave it as 45 when he was sentenced in August 2008. His date and place of birth were not reported.
The Sowetan wrote at his sentencing that his first crimes were committed in 1985, when he was 21, and that they included rapes and killings in Makhado. The paper did not say how those cases ended. In court, according to the same report, Mulaudzi offered as an excuse that his father, a polygamist, had failed him and had led him to kill.
By the mid-1990s Mulaudzi was in Baviaanspoort Prison, outside Pretoria, serving life. The Sowetan described the sentence once as two life terms for murder and once as two life terms for murder and robbery. Sapa, in 2006, said he had been serving several life sentences for other murders. The dates of those convictions and the names of the people killed have not been made public.
He escaped. Police told Sapa in 2006 that the escape was in 1996. "We have been hunting this guy for about 10 years," Senior Superintendent Motlafela Mojapelo said. The Sowetan's reports of the 2008 trial, citing police, put the escape in 1999. How he got out was not reported.
By 2004 he was back in the Venda area of Limpopo. After his arrest, Mojapelo told Sapa that Mulaudzi might also be linked to three attempted murders, two armed robberies, three rapes, four murders, three housebreakings and two assaults in the Siloam and Levubu areas since 2004. These were police links at an early stage of the case, and which of them went to trial has not been made public.
One of the crimes described in the 2008 judgment was an attack on a police officer, who was robbed in 2006. The officer's gun had still not been recovered when the trial ended.
Sapa named the victims of the murders he was charged with in 2006. Ndivhuwo Winnity Tshilimandila was 19. Nyadzeni was 14, Shumani was 10 and Levhalesani Maxwell Sivhugwana was 7. All four were killed in Thohoyandou in August.
Phophi Tracy Radzilani, 30, was killed the same month, Sapa reported. Her two children also died: Rotondwa, who was 7, and Moses Mushiana, who was five months old.
Shonisani Thinandavha was found dead at Mulodi in July 2006. Her killing came up in the judgment in 2008, when the judge noted that some of what had been taken in her killing was never recovered.
Beyond their names and ages, almost nothing has been made public about who these people were: their families, their work or their schooling.
Mulaudzi was arrested in 2006 at Mulodi. When Judge Hetisani began delivering judgment in August 2008, the court heard that police had found him hiding inside a refrigerator that no longer worked.
Sapa reported that after his arrest on a Monday he appeared briefly in the Dzanani magistrate's court on the Wednesday. He faced seven new charges, murder among them, covering the killings in Thohoyandou and the deaths of Phophi Tracy Radzilani and her children. The case was postponed to November 15 for further investigation.
The case went to the Thohoyandou High Court, where Mulaudzi faced 26 counts. He pleaded guilty to some charges and not guilty to others. Then he stayed silent. He did not contest the evidence of the witnesses, and he said nothing until the state had closed its case, the Sowetan reported.
The state advocate, Bathuel Manyuha, asked the court to convict him on all 26 counts. His right to remain silent, Manyuha argued, did not prove that he had not committed the crimes. "The accused dealt with his victims in a brutal manner and had no mercy and some of the victims were lucky to survive," he told the court. Because the witnesses' evidence stood uncontested, he said, the court had to find Mulaudzi guilty even on the counts he denied.
The defense advocate, James Manwadu, answered that his client's silence should not make him liable for every charge in the indictment.
Before giving his verdict, Judge Hetisani said he was concerned that some of the property taken from the victims had never been found. The police officer's gun was among the missing items.
The judge found Mulaudzi guilty on the 26 charges. The categories of offense are on record (murder, attempted murder, rape, robbery and theft), but not the number of counts in each or how many murders the court found proved.
Manwadu asked for a lighter sentence. Judge Hetisani turned the plea down. He said Mulaudzi had gone on committing crimes after escaping from prison, and he asked: "Where is justice going to take place?" He went on: "I doubt that rehabilitation is possible and not all people are correctable." He agreed with the state that Mulaudzi was "a merciless and ruthless person who does not want to change."
The judge said Mulaudzi had picked out women and children, attacked them for reasons he never gave the court, and taken their belongings for his own gain. He seldom attacked a man, the judge observed. "It is the duty of the justice system to protect those who cannot defend themselves from merciless people like you," the Sowetan quoted him as saying.
The sentence was 11 life terms and 146 years, reported by the Sowetan on August 22, 2008. The paper described Mulaudzi as unrepentant. Where he was held after sentencing, and whether he appealed, was not reported.
Several points in the record do not line up.
The year of the escape is given as 1996 by police quoted by Sapa in 2006, and as 1999 by police quoted in the Sowetan in 2008. The superintendent's estimate of about ten years on the run fits the earlier date.
The earlier life sentences are described in three ways: two life terms for murder, two life terms for murder and robbery, and several life sentences for other murders. The number of people killed in those earlier cases is not stated.
The Sowetan's statement that his crimes began in 1985 with rapes and killings in Makhado comes without any detail of a charge, trial or sentence from that year.
The four further murders that police linked to him in 2006 were allegations. Whether they were among the 26 counts has not been made public.
The Sowetan called Mulaudzi a "self-confessed" serial killer at his sentencing. Its own trial report of three days earlier said he had pleaded not guilty to some charges and had otherwise stayed silent, and it did not describe a confession.
1985: According to the Sowetan, his first crimes, including rapes and killings, in Makhado.
Before 1996: Serving life sentences for murder in Baviaanspoort Prison, outside Pretoria.
1996 or 1999: Escapes from Baviaanspoort (1996 according to police quoted by Sapa; 1999 according to police quoted by the Sowetan).
From 2004: Crimes in the Siloam and Levubu areas of Limpopo, according to police.
2006: A police officer is attacked and robbed; his gun is taken.
July 2006: Shonisani Thinandavha is found dead at Mulodi.
August, as reported by Sapa after his arrest: Ndivhuwo Winnity Tshilimandila, Nyadzeni, Shumani and Levhalesani Maxwell Sivhugwana are killed in Thohoyandou; Phophi Tracy Radzilani and her children Rotondwa and Moses Mushiana are killed the same month.
2006: Arrested at Mulodi, hiding in a disused refrigerator; appears in the Dzanani magistrate's court on seven charges; case postponed to November 15.
August 2008: Judge Godfrey Hetisani begins delivering judgment on 26 counts in the Thohoyandou High Court (reported August 19, 2008).
August 2008: Found guilty on 26 charges and sentenced to 11 life terms and 146 years (reported August 22, 2008).