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The ABC Killer: Moses Sithole · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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  Discretion advised. This is ten minute murder. In nineteen sixty four, Moses
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  Sithole was born in Valores, a town near Boxburg, Transfalt Providence and apartheid
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  South Africa. His mother and father, Sophie and Simon Sitthole, had very
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  little. With five children to feed, there was often not enough to go
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  around. The sit Holes, like many struggling South African families at the time,
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  lived in poverty, a poverty that only deepened when Simon Sitthole suddenly died.
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  Moses was just five years old when his father passed away, and the
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  family was left with no income to support themselves. Desperate and out of options,
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  Sophie gathered her children together one day and took them to a local police
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  station, where she left them. Moses and his siblings were then caught it
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  off to an orphanage in Quasulu and Detale, where life took another drastic turn.
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  Moses and his siblings later claimed that they'd been subjected to abuse while living
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  in the South African child care services, and when Moses became a teenager,
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  he just couldn't take it any more. He preferred risking a life on the
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  streets rather than staying at the orphanage, and he took off one day,
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  never to return. He reached out to his older brother, Patrick, who
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  was able to give Moses a place to stay for a short while, but
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  Patrick was also barely standing on his own two feet and couldn't offer Moses very
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  much. Moses turned to working in the Johannesburg gold mines to support himself,
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  which kept food in his belly and a roof over his head, but it
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  also gave him the opportunity to stretch his wings a little bit. It was
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  early in his teenage years that Moses' interest in sex began. At first,
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  he satiated his urges with his girlfriends, but he found that he couldn't keep
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  one for very long. Maybe he was just an ordinary teenager, or maybe
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  the feeling of abandonment he felt after being left at the police station by his
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  mother had colored his opinion of women and his ability to maintain long term relationships
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  with them. In those crucial formative years, a step in any direction can
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  lead to almost anything, but one day Moses would do something that would make
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  it perfectly clear that he was no ordinary teenager. In February nineteen eighty nine,
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  Baissua Doris Swakamisa walked into her local police station to report that she'd been
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  attacked and raped. She was able to give a detailed report of the incident
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  and her attacker, and the police were able to find and arrest him.
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  The still teenaged Moses Sitthole was then sent to court for sexual assault. All
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  through his hearings, Moses claimed that he was innocent, but the prosecution was
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  able to provide enough evidence for Moses to be found guilty of all charges.
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  He was sent to jail, still claiming that he was innocent, but otherwise
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  a model inmate, and after only seven years, he was released for good
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  behavior. Moses later claimed that it was his time behind bars that led to
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  the escalation of his crimes and was the cause for what happened next. On
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  the surface, his punishment seemed to have done its job rehabilitating the young man.
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  Moses played the part of a reformed model citizen. He got a job,
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  and not just one that he had to keep a roof over his head,
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  but one that would help him change the world around him for the better.
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  Moses started running a charity called Youth Against Human Abuse and their mission was
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  to end child abuse. This was a cause close to heart for Moses after
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  his time in the orphanage, and he seemed truly dedicated to making a difference
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  for children who were going through the same thing that he had gone through.
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  Moses was warm and charismatic. He drew people towards him and strengthened their beliefs
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  in his cause. He would often approach people on the street and bring them
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  into the fold, offering protection, a job, a way to change the
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  world. But what Moses was really doing was hunting for his next victims.
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  Many of those people Moses approached were women. He'd wave a job in their
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  face and promised to get them an interview, and for so many people trying
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  to get by in such a difficult period in South African history, a job
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  was a hard, hard thing to come by. Women would come in and
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  Moses would get to know them a little bit better. Maybe he'd offer them
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  a job, or maybe he wouldn't. But for so many of those women,
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  their fates had been unknowingly sealed as soon as they'd walked into Moses's office.
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  Moses' experience with the South African judicial system and his time behind bars had
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  taught him that victims could very easily be turned into witnesses, and witnesses could
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  get you into a lot of trouble. He said he targeted women who reminded
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  him of Doris Wakemisa, the woman whom he still alleged had falsely accused him
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  of rape almost a decade before. Other people, however, claimed that Moses
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  targeted women who reminded him of his mother. Whichever version is true, the
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  fact is Moses would entice potential victims with the promise of a job. The
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  women would leave his office and go about their daily lives, but Moses would
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  be following. He'd then lure them somewhere secluded field, attack them, sexually
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  assault them, and then strangle them, most of the time with their own
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  underwear. One of his victims, a twenty five year old lady named Letta
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  and the last name that I can't pronounce, had her two year old son
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  with her, and Moses was still undeterred. For a man who was managing
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  a charity aiming to end child abuse, Moses chose to show no compassion.
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  He hit the child across the head with a blunt object, injuring but not
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  killing the toddler. While Moses was dragging Letta away to assault and strangle her.
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  The child was left at the mercy of the Elements and would die a
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  slow death of exposure. As if his treatment of these women and in the
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  child's case wasn't enough, Moses would often phone his victims surviving families and taunt
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  them. He usually gathered this kind of contact information from his initial interviews with
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  the women, or he would at least get enough information from them that he
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  could find their relatives all on his own afterwards. With Moses's reign of terror,
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  the nation was thrown into panic. Its women were targeted by a killer
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  known only as the ABC Killer, who seemed to attack at random and at
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  will. In an attempt to end the long string of assaults and murders,
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  Nelson Mandela made a public appeal for anyone with any information to come forward,
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  but it was like trying to catch smoke with your bare hands. It was
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  in August nineteen ninety five, around thirty victims in and only two years after
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  Moses's release for good behavior, that a witness spotted Moses with his latest victim.
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  He'd almost been caught once before, when another witness had seen Moses acting
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  unusually around another woman who later turned up dead, but that witness hadn't been
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  able to get a clear view of Moses's face. This time, however,
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  a witness clearly identified Moses as being the last person one of the victims had
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  been seen alive. With investigators inched closer to finding the elusive ABC killer,
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  named so because his crimes ranged from Aderidgeville, Bocksburg, and Cleveland, they
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  uncovered Moses's previous conviction for rape and the investigation tightened around him, but Moses
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  managed to escape before the police could arrest him. By then, he'd already
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  set up a house with another woman, had a daughter, and separated with
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  the mother, choosing instead to become homeless and then go on the run in
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  order to continue his crime spree. Strangely, Moses then contacted a journalist named
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  Tamson de Beer and made a startling confession. He claimed to be the ABC
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  Killer and said that he'd actually killed around seventy six women, not the thirty
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  that he was wanted for. He said he'd done all of this as revenge
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  for his false imprisonment and to prove that he was willing to tell the truth.
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  Moses gave Tamson directions to one of his victim's bodies that had yet to
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  be say died. Tamson found the remains and the police found Moses in Johannesburg.
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  Instead of coming quietly, Moses violently attacked the police with a hatchet,
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  injuring one of them. Moses was shot, but survived and was taken to
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  a hospital, where it was discovered that Moses was both HIV positive and had
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  TB again, even after he'd already confessed to Tamson to beer. Moses claimed
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  that he was innocent, but the combination of witness testimonies like those from Tamson
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  and the other witnesses who'd sponted him with victims helped put Moses behind bars yet
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  again, only this time for good. Moses was charged with thirty eight murders,
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  forty rapes, and six robberies, all of which he was found guilty,
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  and he received consecutive sentences for all of them, giving him a grand
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  total of two thy four hundred ten years. He's hoping that history will repeat
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  itself again and he'll get out on good behavior. A judge ruled that he'd
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  have to serve at least nine hundred and thirty years of his sentence before he'd
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  be eligible for parole, meaning he'd have to live to the right bold age
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  of nine hundred and sixty three before he could walk the streets again. That's
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