End of run for South African serial rapist Thabo Bester and his girlfriend

The soap opera of Thabo Bester's escape has kept South Africa in suspense. AP - Denis Farrell

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1 min

While he was given for dead, Thabo Bester was arrested in Tanzania on Friday evening, April 7 while he was probably heading to Kenya, with his partner and accomplice, the doctor for celebrities Nandipha Magudumana.

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With our correspondent in Johannesburg,Romain Chanson

The arrest of the criminal couple puts an end to a soap opera that has kept South Africa in suspense and that highlights the failures of the prison system.

Like the great scammers, Thabo Bester deceived his world by multiplying fake identities. Dubbed Facebook's rapist, he was sentenced to life in prison in 2012 for raping several women to whom he dangled a modeling career. On 3 May 2022, the prison administration announced that Thabo Bester had died in a fire in his cell. In reality, neither the size of the body nor the DNA match it, as revealed by the investigative site Ground Up last March.

Yet declared dead, the fugitive reinvents an identity and mounts new scams from the beautiful neighborhoods of Johannesburg, with his companion, the doctor for celebrities Nandipha Magudumana. But his business collapsed when the journalistic investigation came out. The police are on his heels... until his arrest in Tanzania where he was arrested, dressed as a local and in possession of several passports. His girlfriend and a Mozambican citizen were also arrested. They were probably on their way to Kenya. Investigators will have a lot of questions to ask him, starting with this one: who was the man found charred dead in his cell?

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Read on on the same topics:

• South Africa
• Criminality