LEONARD NDZHUKULA, Delmas | Tuesday 9.30pm.
THE country’s top criminal psychologist, police deputy director Micki Pistorius, has been sent to the small Mpumalanga farming town of Delmas this week to speed up investigations into a suspected serial killer in the region.
Police have recovered three severed heads and three headless bodies, not neccessarily matching, from a river and stream near the town and believe that the killings may be the work of a single murderer.
Pistorius has successfully tracked down 30 serial killers over the past five years and will compile a psychological profile of the suspected serial killer. She will work with a special 14-member police task team that has been combing the area for clues over the past two weeks.
Serial killers arrested after Pistorius joined investigations are the Cape Town Station Strangler Faizel Simon; the Wemmer Pan Killer Oupa Shadrack Maake; the Lover’s Lane murderer David Mmbengwa; the Saloon Killer Velaphi Ndlangamandla; and the Gauteng murderer, Moses Sithole. Ndlangamandla and Maake were arrested during the past two months.
Police are meanwhile still searching for a mentally deranged man, Johannes Mohale-Monareng, who decapitated a young girl in Delmas in 1990 and tried to sell her head for R1000. Monareng was reportedly released on supervised leave from Weskoppies Psychological Institute near Pretoria last month.
The killings began three weeks ago when fishermen found three heads floating in the Wilge River near Botleng. Police could find no trace of the bodies but three headless bodies were found floating in a farm dam a week later.
None of the victims have been identified yet and police believe that they may have been abducted from communities outside Delmas.