Johannesburg detectives have discovered another body buried in Moffat Park — the third in six months, The Star reported on Thursday.
The three victims were buried within 500m of each other at the park near Rosettenville, south of the city. All had shirts or jerseys wrapped tightly around their heads, raising fears of a serial killer in the area.
Police have not confirmed that the three cases are linked.
”At this stage we can’t say there is a serial killer,” spokesperson Inspector Mosima Manganyi said at the scene.
The first two victims were found in December and February and had been strangled.
The newspaper reported that police combed the park in April, searching for shallow graves, but came up with nothing.
The first two bodies, of a man and a woman in their 30s, have yet to be identified, as their families have not come forward.
The latest body is the first to have decomposed completely and pathologists estimate the person was killed between six and nine months ago. Bone structure and height point to a female victim.
Pieces of wire and several bricks and rocks were found in the grave, about 20m from a busy road.
Two men collecting wood at the park discovered the shallow grave on Tuesday. The long grass was recently burnt down and they saw a bony arm and red jersey protruding from the ground. They ran to the road and waved down a metro police van.
Two Booysens policemen guarded the scene until early on Wednesday, when it took police and pathologists two hours to exhume the skeleton.
The remains would be examined on Thursday. At the scene, an anxious William Majodina hoped the latest body was not that of his 55-year-old sister, Mzamose, who went missing in the area on April 14. – Sapa