Atteridgeville Jane Doe was a young woman who was found in the township of Atteridgeville, Gauteng Province in early January 1995. She is the sixth victim and first of unidentified victim of serial killer Moses Sithole AKA The ABC Killer.
Case[]
The victim was found nude and severely decomposed in a field. Between January and April 1995, five women and the young son of one of the women were found murdered in and around Atteridgeville. Following the discovery of the last victim, local media on 17 April 1995 speculated that the modus operandi of the Atteridgeville murders was similar to a series of murders that occurred during the summer of 1994 in the Cleveland suburb of Johannesburg.
Law enforcement at the time initially suspected David Selepe to be behind the Cleveland murders based on his confession (only oral; he refused to confess in writing) and him fitting the psychological profile of the killer. Selepe was shot in self-defense by the police on 18 December 1994 while leading them to where he buried the bodies of victims. On 19 April 1995, authorities conceded the possibility that there was a new serial killer operating in Atteridgeville, copycatting the Cleveland murders.
In October 1995, a man named Moses Sithole was arrested after being publicly sought as the prime suspect in the case since August 1995. After his arrest, he was determined to be responsible for the sexual assault and murder of 37 women and one male toddler between July 1994 and November 1995 across the Gauteng Province. He had lured his victims by enticing them for job interviews at a shell company he owned. He would then take them to remote fields and then assault and kill them. More than ten of his victims remain unidentified. No descriptions of the unidentified victims are currently available, except that they were young to middle-aged black women, and they have since been buried in pauper's graves.
It should be noted that Sithole's list of victims includes victims initially thought to have been committed by Selepe. The relationship between the two, if any, remains unknown.
Sithole was convicted for 38 charges of murder, 40 charges of rape, and six robberies. He was sentenced to 2,410 consecutive years and is currently incarcerated at the Mangaung Correctional Centre.