Johannesburg Jane Doe was a woman who was found in the city of Johannesburg on 14 October 1995. She is the 37th victim to be connected to Moses Sithole, AKA The ABC Killer, as well as his tenth unidentified victim.
Case[]
The victim was found at the Village Main Reef Mine near Johannesburg. Her neck was bind to a tree with shoelaces. Based on the modus operandi, authorities connected her death to a series of murders that were occurring around the Gauteng Province. The day prior to her discovery, authorities had published pictures of Moses Sithole, their prime suspect in the series, in newspapers.
In October 1995, 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 another man named David Selepe. Selepe was suspected of being behind the initial murder spree based on his oral confession and his 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 body of a victim. The relationship between the two, if any, remains unknown.
Sithole was convicted of 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.