How a South African “Facebook rapist” escaped from prison by faking his own death

According to unbiased digital publication Groundup, on June 11, 2022, a prison warden on the Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein, South Africa, despatched an e mail to the South African Deputy Minister of Correctional Services, Phathekile Holomisa, with the query. “Are you aware that the inmate who ‘allegedly’ burnt to death at Mangaung Correctional Centre was supposedly assisted to escape by the Mangaung Correctional Centre & Department of Correctional Services officials at the prison to escape?” he requested.

The prisoner in query was Thabo Bester, infamously generally known as the “Facebook Rapist”. He was serving a life sentence for homicide and a sequence of rapes, a sentence handed in 2012. Bester lured girls by promising them worldwide modelling gigs through the social media website, after which he robbed and raped them at knifepoint.

The “death”

On May 3, 2022 at round 3 a.m., an officer on the most safety correctional facility the place Bester was incarcerated reported smoke coming from Bester’s cell. A mattress had been set alight within the cell by which Bester had been remoted and a physique was discovered beneath it, burnt past recognition.

At the time, the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) introduced that the physique discovered within the cell was certainly that of Bester, a “fact” which was broadly repeated  by South African media. Even the BBC reported the supposed death of Bester.

“We are able to confirm that the inmate in question [Bester] passed away on May 3, 2022. As required by law, an inquest docket was opened and there is cooperation with authorities in that regard,” stated DCS spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo on the time.

Suicide or homicide?

Initially, Bester’s death was thought by police to probably be a suicide by self-imolation. However, a autopsy report confirmed that the physique discovered charred within the cell, which to that time was believed to be Bester’s, had succumbed to blunt power trauma accidents to the top and never the hearth itself. Stab wounds had been additionally recognized on the physique.

According to a supply who spoke with GroundUp, they allegedly spoke to Bester a few days earlier than he died by which they noticed him being “uncharacteristically happy” and even mentioning that he can be “going away soon”, an utterance the supply discovered odd as Bester was serving a life sentence.

After the hearth, SAPS Free State spokesperson Brigadier Motantsi Makhele, confirmed that DNA samples had been taken from the physique after the hearth, and likewise stated it was “still to be confirmed” whether or not the physique was certainly Bester’s.

After the autopsy report, which famous a “strong smell of accelerant (paraffin)” from the physique’s trachea and bronchi, the police docket regarding the matter was modified from suicide to homicide.

Much more was not including up

There remained a variety of gaps within the story about Bester’s supposed demise on that fateful morning of May 3, 2022. To begin with, the charred physique’s peak on the time of the post-mortem was 1.45m, however in a police mugshot, Bester stood taller, at simply over 1.7m. 

Additionally, a supply informed GroundUp that earlier than the hearth broke out, a prison official positioned Bester in a nook cell by himself. However, that cell was not often ever used because it was troublesome for CCTV cameras to see into it.

The CCTV cameras pointing to the exit of the prison had been apparently not on the right angle at 2:59:50 a. m., seconds earlier than the smoke was first reported. However, on the fringe of the body of footage captured on a CCTV digital camera that night time, two individuals could possibly be seen rapidly exiting the prison.

Perhaps, essentially the most intriguing piece of the alleged demise of Bester was the images from June 2022, virtually two months after his supposed death, which present a man who appears to be like just like the convicted rapist and assassin buying in Sandton City, Johannesburg.

All this proof was shared by GroundUp with the related authorities, however no follow-up investigation was performed on the time.

Running multi-million-rand scams from prison

Even throughout his incarceration, Bester continued  his scams proper from his most safety prison cell. Bester, calling himself “Tom Motsepe”, posed because the chairman of twenty first Century Media, a rip-off occasion and digital media firm, which was made to appear like a subsidiary of twenty first Century Fox. 

The firm had luxurious places of work in Sandton and employed greater than 30 workers who had been apparently given brand-new laptops at resumption.

Assuming the id of “Tom Motsepe”, Bester’s firm hosted a glitzy launch on the high-end Hilton Hotel in Johannesburg. So brazen was Bester that he made an look in the course of the occasion through video name, by which he made the attendees sing him a “happy birthday” jingle.  

The attendees, who had been outstanding South African leisure trade personalities, had been made to consider that he was in New York whereas in precise reality, he was sitting in a prison cell simply 400 kilometres away.

Tom Motsepe’s profile on his web site claimed that he owned 33.5% of Viacom, 12.9% of twentieth Century Fox and “went on to occupy” UBS Financial Services in Switzerland.

According to former staff, Motsepe, because the managing director of the corporate, ran day by day operations which included placing collectively a rip-off occasion purporting to have Halle Berry and Taraji P. Henson as particular visitors. M-Net channel 1Magic was the official media companion for the occasion.

The finish, or just the start of the saga?

On Saturday March 26, South Africa’s division of correctional providers issued a assertion confirming that the physique discovered charred past recognition on May 5 2022 was not that of Bester, which means that he had certainly escaped from prison that fateful early morning. The division additionally issued a manhunt for him and both suspended or dismissed officers who had been on obligation on the morning Bester escaped.

The revelation by the DCS that Bester had certainly escaped leaves extra questions that it solutions. Firstly, whose physique was discovered charred past recognition in Bester’s cell? According to the post-mortem, the physique had head and stab wounds. Who inflicted these? How did Bester escape from his cell, not to mention a complete most safety prison, which is the second largest non-public facility on the planet, with out discover? Who aided and abetted his escape?

Additionally, Bester escaped from prison in May 2022. Why did it take virtually a complete yr for the DCS to determine his escape and difficulty a manhunt? Were it not for the exposé by GroundUp, would Bester’s escape have been “figured out”? Where is Bester now? Last, however undoubtedly not least, how did Bester’s “Tom Motsepe” alias handle to run a complete 30-person group firm from a most safety prison, with out detection?

Between June and September 2022, solely months after his escape, an Instagram person alleges that Bester had gotten into contact together with her, inviting her for auditions for a pretend Netflix present, a related modus operandi he had used to lure and sexually assault girls earlier than his eventual arrest.

Bester’s story not solely exposes the incompetence and corruption of South Africa’s public establishments however  additionally exhibits the function that social media and digital platforms can play in aiding criminality but  additionally curbing and exposing it.

Bester used Facebook to lure girls to assault them, and he additionally used Twitter, in addition to entry to web providers to run a well-coordinated rip-off proper from his cell in a most safety prison. 

As consideration now turns in the direction of the manhunt for Bester, it stays to be seen the function that social media and the web basically will play to find him. Will it, like in the course of the quest for the reality behind the circumstances of his “death”, do a higher job than the authorities?