Police link seventh body to Ekurhuleni killings as post-mortems begin

A seventh woman has been linked to the killings under investigation across Ekurhuleni, acting provincial police commissioner Major General Fred Kekana confirmed on Tuesday, and a full post-mortem on a sixth victim is scheduled for Wednesday morning.

The seventh body was found in a river in Clayville, next to Tembisa Mall in Olifantsfontein, on 7 September. Kekana said the woman was in her late twenties and was found wearing only underwear. He said he would not speculate on how her clothing went missing, and that pathologists had found no visible wounds on the body. It will still be examined for links to the other cases.

On the sixth victim, found earlier on Tuesday dumped in KwaThema near Springs and already decomposed, Kekana said a preliminary report pointed to strangulation. “The lady seems to have been strangled first on the neck,” he said.

What police have confirmed

Seven bodies have now been drawn into the same investigation. Six of the seven women have not been identified. Kekana said only two have been positively identified so far, and that forensic teams are working with health department pathologists on the rest. National police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said investigators were not yet formally linking the KwaThema body to the earlier cases, but were not ruling it out either. “We need as much hands as possible on the ground,” she said, appealing for public help.

One suspect, arrested in July in connection with the first victim, remains in custody.

As The Citizen reported on Tuesday, the discovery sites sit close together in the same part of Ekurhuleni, and the bodies of the earlier victims were found partially undressed and with visible bruising.

Why this part of Ekurhuleni

Olifantsfontein, Clayville, Tembisa, Kempton Park and KwaThema sit along the eastern edge of the East Rand, a corridor of dense, fast-growing townships and industrial nodes where Gauteng’s population has expanded faster than its policing, its street lighting and its forensic capacity. It is a part of the province where women travel early and late for work, and where the distance between a crime scene and the nearest police station with a working forensic team is often measured in hours, not minutes.

That is the background against which the multidisciplinary team, drawn from SAPS detectives, forensic services and health department pathologists, has been assembled. The number that matters most in Kekana’s briefing is not seven. It is two. Until the remaining five women are named, their families cannot be told, their cases cannot be properly docketed, and the investigation cannot be closed off case by case. Identification is the bottleneck, and it is the reason the appeal for public help has been made.

What the state has done

Acting police minister Firoz Cachalia and acting national commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane were due to meet the multidisciplinary team in Parktown on Tuesday evening for updates and further direction, with a media briefing to follow. President Cyril Ramaphosa has said no stone will be left unturned in the East Rand killings. A suspect is in custody. A task team is on the ground. Post-mortems are scheduled.

The question that remains, and that the Parktown briefing should answer, is how quickly the identification process can be completed, and whether the forensic capacity assigned to this corridor is enough to match the pace at which the bodies have been found.

What happens next

The post-mortem on the KwaThema victim is set for Wednesday morning. Cachalia and Dimpane were expected to brief the media after Tuesday evening’s meeting in Parktown. Police have asked anyone with information to come forward.

Source: The Citizen, Seventh woman’s body found in Ekurhuleni as police confirm link to serial murder probe