Kempton Park: what the police have confirmed, and what they have not
The SAPS has confirmed that 4 of the 5 women found dead in and around Kempton Park since 15 July were sexually assaulted, but it has not concluded that the cases are linked and will not call it the work of a serial killer. A man arrested 2 days after the first body was found has been in custody since 17 July, and one report says he is that woman’s boyfriend. A sixth body was found in KwaThema on 15 September, 45 kilometres away, and was counted alongside the others within minutes. Nothing about that woman has been established.
The confirmed link
Deputy National Commissioner for Policing Lieutenant General Tebello Mosikili briefed the media in Kempton Park on the night of Monday 14 September. Asked what the motive was, she said the motive is not known. She then said the team can confirm that 4 of the 5 women were sexually assaulted. The fifth was found in a state of decomposition, which prevented investigators from making that determination. On mutilation, she said not as yet.
That is the strongest link the SAPS has placed on the record. No cause of death has been officially confirmed for any of the 5 women.
Mosikili was careful about the word everybody is using. She said the police are not discounting the possibility of a serial killer, but that the investigation is still under way and they have not reached that conclusion.
The 5 cases
The first body, a 37 year old woman, was found near the R21 on 15 July. She was naked and had been restrained with cable ties. Two days later, on 17 July, police arrested a man. He remains in custody and Mosikili said he will appear in court shortly.
A second woman, aged 32, was found near the R21 on 24 August, partially clothed and with bruising.
On 10 September a woman was found closer to Rhodesfield in an advanced state of decomposition. She has not been identified.
On Saturday 12 September a 38 year old woman was found behind the Protea Hotel OR Tambo in Rhodesfield, on the corner of York Street and Gladiator Street, in running clothes. Her face was so badly beaten that her family could not identify her that day. She was identified at the Germiston mortuary on Monday 14 September as Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, centre manager at Festival Mall.
Moselakgomo had left home for her regular run on 9 September. Her 8 year old daughter raised the alarm at 18:30, half an hour after her mother was due back.
The fifth woman was found on the morning of Monday 14 September by a passerby on the side of Porcelain Avenue in Olifantsfontein. National police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said she was partially clothed with bruising, that there was no blood at the scene, and that she could have been killed elsewhere and left there.
The man in custody
TimesLIVE reported that Gauteng acting provincial commissioner Major General Fred Kekana said the man arrested in July is the first victim’s boyfriend. The Daily Maverick describes him as her partner, reporting rather than confirming it, and says that case appears to be handled separately from the 4 that followed.
The SAPS has not used the word in any of its written statements, and it should be treated as reporting rather than as a finding. If it holds, the first case is a domestic murder. It is also the case carrying the most distinctive detail in the set, the cable ties.
Kekana has said investigators are not limiting themselves to one suspect or one theory, and that it is premature to say the cases are linked or that one person is responsible.
How the number was assembled
Mosikili said the first 4 bodies were found roughly 2 kilometres apart. Olifantsfontein sits about 25 kilometres north of Rhodesfield, and Mathe said police were still working out whether that death is connected at all.
Asked how the fifth fits, Mosikili said it is included because it is an incident in Kempton Park at this particular time, so it goes into the dockets to be examined as a whole. She also said the police are standing at 5 cases for now while they analyse other cases reported in the area, and that neighbouring stations have been asked to send their missing person files to the investigation team.
The number 5 is therefore a working total, not a finding.
On the afternoon of Monday 15 September a woman’s body was found on the side of the road in KwaThema, Springs. Nothing has been established about her. eNCA reported it and noted in the same sentence that KwaThema is 45 kilometres from Kempton Park. Six minutes later the SABC reported that the discovery brings to 6 the number of women’s bodies found in Ekurhuleni in 2 months.
What the criminologist said, and when
On Sunday 13 September, criminologist Professor Nirmala Gopal told Newzroom Afrika that from a profiling perspective the similarities, the location, the victims all being women, the marks on their bodies and their being half naked show the hallmarks of a single perpetrator. She said she would move toward a serial killer rather than a syndicate, and that the final call rests with investigators.
She was speaking on the Sunday. At that point the count stood at 4, the Olifantsfontein body had not been found, and the police had confirmed nothing about sexual assault. Almost every reference to a criminologist backing the serial killer theory this week traces to that single interview.
The Citizen reported that the Kempton Park station commander told a closed meeting on Monday that police do not believe there is sufficient evidence to conclude a serial killer is responsible, and that the cases do not all share the same method.
Asked whether the killer has a type, Mosikili said the victims fall within an age range of late 20s to late 30s, and that this is the only similarity she can safely talk about. She then said some of the bodies have not been identified, and that a person’s age cannot be determined from the remains. The Gauteng Department of Health said on 15 September that 2 of the 5 women have been identified and 3 have not. A second woman was identified using DNA and has not been named publicly.
What the murder figures show
In the April to June 2026 quarter the SAPS recorded 5 427 murders nationally. Of those, the verified number of women murdered was 569. Gauteng accounted for 1 276 of the national total, roughly a quarter.
Applying that share gives somewhere near 90 women murdered in Gauteng across a 2 month period. Gauteng has well over 100 police stations, so the expected number at any single station over that period is less than 1. Kempton Park has 5. That calculation is my own. The SAPS publishes no station level breakdown for women murdered, and I would welcome a correction from anyone who has better figures.
The figures cut both ways. They suggest the Kempton Park cluster sits above the background rate. They do not establish one perpetrator. Women make up roughly 1 in 10 of South Africa’s murder victims, and most are killed at home by someone known to them. Women left at roadsides, half naked and sexually assaulted, is a different category of crime with a much smaller number behind it.
If it is 5 men
If these are 5 separate murders, then 5 different men in one part of Ekurhuleni each decided, inside 8 weeks, to rape and kill a woman and leave her at the side of a road.
A single killer can be arrested and it stops. Five cannot, and catching the first changes nothing for the next woman.
The police have already described a second method. At the Sunday briefing Kekana said approximately 10 cases have been reported at Kempton Park Police Station where individuals met people online and were subsequently lured to locations where they were allegedly robbed and sexually assaulted. He ruled Moselakgomo out of that pattern, saying running was part of her lifestyle. Mathe said at the same briefing that the unidentified women may be victims of it.
What settles it
Asked how police would trace a suspect, Mosikili said that with rape there is another person’s DNA on the victim, and that once it is collected and analysed it will show whether investigators are looking at one person or at several. She said the team is also reviewing previous cases and the whereabouts of people previously arrested.
Action Society has asked the SAPS 3 questions: whether usable DNA was collected at each scene, whether the profiles have been processed, and whether any match an earlier unsolved crime. National spokesperson Juanita du Preez said that if the women were killed by the same man, he has very likely offended before and left DNA in earlier offences.
In an assessment published on 4 June 2026, based on the DNA Board’s own reporting, Action Society found that 3,5% of buccal samples taken from arrested people were processed within the 30 days the law requires. In December 2023 the organisation reported that DNA work on 10 493 prioritised cases had identified 486 serial rapists, and warned that repeat sexual offenders escalate.
The response, and the clock
Acting National Commissioner Lieutenant General Puleng Dimpane ordered a dedicated multidisciplinary team, led by Gauteng Deputy Provincial Commissioner Major General Mbuso Khumalo and including the Murder and Robbery Unit and the Investigative Psychology Unit. In a written statement Dimpane said the SAPS will leave no stone unturned in ensuring that those responsible are identified, traced and brought to justice, and that the team will identify possible linkages where they exist.
Mosikili said the 72 hour activation plan the police use for cases of this nature is currently running, and that they will be coming for those responsible before the end of the week. Mathe closed Monday’s briefing by saying the SAPS will now minimise briefings, because the real work starts and detectives need space without interference or speculation.
Whether these deaths are the work of one man or several will not be settled by a community meeting, by a profiler on television, or by a running total in a headline. It will be settled by a laboratory result, in a system that meets its own legal deadline 3,5% of the time.
