Cop who arrested serial killer jobless
Hawks officer fired after cash stolen from office
CAPTAIN Aaron Hanise, the sharp-eyed Hawks detective who caught the “monster of Tholeni” serial killer Bulelani Mabhayi, is jobless.
Former Captain Hanise confirmed this week he had been sacked in June last year for negligence after thieves broke into his fifth floor East London Hawks office and stole R75 000 in cash from a safe.
The money was recovered from a cash-in-transit heist that took place on the N2 off-ramp to Gonubie in November 2011.
Hanise said when the theft in his office occurred in 2012 he was stationed in Butterworth, where he was completing the Mabhayi investigation.
Mabhayi, South Africa’s most notorious and prolific serial killer to date, is serving 25 life sentences in the West Bank Maximum Prison for his slaughter in the so-called “village of death”.
Hanise successfully linked him to 36 charges – 20 of murder, six of rape and 10 of housebreaking.
Speaking this week of his dismissal, Hanise said: “I was called to come back to East London by my commander who informed me there had been a break-in in my office where evidence of a cash-in-transit heist was stolen.
“I gave my sworn statement to an investigator from head office.
“I was then charged with negligence. I appealed but my dismissal was confirmed by (former Hawks boss Lieutenant-General Berning Ntlemeza),” Hanise said.
“I am unemployed and it has been not easy for me,” Hanise said yesterday adding he had since relocated from East London back to his village outside Centane.
National Hawks spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi confirmed Hanise was no longer in the service.
“This is a matter between the employer and the employee. From our side the member left the service to pursue greener pastures.”
Asked what he got up to these days Hanise said: “These days I wake up and go to the shop. I pass time by looking after my father’s livestock.”
Hanise arrested Mabhayi the day after he killed his final victim on August 11 2012. Mabhayi had hacked Nomphumzile Lubambo, 57, to death, attacking her as she lay sleeping.
Hanise and his colleagues combed through Lubambo’s two-bedroom house.
On the verge of going outside, they discovered one clear “abnormally large” shoe print on a corner table.
Mabhayi had apparently climbed on the table to remove a light bulb, leaving a large boot print.
Hanise recognised that he had seen a military-style boot that could have left the print.
“That shoe size and make were not common in the village,” the detective said after Mabhayi was sentenced.
He had once seen Mabhayi wearing a similar pair of boots.
“I remember being puzzled and immediately thinking, ‘Why is he wearing big boots when he has small feet?’” said Hanise.
Accompanied by colleagues, Hanise led the way to Mabhayi’s ramshackle home, 500m down a narrow road from the murder scene. There, they found the boots and detained Mabhayi for questioning.
“The boots definitely matched the print. We then sent them for further tests,” Hanise said.
“When we began interrogating him, he confessed to the murder and started telling us about other murders.
“We had finally cracked the case,” he said. —