By the book: it begins with a handshake…

IF YOU say the name Bongani Mfeka, you will see a softness flicker in those slightly Slavic eyes beneath the hair that is cut so straight across Piet Byl’s forehead.

In the world of serial killers, the thin, unassuming Bongani Mfeka was unique. Piet knows of no other serial killer who showed remorse for his actions.

Mfeka begged Piet: “Don’t ever let me get out of prison, because I’ll kill again. I can’t stop myself… Lock me up, that’s where I belong.”

The seed of evil was sown early, during Mfeka’s troubled childhood in the hills of the former Natal, in a hut near the Kranskop.

Mfeka’s father couldn’t stand him. He was cold and distant towards his scrawny young son. But it was Mfeka’s mother who was the head of the household, domineering, and overprotective towards Mfeka. They developed an unnaturally close relationship.

During Mfeka’s teenage years, their relationship became increasingly warped. His mother sometimes helped smuggle girls into his room without his father’s knowledge. Piet later heard from the mother that Mfeka sometimes had two girls in his bedroom at the same time.

“That is where Mfeka’s troubles started – his absent father, his weird, domineering mother, a classic breeding ground for a serial killer,” Piet assures me.

In almost all the serial killings Piet has investigated, something had inevitably gone seriously wrong with the killer’s sexual identification as a child.

“But that’s not enough reason to go out and kill women,” he says, repeating the words you hear him say so often.

Here in his friend’s garden flat in Randburg, we are surrounded by files stacked high on two tables, together with a laptop, a few Amstels and Coke Lights, and some halfeaten sandwiches.

On the porch a boerboel sleeps in the shade. I hear the tuk-tuk of the Kreepy Krauly in the pool.

I gaze in horror at the photographs in the police files. Such an orderly administration of cruelty.

“Bongani Mfeka became my client in 1996,” Piet says. “Client”. That is how Piet impassively refers to his serial killers.

He plays mind games with them, becomes their confidant, their friend. All along he has only one thing in mind: to put them behind bars for as long as possible.

“Bongani had an excellent command of English. He was highly intelligent, but after completing Standard 8 he was forced to go and work on the mines in Randfontein.

“There was no money for further studies. He had the potential to go further but not the opportunity. It frustrated him. He never got married, and always returned to his parents’ home for holidays.”

Mfeka’s arrest was a bit of a coincidence, a stroke of luck, really.

While he had been raping a woman in Kranskop, his victim had fought back ferociously and bitten his hand. In fact, she had actually bitten a piece of his hand off. Then she had managed to escape and had run away.

A taxi had stopped for the naked, screaming woman who was running down the road and the driver had taken her to the police station.

When the woman mentioned in her statement that she had bitten off a piece of her attacker’s hand, the local detective had immediately phoned the Kranskop clinic and had asked them to alert him should a man walk in with any kind of hand injury.

And so it was that, on 8 September 1996, the 32-year-old

Don’t ever let me get out of prison, because I’ll kill again. I can’t stop myself… Lock me up, that’s where I belong.

Mfeka was arrested at the local clinic.

The provincial head office in Durban then informed Brixton Murder and Robbery that there was something strange about their new rape suspect. He flatly refused to say a single word.

This caught the interrogators’ attention. Had Mfeka talked, he would have been just another rapist making a confession. He would have slipped through the police’s net, been sentenced for a single misdemeanour, imprisoned and, in due course, set free. But Mfeka chose to keep quiet, thereby focusing undue attention on himself.

Piet shakes his head, still amazed at the role coincidence can play in bringing criminals to book.

Piet went to Kranskop. At the time he had been baffled by a spate of murders in the Nasrec area, south of Johannesburg. Perhaps there was a connection, perhaps this was his man, Piet hoped.

As always, he was keen to find a link between cases that had no apparent connection. He stored one more thing in the filing system between his ears: his colleagues at the charge office had also mentioned that there were a number of unsolved murders at Kranskop.

When Piet shook Mfeka’s hand – he made a point of greeting every suspect with a shake of the hand, quite deliberately – he took note of the man’s lack of aggression. The man seemed neat and polite.

Before they left Kranskop, Piet bought Mfeka a loaf of bread and a Coke, warning him not to make any mess in his car. Piet didn’t usually allow anyone to eat in his car, but Mfeka, Piet had noticed, was exceptionally fastidious.

He played upon this character trait to make conversation, to try to win the man’s trust.

When they stopped at Van Reenen’s Pass, Piet continued with this tactic. He invited Mfeka to sit with them, having made a decision not to treat him like a common criminal. In one of the dockets there’s a photograph of Mfeka sitting at the fireside, a shy smile on his face and a can of Coke in his hand.

In this friendly atmosphere, Piet got Mfeka to confess.

“It’s a strange thing. I’ve experienced it so many times – you talk to someone about a specific crime and out of the blue he’ll ask for something like a glass of water.

“Then you know: the man wants to confess about other crimes as well.

“Bongani confessed to one murder after another around the fire. I could see he was remorseful. He became quite emotional as he spoke.”

In one of the case dockets, Mfeka made the following statement to Piet: “You men have been involved in the investigation for only a short time and you already know everything about me.

“The other policemen have been investigating me for months on end and they still know sweet nothing. It is clear that you are interested in your jobs and know what you are doing.”

Later, back at Brixton, Piet phoned around to hear whether Mfeka’s confessions could be connected with any open murder dockets between 1994 and 1996. There were several. At Welverdiend, near Carletonville, Piet learned, a je docket had been registered – a judicial enquiry, not a murder. “When I looked at the photos, they showed a naked girl with head injuries, lying on her stomach in the veld… and they had registered a je! For crying out loud! I thought.”

Indeed, one of the murders Bongani confessed to had been at Welverdiend. Piet shakes his head. Later, Mfeka pointed out the crime scenes in the company of an independent officer and an interpreter.

“This is normal procedure, to prevent allegations of undue influencing. It’s of utmost importance, Piet stresses. Always keep your case watertight. Pay attention to detail. Do everything according to procedure.”