How to catch a serial killer –
The country may have the third highest number of repeat murderers, but the police’s elite profiler unit has never lost a single case. A forensic psychologist talks about tracking them
‘Ioften don’t like to tell people what I do,” forensic psychologist Gérard Labuschagne says, leaning back comfortably in his seat at the Mail & Guardian’s offices in Johannesburg. He’s here to talk about the successes of South Africa’s forensic profilers — a 100% conviction rate.
“If I’m out, I dread the question: ‘What do you do?’ I try to avoid it. When I was in the police service, I would just say I’m a policeman and people would just stop talking to me.”
Labuschagne is dressed in a slick blazer and is toting a khaki green backpack. His steely demeanour, an effect of his bald head and blue eyes, softens when he speaks.
He headed up the police service’s investigative psychology section (IPS), South Africa’s equivalent of the FBI’S behavioural analysis unit, for 14 years, before he resigned in 2016.
That is part of his problem; behavioural analysis is a field plagued by Hollywood tropes. When people find out that he is a profiler, like Jack Crawford from The Silence of the Lambs, Labuschagne must field the inevitable questions about his penchant for true crime films and books.
Talking about the gulf between the way things are done in the movies and how it works in real life, Labuschagne’s words snap with derision.
His conversation goes from the difficulties of what was a sometimes thankless job to the small triumphs of being part of a team tasked with helping to solve some of the country’s most serious crimes.
Local profilers
Forensic psychologists work with the police to profile and track down offenders. The profile allows police to start guessing a killer’s next move, so they can catch them. The profile of American serial killer Ted Bundy, compiled by the FBI’S Robert Ressler, led to his capture in 1978. Ressler, who is credited with coining the term “serial killer”, believed Bundy looked for young women with long hair parted down the middle. He said Bundy hung out at bars, ski resorts, beaches and other locations where young people gathered. Five days after this profile went public, authorities in Florida arrested Bundy.
Acclaimed South African forensic psychologist and author Micki Pistorius met Ressler in 1995, a year after she founded the IPS.
Pistorius profiled some of South Africa’s most prolific serial killers, including Moses Sithole, who committed at least 38 murders and 40 rapes. Pistorius’s profile predicted that Sithole would contact the media. In 1995, Sithole contacted The Star under a fake name and confessed his crimes.
During her six years at the helm of the IPS, Pistorius trained more than 100 detectives in investigating serial murders.
Although the IPS may have had an illustrious beginning, it has also not been immune to the problems of underfunding and skill shortages other law enforcement units have encountered over the years.
The unit, made up of psychologists and detectives, has had trouble retaining experienced investigators, who, according to a 2018 Sunday Times report, have left amid complaints about low pay and heavy caseloads.
The newspaper’s article also carried a startling but contested ranking that puts South Africa third on the list of countries with the most serial killers and rapists, behind the United States and Russia. The Radford University and Florida Gulf Coast University serial killer database, which has information on 4068 serial killers and 11680 victims since the early 1900s, also puts South Africa third on the list of countries with the most serial killers, but behind the United States and England.according to the list, South Africa has had 117 serial killers between 1900 and 2016.
But these lists have their problems — often killings haven’t been linked together, and some countries don’t have the investigative skills to work out that there is a serial killer in action.
Labuschagne says that during his time in the police service, he worked on 110 serial murder cases, including that of quarry murderer Richard Nyauza. When his sentence of 16 life terms for a series of gruesome murders in 2002 and 2006 was handed down, Nyauza smiled and said he “felt nothing”.
“It changes nothing,” Nyauza said before being led down to the cells.
Before his descent, he took the time to shake Labuschagne’s hand. Labuschagne was responsible for linkage analysis resulting in Nyauza’s conviction on all 24 charges against him. With his 110 cases, Labuschagne has probably encountered far more serial killers than his colleagues abroad, he says.
Being able to count the number of serial killers South Africa has had is a testament to the success of the IPS and the country’s DNA database, according to Labuschagne. “We have the ability to have a fairly accurate record … We have a lot [of serial murders], we know that. And we can show you that we have a lot.”
Thanks in part to the database, the IPS has a strong reputation for catching serial killers. Labuschagne confidently says: “No one has ever walked out of a court and was found not guilty.
“I think over the years that what we did, and how we did it, worked. We had a very good success rate in solving serials. We have never really had one who continued to kill that we didn’t catch.”
A career in profiling
Labuschagne says the unit’s reputa