Bloody shoe print ends reign of terror
For five years this Eastern Cape odd-job man picked off his victims — all women and children
HE was the monster who lived in Tholeni, the village of the dead.
Bulelani Mabhayi lived among those on whom he preyed — the weak and vulnerable women and children of the village near Butterworth in the Eastern Cape.
Mabhayi was sentenced in the High Court in Mthatha this week to 25 life sentences after pleading guilty to 36 charges — 20 of murder, six of rape and 10 of housebreaking.
His bloody reign with an axe or panga started in 2007 in Tholeni — a cluster of mud huts and face-brick homes nestled between parched cornfields.
It ended the day after he killed his final victim on August 11 last year — Nomphumzile Lubambo, 57, who he hacked to death while she slept. No one had heard her screams because, as neighbours described that night to the Daily Dispatch, the wind was howling too loudly.
When her nephew Gcinumzi Lubambo discovered her body the next morning, she was wrapped in blood-soaked blankets on the floor. Her attacker had stepped in her blood, leaving behind shoe prints that offered police their first real clue.
They had previously offered generous rewards, conducted mass DNA testing on the village’s men, and resorted to the extreme measure of securing women and children in a community centre at night — all to no avail.
But no sooner had lead investigator Captain Aaron Hanise spotted the bloody shoe prints than he realised that they were smudged and would be of little help in the search for the Eastern Cape’s worst serial killer.
Hanise and his colleagues combed through the 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. Hanise knew he had seen a militarystyle boot that could have left the print.
“That shoe size and make were not common in the village,” the detective said. 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, just 500m down a narrow road from the latest 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 this week.
“When we began interrogating him, he confessed to the murder and started telling us about other murders. We had finally cracked the case.”
Provincial police spokeswom- an Brigadier Marinda Mills said it was “remarkable” that after all the efforts made in the investigation, Mabhayi’s shoe print had led to his arrest.
The road to his arrest and
That shoe size and make were not common in the village . . . we had cracked the case
sentencing was littered with the bodies of 20 victims — nine children and 11 women.
One of the youngest was an 18month-old baby, Khazimla. The baby was hacked to death along with his six-year-old brother Ongama and their mother, Sinazo Mbeki, 26.
By 2009, it had become apparent to residents of Tholeni that a serial killer was at work. Villagers who spoke to the media during the past few years appeared to suspect the killer was one of their own.
As the Amahlubi Tribal Authority’s Nkosi Mvuyiswa Luzipho told the Dispatch in April 2010: “We cannot blame a stranger from another town. This serial killer is in this village; he is between the people who are staying here.”
But, like many of the villagers, Luzipho could not comprehend that “one of his people” could have been responsible for a brutal attack like the one in May last year in which 15-month-old baby girl Liyema Mxhunyelwa was hacked to death.
The killer also raped and strangled her 13-year-old sister Lukhanyo — who was in Grade 7 — and attacked their grandmother, Nomandla, 53, who later died from her panga wounds.
When villagers came upon the bodies, they found Lukhanyo’s books strewn about. In one, she had written: “Mother Teresa was God’s gift to the world as far as the poor and defenceless were concerned.”
An untrained builder, Mabhayi, 39, met his victims while he painted their homes or did odd jobs for them.
In most of his attacks Mabhayi killed everyone he found in the house. But one girl survived — a three-year-old who was asleep at the foot of Nomandla’s bed. She is not being named for her own safety.
On Friday, Nomandla’s brother, Fundisile Mxhunyelwa, 59, said he would never forget waking up and wondering why his sister had not prepared the young girl for creche.
“That morning I remember waking up to the sound of the school bus hooting. I got up to find out why she was not ready,” he said.
As Mxhunyelwa walked to the main hut, he was paralysed with shock as he saw puddles of blood on the threshold.
He found the three-year-old lying outside, covered by a blanket. “She was cold and shaking,” he said.
Mxhunyelwa wrapped the child in his coat, returned to his neighbouring hut, and sum-
She is doing fine . . . she does not remember anything about the attack
moned the villagers.
After his sister’s funeral, Mxhunyelwa, who feared for the girl’s safety, moved her to a relative’s home in Xhora, a village about 30km from Mthatha.
This week the child — who celebrated her fourth birthday recently — was outside laughing and playing with the young puppy that has become her closest companion, seemingly unaffected by the bloodshed that happened around her.
“She is doing fine . . . she does not remember anything about the attack and we prefer it that way,” said a woman relative.
The woman said she was relieved at Mabhayi’s conviction and welcomed the “harsh sentence” but added, “It will never bring back our family.”
Of Mabhayi’s home — a shack of corrugated iron and wood next to a sports field — there remains little. After his arrest last August, villagers set upon the building and tore it down.
Last week, they returned to torch whatever remained — perhaps an act of terrible desperation to remove all physical evidence that a monster once lived among them. Comment on this: write to tellus@sundaytimes.co.za or SMS us at 33971 www.timeslive.co.za