It was about to be a perfect escape. On May 3, 2022, a charred corpse appeared in a cell after a freak fire at Mangaung maximum security prison in central South Africa. When the identity of the deceased was made public, the news reached the main media of the African country: the deceased was Thabo Bester, known as the Facebook rapist because he used this social network to attract his victims, beautiful and very young women, whom he promised to put in contact with bookers or international model discoverers.
In 2012, a Cape Town judge was not swayed by the good manners or the expensive clothes of that well-built young man from the wealthy class. He sentenced Bester to life in prison for the murder of his girlfriend, the model Nomfundo Tyhulu, and as being responsible for at least three rapes.
Less than a year ago, it seemed that his life and his record had ended abruptly due to the flames of his cell in what was initially transcended as a suicide. But there was one problem: it was a lie. Bester was arrested on Friday in Tanzania, where he had eloped with his current girlfriend, a popular doctor with hundreds of thousands of social media followers, and a Mozambican friend, as the three tried to cross the Kenyan border with fake passports . The trio will soon be extradited to South Africa.
His arrest closes, for now, a case full of unexpected twists. South African police had been desperately hunting Bester for a month after new post-mortem and DNA tests revealed in March that the charred body found in the Facebook rapist's cell belonged to another person who had died in due to a skull fracture from a strong blow to the head. Those responsible for the new analyzes also stressed that the burnt corpse gave off a strong stench of paraffin and that the face and hands had been deliberately burned.
The case has caused consternation in South Africa, according to evidence that Bester, 35, received help to escape from one of the most secure prisons in the country. Three South African workers from the British security company G4S, in charge of monitoring the prison where the events took place, have been accused of helping the prisoner to escape. The Executive of Pretoria has already announced that it will not renew the contract with the company, which expires in 2026.
In the months following his faked death and escape, the Facebook rapist led a quiet and luxurious life in Johannesburg, living in a mansion in Sandton, one of the city's most exclusive neighbourhoods. Bester and his partner even operated a shell company selling properties, from where they swindled several people out of millions of dollars.
His perfect escape would have been a reality had it not been for the independent South African media GroundUp, which spent a year investigating the leads to connect the case and even published photographs of the fugitive shopping in a supermarket, which led the police to seriously investigate the case.
For months, GroundUp reporters collected evidence that the prison's security cameras were moved on the night of the fire, that a group of people left the compound just minutes before the flames started and interviewed other inmates who claimed to have seen strange things that night.
Bester had inexplicable privileges while in prison, such as access to a cell phone or a computer with an internet connection, from which he could hold a conference.
The corruption that permeates Bester's ultimately thwarted escape has caused a social storm in one of the most sexually assaulted countries in the world.
In February, the South African police published the record of the last 12 months and the numbers were staggering: 138 rapes were reported every day in South Africa last year.
