Murderer and rapist who escaped prison by faking his own death behind bars

A notorious South African killer who escaped a maximum security prison by faking his own death has been arrested after living in a mansion with his famous doctor girlfriend for nearly a year.

Thabo Bester, nicknamed “the Facebook rapist”, was killed last Friday along with Dr. Nandipha Magudumana arrested in Tanzania in Tanzania.

South African Police Minister Bheki Cele told reporters that the couple and another person caught with them had several passports in their possession and were about to cross the border into Kenya.

Bestor was returned to Johannesburg under heavily armed guard on Thursday, closely followed by Magudumana in a separate white van.

She is expected to be charged with murder as part of the elaborate escape plan, which saw a corpse sneak into the prison where Bester was being held to help him fake his own death in a fire and escape.

A prison guard and Magudumana’s father have already been charged with murder in connection with the body burned in Bester’s cell.

Police say the unidentified man died of blunt force trauma to the head before the fire broke out.

Bester was convicted of one count of murder and two counts of rape in the death of his then-girlfriend, model Nomfundo Tyhulu. He was sentenced in 2012 to life imprisonment plus 75 years.

He was known as “the Facebook rapist” because he tended to use social media to lure victims to his house before attacking them.

Magudumana, on the other hand, is a well-known doctor and businesswoman whose Instagram page has more than 146,000 followers.

In 2018, the glamorous medic was named one of the 200 most influential young South Africans by the Mail & Guardian.

Bester staged his escape from the Mangaung Prison Center in the Free State province nearly a year ago, when a suicide was officially declared following the fire in his cell.

Details have only been released and pieced together in the last three weeks, with critics claiming officials deliberately covered up the story.

MPs held a special parliamentary hearing on Wednesday about security shortcomings that played a role in the escape.

They interviewed senior prison officials and British private security company G4S, which has a long-term contract.

Three prison employees, the night watchman and two guards who worked in the surveillance camera control room, were fired on suspicion of helping Bester escape in the confusion of the early morning fire in his cell on May 3, 2022.

Although one was charged with murder, MP Glynnis Breytenbach said she suspects more guards and officers were bribed to take the body to the holding cell and help Bester escape.

“How many palms are greased?” she asked at the hearing. “Are you telling us honestly that this escape of Hollywood proportions was accomplished with the help of just three people?”

Prison and G4S officials admitted when questioned that a television box large enough to possibly conceal a body was taken to the prison in an unauthorized vehicle hours before Bester broke out around 4am the next morning.

Neither the closet nor the vehicle were searched.

They also said top prison officials had given Bester permission to be transferred to a one-person cell three days before he escaped. The cell was next to an emergency exit, which he probably used to escape.

MP Xola Nqola said it was “no coincidence” that Bester was transferred to this cell.

An internal investigation by G4S found that the prison’s security camera recording system had a “power failure” around the time of the escape.

More arrests are expected.

After his escape, Bester and Magudumana, identified by police as his “accomplices”, lived for months in a mansion in an affluent Johannesburg suburb. to media reports.

Authorities only publicly announced last month that Bester did not die in his cell and escaped, after South African news organization GroundUp reported that the charred body found in the cell was not Bester’s, according to autopsy results.

The news and increased public interest in the case seemed to have prompted Bester and Magudumana to flee the country.

It was also heavily criticized against authorities for failing to warn people that a dangerous criminal was on the loose.

The parliamentary hearing focused on the initial failure of the prisons and continued on Thursday.

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