A man’s body was found in the killing field on Monday, where the remains of five women have been unearthed – the latest one last week. Lenasia police spokesman Captain Mbulaheni Netshivhodza said the cases could not be linked, but condoms found at the scene could give a clue regarding the killers and killings.

The shock discovery of a Soweto woman’s skull – sticking out of a shallow grave near a railway line – has unearthed a killing field of women’s bones and bodies. And police are probing the possibility that a serial killer and rapist – or two or more – is on the loose. The body of the woman, who disappeared two years ago after testifying in court against a man who had conned her, was found last week when a woodcutter noticed a skull protruding from the soil in a secluded area next to the railway line in Lenasia.

And it wasn’t the first time a body had been found in the area, he said. In February, a decomposing body was found there by a passer-by. The body is still lying in the government mortuary because nobody has claimed it. Netshivhodza said the bodies of at least five women were found in the same area last year. He did not have the exact number of bodies found in the area, but there were many, he said. “They were found in different areas, but not far from each other.” Some were naked, others half-naked, and post-mortem results revealed they had been raped. Netshivhodza said police believed the serial killer or killers had abducted the women from various areas, then raped and killed them in the veld in Lenasia near the Waterworks informal settlement. He also said most of the victims had not been identified.

Now police are investigating how the man, aged between 25 and 30, had died. “He had injuries on the face and bruises on his body. It looks like the body has been there for two days. His face was swollen and covered in blood. The injuries do not show that an object was used,” he said. The deceased was dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt.

Despite the danger in the area, people were still walking through the veld. It was not clear whether they were aware that a skeleton had been found there. Netshivhodza added: “These people don’t want to listen to us. This place is dangerous. Next to the grave, there were used condoms. The condoms looked like they have been used recently. So you never know if there is someone lurking in the veld.”

He also urged people who know of any woman who has gone missing to contact the police.

-article by Solly Maphumulo rewritten and adapted by admin-

Serial Killer, Anthony Sowell, who allegedly killed 11 people whose bodies were found in his house and buried in the yard, finally got arrested walking down the street near his home, after eluding police for two days.

Suspected serial killer Anthony Sowell, an ex marine, appeared in a Cleveland courtroom Wednesday. His lawyer asked for bond, stating that Anthony Sowell was a Cleveland resident, had a medical condition, a pacemaker. Prosecutors argued that the man was an imminent threat to the community. Judge Ronald Adrine denied bond and called the allegations against Anthony Sowell some of the most serious he had ever seen. And although he was only being charged with six counts of aggravated murder, the judge also knew that five more bodies had been found at Anthony Sowell’s east Cleveland residence, bringing the total number of bodies recovered in the house and on the grounds to 11. Authorities are yet uncertain as to how many bodies may actually be buried or hidden on the suspected serial killer’s east Cleveland property.

It is believed that Anthony Sowell did all the killings after he got out of prison in 2005 for a rape conviction where he received a 15-year sentence. According to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, the Coroner’s Office reported that seven of the women died of strangulation, six by ligature. The last died of manual strangulation. All were black females and the bodies were in various stages of decomposition, some quite advanced, so it might not be possible to identify everyone.

The reasons for mass murder, brutal assaults and serial killings of women, are unknown and police are still trying to comprehend the magnitude of Sowell’s alleged crimes.

Darnissa Wiley, serial killer’s neighbor says, until recent weeks, there was no reason to suspect what was going on in the house: He had a block party in the summertime. He barbequed for the whole neighborhood. People were going in his house, in his backyard, and no one knew that kind of behavior was going on. Despite the fact that the a strong stench hung in the air, she never tied it to the house or suspected it was decomposing bodies. Some neighbors blamed it on a nearby sausage factory.

-article by saul relative rewritten and adapted by admin-

CLEVELAND, Ohio – Scores of law enforcement officers continued their search for convicted 50 years old sex offender Anthony Sowell, while investigators temporarily ended their work at Sowell’s home after finding the body remains of as many as six people inside and outside his house.

Anthony Sowell is wanted in connection for an alleged attack on a woman in his home in September. When police arrived at the home on Thursday with a search warrant, they found two bodies on the third floor. Because the bodies were in advanced stages of decomposition, the bodies have not yet been identified and their genders not yet determined. Friday afternoon a third body was uncovered in a shallow grave in the basement of the home. Cadaver dogs uncovered additional shallow graves in the home’s backyard. Investigators say they plan to continue searching the home for more evidence. At least two of the bodies were women. One body was found in the back yard, the rest in the house.

“Sowell is the most wanted man in Cleveland right now,” said police spokesman Lt. Thomas Stacho. He also said that the bodies “appear to be in different stages of decomposition.” He said an expert from the Cleveland Museum of Natural History was at the house helping coroner employees determine when and how the victims had died – at least one of the victims died from violence.

A review of police reports and court records show Sowell struck up conversations with women, usually by offering them alcohol. Once inside his home, three women said, Sowell choked them, stripped off their clothes and raped them. A fourth woman told police Sowell offered her a beer and choked her, but she was able to run away before he could sexually assault her.

Sowell remains at large and on the run. Crime Stoppers and U.S. marshals are offering a $12,000 reward for any information leading to Sowell’s arrest. He is considered to be extremely dangerous. He is 6 feet tall and 155 pounds. He wears eyeglasses and frequently sports a mustache. He does not drive a car, and is known to collect and cash in scrap metal. He spent 15 years in prison for a rape dating back to 1989.

Anyone with information can call 1-866-4-Wanted.

-articles by Julie and Mark Puente rewritten and adapted by admin-

Los Angeles detectives were going through cold case files, following the arrest of a 72-year-old man suspected of being the city’s worst serial killer, for raping and murdering dozens of women decades ago. Police believe that John Thomas Jr is responsible for as many as 30 murders dating back to the 1970s and 1980s.

John Floyd Thomas Jr., 72, may have begun his killings as far back as 1955 and he could be one of the worst serial killers in United States history, according to Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton.

Thomas was arrested on March 31 when police linked a DNA sample taken from him to the crime scenes of two women murdered four years apart in 1972 and 1976. Evidence linking him to three other murders has also been found. “Thomas, at this time — and we think this is probably going to expand — is also suspected in as many as 25 other murders that occurred in the Southland in the 1970s and 1980s,” Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton said, “We have not yet reached the depth of what he’s done“.

Thomas, who sits in a Los Angeles jail, has been charged with two killings — in 1972 and 1976 — but prosecutors will likely add more cases when he faces arraignment on May 20.

While Thomas was arrested “a number of times between 1955 and 1978″ for sex crimes and burglaries, detectives did not have the technology to identify him as a suspect when the region was terrorized by a series of killings then blamed on the “Westside Rapist,” Bratton said.

As part of an ongoing Los Angeles Police Department program to collect DNA evidence from convicted sex offenders, officers asked Thomas for a DNA swab – and that’s when they first matched his DNA to rape kit evidence collected from first two victims, and investigation went on.

“Because of Thomas’s criminal background, the close proximity of his homes to murder locations, similar victim descriptions [white elderly females] and other evidence that suggests the type of modus operandi used by the suspect, detectives strongly believe Thomas is very likely the suspect in ‘The Westside Rapist’ cases,” a police statement said.

By most available accounts, John Floyd Thomas Jr. spent the last two decades living a relatively quiet life:
“He always had a smile on his face. He was placid, congenial and affable, a pleasant fellow who, if the allegations are true, may in fact be a monster,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, an L.A. community activist who once worked with Thomas. “It almost takes your breath away.”

While he served about 12 years in prison between 1955 and the late 1970s for his previous convictions, he has no record since his last arrest in 1978, police said.

Deputy Chief Beck said the growing use of DNA databases and computers to match them to crime evidence will likely lead to more cold case killers being identified.

-article by Alan Duke and Andrew Blankstein rewritten and adapted by admin-

Robert Napper, the man who killed young mother Rachel Nickell, more than 16 years ago, may also be responsible for a string of attacks and murders throughout the 1990s. He faces questioning over the murder of at least three other women whose brutal deaths bear a striking resemblance to the killing of Rachel Nickell.

Robert Clive Napper was born in February 1966, the oldest of four children. He was brought up in a violent household and was abused by a family friend who was jailed for the offense. His father Brian, a driving instructor, emigrated when his son was 12, leaving Napper’s mother to bring the family up alone. As a child he was diagnosed as having a “highly toxic mixture” of paranoid schizophrenia and Aspergers’ syndrome and received psychiatric counseling for six years.

All three Robert Napper’s victims were repeatedly stabbed and left for dead within a year of Miss Nickell, who was knifed 49 times by Napper in front of her son Alex. The unsolved murders have tormented police for the past 18 years who, despite arresting several suspects, have never tracked down who was responsible. Officers will now visit Napper at Broadmoor – where he has been detained indefinitely. It is likely they will question him about the deaths of Claire Tiltman, 16, Penny Bell, 43, and 47-year-old Jean Bradley.

Napper has been held at Broadmoor mental hospital since 1995 after admitting killing 27-year-old Samantha Bisset and her four-year-old daughter Jazmine the year before. It is feared he could be linked to as many as 106 rapes and sexual offenses on 86 victims.

Professor Laurence Alison and Marie Eyre, co-authors of an upcoming book on Napper, claim that it is difficult to pinpoint the psychological mechanism that can explain such a hatred of young women. Napper is an example of the psychoanalytical ideas of what Freud called the sex and death instincts, dualities that are constantly in tension, generating conflict and the potential for aggression directed at ourselves (masochism), as well as at others (sadism), at the points in our lives where birth and death and sex and violence combine.

He was obsessed with knives and – coupled with impotence – these constituted the most consistent feature of his crimes. Knives were used frequently.The fact he targeted mothers who had recently had children combines sex and death symbolism and perhaps speaks volumes about his views of his own childhood and his own mother. It enraged him to see a mother as a sexual, desirous partner for an adult man…

To get inside the mind of this notorious serial killer and rapist, get ready to read the book Killer in the Shadows: the monstrous crimes of Robert Napper, by Professor Laurence Alison and Marie Eyre, that will be published on 12 January 2009.

-original articles from telegraph.co.uk rewritten and adapted by admin-