News24 | ‘It runs deep’: Profiler Pistorius on why Ekurhuleni murders point to a serial killer

In this Q&A, Dr Micki Pistorius, who founded the SAPS’ investigative psychology unit, is a renowned profiler and author, explains why these cases point to a serial killer, how a killer’s signature distinguishes one from another, and why SA’s vast open land makes bodies harder to find.

What is the difference between profiling a person and a forensic psychological assessment of a person?

The forensic psychological assessment of a person is usually for court purposes.

There you would actually meet the person, there would be some psychological tests and a whole assessment of this person, and eventually, there is a report that has your conclusions.

One of the big differences between a psychological assessment and profiling is that in profiling, you do not have to meet the person.

You draw the profile based on the behaviour on record. This is why it can work on a crime scene. There are many sources that you can use, including social media. There are no tests involved.

You can profile an unknown person, like a perpetrator, or a person for a company. Like, how do we approach this CEO? You can also profile a historical person.

In a case of a crime, such as a serial killer, we draw up a profile. That’s an investigative tool, and it helps the detectives. It gives them a benchmark to measure their suspects against.

How can a profile lead to the capture of a serial killer, as opposed to forensic evidence?

Forensic evidence is still number one, and that would lock in a conviction, like DNA.

However, when you find DNA at a crime scene, you still have to find the person it belongs to, so that can take time.

In the case of the Station Strangler, we published the profile in the newspaper, and there was a nurse who said this profile matches a person who books himself into the clinic quite regularly, and she was right. That was Norman Simons, who was arrested as the Station Strangler.

In that case, the profile actually led to the arrest of the serial killer. Forensic evidence is, of course, best.

What would a profiler be expected to do in a case like these Kempton Park killings?

The profiler could link the crime scenes to each other.

A well-trained, experienced profiler will try to find the killer’s specific signature on the crime scene. Killers leave signatures; they leave psychological clues on the crime scene.

The serial killers act out a fantasy on their crime scenes, and every person has their own particular idiosyncratic fantasies that they do not necessarily share with other people.

An example is Moses Sithole and Lazarus Mazingane, the Nasrec serial killer, who were operating at the same time, and maybe some of these crime scenes overlapped because Sithole was not just in Atteridgeville; he also worked in Johannesburg, and then there was the Cleveland serial killer as well. So, there were three of them at the same time.

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Sithole’s signature was sadism. He prolonged the death of the victims, and he tortured them psychologically and physically. And he liked to watch.

Mazingane, on the other hand, was consumed by rage, so his crime scenes were violent.

They had the same victim profile. You would find the bodies of the women sometimes next to the highways or just off the highway, and they would correspond. Unless you’re trained and experienced enough to see that the signature – like one is a sadistic one, and the other is violence, that’s how you can link them and keep the two apart.

Otherwise, you’re going to take one serial killer’s bodies and attribute them to the other one, and then that serial killer is going to go free. That’s a very important thing, and I think you need an experienced profiler on any crime scene with multiple bodies.

Police and the media have drawn a link between gender-based violence and femicide on the one side, and this series of murders of women on the other. Is there a link?

I think we should approach it from a different angle.

In gender-based violence, the perpetrator usually knows the victim. It’s a husband and wife, or it’s a boyfriend and girlfriend. There is usually a relationship between people who commit femicide in gender-based violence cases.

In a serial killer case, the serial killer doesn’t know his victims beforehand.

So, yes, it’s a man killing women, but he’s not going to be charged with gender-based violence. He’s going to be charged with multiple murders. That’s an important difference.

Women are being killed in both cases, but I think it’s more than just gender-based violence.

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Femicide, sadly, is a scourge. It happens daily, and not just in South Africa, in many other countries. While serial killers are rare, comparatively.

So yes, there’s a link. But I don’t think we should just attribute it to gender-based violence. It runs deep, very, very deep.

Is there a patriarchal element?

Yes, I think there could be some kind of patriarchal element in it: that a person who kills multiple women and demands sex feels he’s entitled to it, and that women cannot say no to him.

I think that element is there, and I think that’s what they share in the gender-based violence of men against women. But remember, gender-based violence is also women against men, and women can kill men. Serial killers also kill children, so I think it’s a bit wide to take it from that angle. Although there are elements of it present.

From the information that has been made public about these Kempton Park cases, what can responsibly be said about the killer or killers?

At this stage, it is very possible that one or two of these women were killed by somebody they know.

We know the first woman was allegedly killed by a boyfriend.

It’s possible that one or two of the others also have been killed by somebody that they know.

In the Phoenix serial killer case in Natal, we did find somebody who killed his wife or girlfriend and left the body in the killing fields in the sugarcane, where we found some of the other bodies, hoping that we would think this was done by the serial killer.

However, any experienced detective and profiler can immediately tell you that this one doesn’t fit. They would identify if it’s a copycat or if it’s somebody, some intruder, hoping that we would just add the body.

The second thing is “killers”. It’s unlikely that eight (now nine) women in the same area within 40km of each other had eight (now nine) different killers. That’s highly unlikely. It’s never happened before.

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It’s also not gang ritual-related. So, in my experience, it points to a serial killer. There’s a victim profile that corresponds. There’s geolocation that corresponds, and there’s a modus operandi.

Police have also confirmed that the women were sexually abused. So to me, yes, it points to a serial killer.

You founded the investigative psychology unit within the SAPS. The unit that has been called in on the Kempton Park cases. What does a properly equipped serial murder investigation unit look like, and what role does profiling play within it?

I founded the investigative psychology unit in 1994. At that stage, we were just beginning to get cellphones. You can imagine what our technology was like. Now they have wonderful technology.

In such an investigation, the first and most important part is your detective.

The detective has a team, and usually, they are trained in investigating serial killers.

Then there are certain units that come to the assistance. The first could be the investigative psychology unit. Remember that the profile is a tool for the detectives to use.

Then there would be your forensic pathologists. They give you very important information like how long the blood has been there, whether it has been exposed to torture, and the method of killing. That’s very important.

Then, crime scene analysts go out to the crime scene, collect evidence, and take photographs. If you have bad photographs of a crime scene, it can really be detrimental, because sometimes your forensic psychologists cannot get to the crime scene in time, so we have to rely on photographs, and that can be a problem if the photographs are not taken by someone who knows what they are doing.

Then you can have the canine unit.

Then whatever is collected on the crime scene goes to the forensic laboratory. That could be anything: soil samples, hair, DNA, bullets, etc.

Now we’ve got geolocation programming that is quite wonderful, where they plot where the bodies were found or murdered, and that could give an estimate of where the killer stays. They may also use drones now. We didn’t have drones then.

In some investigations, we had the task force involved, and they did observations. There was one serial killer in Capital Park in Pretoria, where I suggested, because there were multiple bodies that somebody observed. The task force arrested him that night when he returned.

And you have media relations.

It’s a multidisciplinary task force that investigates a serial killer, and there’s a lot of coordination involved in it.

This is what I think they’ve got at the moment in this case.

Do serial killers in South Africa show distinct characteristics or patterns compared to those in other countries? Does geography shape the profile?

Firstly, serial killers are not a group.

The term serial killer refers to a specific category of criminal.

You can’t say to the police, why are you not winning the fight against serial killers?

You can say it about the fight against gangs, because gangs are a distinct group; they have insignia, and you can identify them.

Serial killers do not talk to each other; they don’t confer. They’re not a group, that’s important.

A serial killer is a serial killer in any country.

It is a person who is acting out, usually a sexual fantasy.

The main thing here is the motivation, and that is the fantasy that is acted out. That is quite important, and that happens all over the world.

There could be slight cultural effects, or, if you say geography, for instance, or the weather.

The [Cape Town strangler] picked up his victims on a rainy day. If he knew it was going to rain that night, then in the afternoon, he would drive far out to the farms and scout an area where he was going to leave his victim.

At about 17:00, he would entice the [sex worker] into his car, and this would happen in the parking lot of a shopping centre. At that time, people are in a hurry. It’s raining. They want to get their groceries, and they want to go home. Nobody notices a girl getting into a car with the windows steamed up, and he would actually kill her in the car. He would strangle her.

Then he would drive out and place the dead body in the dirt road area he had pre-selected. He knew that the rain would wash away his car tracks, and that’s how the weather played a certain role.

When I was training profilers in France, somebody stood up and asked a question: “Why are the crime scene photographs of South Africa – the bodies are so very decomposed?”

I explained that South Africa is a country with vast open land, and somebody could leave a body in the veld, as in this case in Kempton Park.

Now, people wouldn’t notice that body if the grass is tall, unless it begins to smell. Unless somebody diverts from a footpath, you won’t know there is a body.

How can there be nine bodies lying around that people didn’t notice?

Oh, easily. There can easily be bodies lying around because it’s veld and because the grass is tall, and you’ll only notice them when they start smelling. Or when someone with a dog walks past.

In the Netherlands, they don’t have vast open spaces. That’s why when somebody’s killed, they find the bodies much sooner.

So, there are elements that bring in differences in different countries about serial killers.

These Kempton Park cases appear to be particularly violent and sexual in nature. Is that common?

Yes, it is quite common in male serial killers that we find the bodies being sexually assaulted.

The Cape Town [strangler], who we thought was impotent, but he used other objects to insert. That’s a different fantasy that we find.

In the case of the saloon killer, Velaphi Ndlangamandla, he didn’t approach the bodies; he shot them from a distance. But every time he pulled that trigger, he experienced sexual gratification. The sexual gratification was related to the firearm, which was a rifle, a .22 rifle that he used.