Police widened their investigation into the deaths of women in and around Kempton Park, east of Johannesburg, to an eighth case on September 15, 2026, after the body of a 35-year-old woman was found behind a club in KwaThema, Springs. The deaths have come over roughly two months.
She lay near the KwaThema Centre, behind a row of shops, and police had no name for her when they announced the discovery. Decomposition left the time of death unclear, and investigators believe the body was dumped there.
A ninth body turned up on Thursday, September 17, and officers locked down Kempton Park, where three bodies surfaced in a single week. The earlier find came after President Cyril Ramaphosa ordered the cases treated as a priority and police put up a R400,000 reward — about $24,500, or £18,000 — for information leading to a breakthrough.
Four of the nine women have been publicly identified. Relatives of Itumeleng Kekana, 32, reported her missing in Kempton Park on July 17. Searchers found her body on August 3 in Pomona, close to Great North Road and a short distance from the Max informal settlement.
A mother and avid runner, Elizabeth “Tsontso” Moselakgomo, 38, left home for her usual run on September 9 and did not return, and her young daughter raised the alarm. Searchers recovered Moselakgomo’s body on September 12 behind a hotel in Rhodesfield, Kempton Park, near the R21, and her family identified her at the Germiston mortuary on September 14. Fellow runners took to social media to try to locate her, drawing wide attention to the case — and that effort ultimately led to more bodies being found.
The youngest of the victims has been identified as a 20-year-old woman, police said.
As of September 21, police had made an arrest in the East Rand murder investigation — a breakthrough in the series of murders of women in Ekurhuleni on Gauteng’s East Rand.
What Police Say About a Link
Investigators have stopped short of concluding that one person is behind the deaths. National police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe has called the overlap between some of the cases concerning, pointing to how the women’s bodies had been left and the state they were in when discovered. She cautioned at the same time that any conclusion about a single perpetrator would be premature.
“For now, nothing tells us that we’ve got a serial killer,” Mathe told reporters. Detectives are also weighing whether a group of people could be responsible — or whether someone is imitating an earlier crime. “It could be that it’s a copycat crime that is happening right here but so far, no linkages as yet,” Mathe said.
Gauteng provincial police commissioner Fred Kekana said: “Investigators are considering all possibilities, including the possibility of multiple suspects or separate perpetrators.” He added: “Police are comparing the evidence, timelines, locations, victim profiles and circumstances of each case.”
By September 16, the South African Police Service (SAPS) had launched a dedicated multidisciplinary task team and brought in its Investigative Psychology Section to build a profile of the perpetrator.
Several of the bodies were undressed and decomposed when they were discovered, and police say bruising or assault preceded the deaths of a number of the women. Those similarities are the thread that drew detectives to handle the cases as one body of work, even as they try to establish whether any are connected.
Officers made one arrest on July 17 over the first death — a 37-year-old woman found naked in an open field near the R21 in Kempton Park, restrained with cable ties — and the suspect, reported to have been the woman’s partner, remains in custody, though no charges have been filed against him. Deputy national police commissioner Lt-Gen Tebello Mosikili said on September 17 that preliminary information indicated the man was a foreign national, adding that police could not confirm it and were working with the Department of Home Affairs and state security agencies to verify his identity through fingerprint records. Investigators have established no connection between him and the eight other deaths.
