On 3 May 2022, the Department of Correctional Services announced that Bester was found dead in his cell at the Mangaung Correctional Centre, a maximum security private prison operated by multinational security company G4S. A fire had broken out and a body was found under a burnt mattress.
Bester became known as the “Facebook rapist” because he used the social media platform to lure women with claims that international modelling scouts were interested in them. He would then rape them and rob them using a knife. He murdered at least one of his victims. In 2012, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for these crimes.
GroundUp has learnt that in the early hours of the morning of the fire, people were seen on CCTV cameras hastily exiting the prison.
In January, we revealed that the person whose body was found in the cell was dead before the fire broke out. According to the post-mortem report, which we have seen, the person was killed by a blunt force injury to the head.
The body’s height at the time of the autopsy was 1.45m. But in a police mugshot, Bester stood taller, at just over 1.7m. (While this is suspicious, a forensic pathologist told GroundUp that it is possible for a pathologist to underestimate the height of a burnt body.)
Minutes before a fire broke out in Thabo Bester’s prison cell at the Mangaung Correctional Centre, CCTV cameras observed people hastily leaving the prison.
After the fire, a body was found in the cell, burned beyond recognition under the mattress. The autopsy report revealed the person was dead before the fire broke out.
Celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana collected the body, claiming to be Bester’s wife, but the body was later confiscated by police.
A woman who says she is Bester’s biological mother also tried to claim the body, but her DNA did not match the body’s.
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