Celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana’s possessions were being removed from her rented Hyde Park mansion on Tuesday when a quarrel broke out with the landlord. The landlord claimed that some of the things being removed from the building belonged to him.
Last week, GroundUp published several reports linking Magudumana to escaped rapist and murderer Thabo Bester. In the wake of these reports, Magudumana’s social media accounts have gone silent and some have been deactivated.
Bester was seen shopping with Magudumana and her daughter in a Woolworths in Sandton in June 2022, almost two months after the prison cell fire in which Bester was thought to have died. Magudumana has also claimed to be Bester’s customary law wife. After receiving a tip-off on Tuesday’s events at the Hyde Park mansion, GroundUp visited the site on Wednesday morning. A security guard stationed at the property confirmed that a quarrel took place between the landlord and Magudumana’s people.
According to the security guard, several trucks had arrived to move the possessions. The guard said that Magudumana had been evicted due to non-payment of rent.
Representatives of the landlord showed up, saying that some of the things being removed from the building belonged to the property company. GroundUp understands that the building is now abandoned.
The property next door, which several sources told us was being renovated to become Magudumana’s new wellness clinic, stands deserted and half-finished.
According to popular journalist, Keabetswe, shared a picture claiming Thabo Thomas Bester is still alive after escaping from jail.
She wrote: "The power of social media 🙏🏽
I’ve been sent pictures of who i’m convinced is Thabo Thomas Bester living his best life with the Dr. and her children
A rapist, murderer…does his shopping in Sandton City🙂
This is the timestamp of the pictures
@SAPoliceService who do I talk to?"
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.)
Magudumana runs a cosmetics surgery company called Optimum Medical Aesthetic Solutions. She has 124,000 Instagram followers and was named one of the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans in 2018.
She took the body to a mortuary in Soweto, but it was confiscated by police upon instruction from the investigating officer in Mangaung. Further investigations were then conducted on the body.
Magudumana approached the Pretoria High Court on 19 May, requesting that the body be returned to her. She also asked the court for a declaratory order entitling her to bury Bester. The court has not yet made a final ruling on the matter.
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The department of correctional services has on Tuesday confirmed the death of ‘Facebook rapist’ Thabo Bester.
According to spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo, Bester’s body was discovered with burn wounds in his cell in the early hours of Tuesday morning.
“We have confirmed the untimely passing of an inmate by the name of Thabo Bester at Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein. This inmate was doing life imprisonment. He was discovered in his cell at about 3:35 on Tuesday morning. He suffered serious burn wounds,” Nxumalo told Newzroom Afrika on Tuesday evening.
The department has launched an investigation into the incident to establish what may have happened.
“This was not a natural death, hence it has to be investigated. That particular correctional facility has an advanced technological system to a point that for anyone to even light a cigarette, they won’t won’t use a matchbox that many use on the streets but have certain devices that they would use, hence it’s important to establish the circumstances under which that fire started and what is it that may have been used. It’s also important to establish when the fire started. This is the only cell that had the fire.”
SUMMARY:
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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