Convicted murderer and rapist Thabo Bester, dubbed the “Facebook Rapist”, made his first appearance in the Durban Magistrate’s Court in 2011. He pleaded guilty to all charges, including rape and robbery.
Bester lured victims by posing as a representative of a modelling agency running social networks to communicate with wannabe models.
It is not the first time that Bester is making headlines. Twelve years ago, the Durban Magistrate’s Court slapped Bester with a maximum sentence of 60-years, 10 of which were suspended. Durban-based SABC News journalist, who covered Bester’s case, Nonjabulo Mntungwa-Makamu, says there was a huge hype around the case.
“It was around October 2011, it was one of the big stories that every media house in KZN wanted to actually cover. Inside court if I can tell you it was packed to the maximum because he had gained popularity of being the “Facebook Rapist” and when he walked in and we were shocked. You know as journalists because we were thinking that because of the seriousness of the crime that he had committed, we thought that he could be someone older but we were shocked to find that it was a young man, I think around about that time he was around the mid-20s.”
Mntungwa-Makamu recalls how the court heard Bester lured his victims.
“He pleaded guilty and he actually told the court how he committed these crimes, how he took one of the girls to one of the hotels in Umhlanga. He told her to take off her clothes, she took a bath just to make her comfortable and he had said that people would come in, the camera people would come in to take photos of her with make-up artists and while she was apparently in a shower. That is when he apparently said he took a knife and strangled her and stabbed her in her face and also on her arms and he raped her and he actually said that in his plea statement which was read out by his legal attorney in court. He said he raped that woman after raping her he then robbed her of her belongings. She was shocked that this man could have killed her but she was still alive and she lived to tell the tale.”
Magistrate Sharon Marks who presided over Bester’s rape case gave him a maximum sentence. Mntungwa-Makamu recalls the handing down of the hefty sentence which was welcomed by many.
“When the magistrate was handing down the sentence, she was not lenient at all because when Bester was trying to mitigate the sentence by asking the court to be lenient to him because he had pleaded guilty. He had said that he was molested as a child and he was actually remorseful and he was crying at that time in court. When [Magistrate] Sharon Marks handed down the sentence she said the fact that when she looks at the way these crimes were committed, it did not appear as a person who had psychological problems. In that case she said that she did not believes that Bester was remorseful and therefore he was given a maximum sentence of 60 years in prison of which 10 was suspended.”
Bester is once again making headlines following his mysterious escape from prison in Bloefontein.
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