Thabo Bester, a South African murderer who escaped from a maximum-security prison by faking his own death, has been recaptured after nearly a year of living in a mansion with his celebrity doctor partner.
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Who is Thabo Bester?
Thabo Bester, born June 13 1986, is a convicted criminal who escaped from South Africa’s Mangaung Correctional Centre in 2022 after faking his death. He was on the run for a year before being apprehended on April 8, 2023, in Arusha, Tanzania.
He and his partner Dr. Nandipha Magudumana ran the fraudulent construction business Arum Properties while he was incarcerated, getting clients to pay millions of rand for unfulfilled construction projects.
He was missing for a year after it was thought that he committed suicide by setting himself on fire in his prison cell in May 2022, but a recent post-mortem study determined that the burnt body discovered in his cell was not his. In response to this information, a manhunt was started in March 2023.
He had already been convicted guilty of a number of crimes, including the murder and defilement of women he had met on Facebook. He was found guilty in 2012 of killing his lover, a model named Nomfundo Tyhulu, after abusing her. He was convicted guilty of robbing and defiling two further women in 2011. He received a life sentence in prison.
Bester was never formally recognized by the Department of Home Affairs as a South African citizen. According to Minister Motsoaledi, Bester was discovered to be in possession of an American passport while posing as Tom Williams Kelly when he was apprehended in Tanzania last week. Bester’s mother, Maria Mabaso, was never allowed to register Bester after giving birth to him at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital on June 13, 1986, according to Motsoaledi, who said that this was owing to problems with Bester’s difficult upbringing.
Along with him, Dr. Nandipha Magudumana was also detained. Bester was named “Facebook rapist” who was found guilty of both rape and murder.
She has not yet been officially charged, but according to authorities, she will be charged with murder, mutilating corpses, fraud, and aiding and abetting an escape from prison.
Tebogo James Dipholo, a worker employed by a business that installs CCTV cameras at the Mangaung Correctional Centre (MCC), where Bester escaped incarceration after pretending to die, was present during Dr. Nandipha’s court appearance.
