EXCLUSIVE: Here’s a chilling trailer for the latest true-crime doc series out of South Africa.
Showmax‘s The ABC Killer will look into the grim story of serial killer Moses Sithole, who was convicted of 38 murders, 40 rapes and six robberies, all committed in the space of just over a year, in broad daylight. “I thought the devil has come down to Earth,” says former detective Paul Nkomo.
The three-parter will go back 30 years – just months after Nelson Mandela had become South Africa’s first democratically elected president – to when rookie journalist Tamsen de Beer, working a night shift at The Star newspaper, received a life-changing call from a man who claimed to be South Africa’s most prolific serial killer.
Through repeat conversations, the two developed a disturbing rapport. “It was like a journey I was on with him,” says de Beer in the trailer. “We were bonded in a strange, ugly way. I was hoping he was okay all the time, which is absolutely crazy.”
Sithole would target young Black women across Atteridgeville, Boksburg and Cleveland in Gauteng – the ‘ABC’ in his nickname.
The doc comes from director Jasyn Howes, who is leading his second Showmax series in a row about a 1990s South African serial killer. The first, Boetie Boer, about murderer Stewart Wilken, was nominated at last year’s South African Film and Television Awards for Best Documentary Series and Best Editor (Jaco Laubscher, who also cut The ABC Killer).
Like Boetie Boer, the show uses extensive reenactments, mostly filmed in the real-world locations such as The Star‘s offices, Germiston Train Station, Pretoria High Court and the factory where Sithole was finally caught. Gifter Ngobenisen plays Sithole, with Louise van der Merwe as de Beer and Monte-Carlo Golden Nymph and SAFTA Best Actor nominee Graham Hopkins as Judge George Curlewis.
Howes and SAFTA-winning writer Andy Petersen had access to transcripts of telephone calls between de Beer and Sithole, and her diary entry from the night of the first call.
During filming, Howes tracked down many of those close to the story, including including de Beer and her night editor at The Star, Alameen Brendan Templeton, who admits in the trailer that he was worried his journalist “could end up as one of [Sithole’s] victims.”
Contributions come from the likes of South African profiler Micki Pistorius, former Ettiene ‘Vinyl’ Viljoen, Frans van Niekerk, Paul Nkomo and Derrick Nosworthy, who says, “This was the biggest case of our history at the time. I don’t think we had ever had a case where there were so many people murdered by potentially one offender.”
Deputy national prosecutor George Baloyi revisits his case against Sithole, and attorneys Anthony Richards and Eben Jordaan discuss their defence of him, while survivor Buyiswa Swakhamisu relives the day of her attack and her own brave pursuit of justice.
Sithole is now serving 2,410 years in prison. “He was our Ted Bundy,” said Howes, who was a young boy in Johannesburg at the time of the crimes.
The ABC Killer will be available in full on Showmax from Tuesday, July 22.
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