Accused serial killer alleges police conspiracy

Alleged Seshego serial killer pleads not guilty — Themba Dube

Zim Now Writer

Zimbabwe-born alleged serial killer Prince Willard Themba Dube has accused South African police for planning a conspiracy against him by planting evidence and forcing a confession out of him.

Dube said the contents of the two confessions taken by a magistrate and a senior police officer were not entirely truthful.

The confessions were ruled by Judge Gerrit Muller as admissible after a trial-within-a-trial.

The confession includes gruesome details of how the accused kidnapped seven women in 2021 and later strangled them to death together with a Nigerian national identified as David Abu.

When Dube was first arrested, he had a cellphone that was positively linked to one of the victims which he said he had bought from someone the day he was arrested.

"My mistake was to be arrested with that cellphone. That's when the police thought they could pile the case on me. I believe so because some of the police members were given promotions after my arrest.

“How do you explain that some were working at smaller police stations, but now they are at provincial offices?” he said.

Dube alleged that some of the statements in the confession were made up by him and the investigating officer, a Warrant Officer Seroka, in order to stop him from being assaulted after he was arrested.

He said Seroka forced him to make the confessions after he was taken to seven of the locations where bodies of the murdered women were found. He, however, failed to explain how he took a senior police officer to the same locations without him getting lost two days later.

He also had difficulty in explaining why he was not disputing some parts of the confession statements as to how he grew up in Zimbabwe until he came to South Africa in 2008, after bribing soldiers and police officers, among other people.

Items belonging to some of the victims were found in his rented room in Seshego township which he maintained were also planted.

Dube, is facing seven charges of murder, several of kidnapping, rape, robbery, extortion and contravention of the Immigration Act. He allegedly lured the women with the promise of jobs.

Bodies of the victims were discovered at different locations around Polokwane between August and October 2021.