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South African police have recovered the body of an 11th woman killed east of Johannesburg, according to officials, deepening fears that a series of suspicious deaths in and around the Ekurhuleni municipality may be connected. The discovery, made on Sunday, brings to 11 the number of female bodies found in the area since mid-July.
Police said the woman was located in an open field in Ekurhuleni at about midday local time, or 10am GMT. A security company vehicle that happened to be patrolling the area spotted the remains and alerted the police, according to police spokeswoman Brigadier Brenda Muridili. It was not immediately clear how long the woman had been there.
Investigators have not yet established the victim's identity, her age or her cause of death. Those details were expected to emerge through a post-mortem examination, which would also allow forensic teams to look for clues linking the killing to earlier cases.
The recovery came less than 48 hours after police found the body of a semi-naked woman near a cemetery in the same municipality on Saturday. Provincial police chief Tommy Mthombeni said the woman found on Saturday appeared to have been killed by being stoned, though he stressed that a post-mortem would formally determine the cause of death.
Police said a man connected with that killing has been arrested roughly 400 kilometres (250 miles) away. His detention brings the total number of people held in connection with the wider series of killings to four, according to authorities.
Mthombeni has been careful to temper public anxiety with the limits of what investigators can prove. Speaking to the state broadcaster SABC, he said detectives believe the killing associated with the ninth body — discovered on 17 September — was an isolated case. At the same time, he acknowledged it was possible that some of the other killings were linked, noting that several of the murders share similarities but that there is currently no conclusive evidence pointing to a single suspect or group.
Two women have been charged with murder over the ninth victim. Police suggested that killing may have arisen out of a relationship-related dispute, a detail that underlines how many of the cases under investigation may involve intimate-partner or domestic circumstances rather than a single unidentified serial offender.
The killings have unfolded across a relatively small area and at an alarming pace. Police found three bodies within a six-kilometre (four-mile) radius of one another in Ekurhuleni in July and August. Earlier this month, six more bodies were recovered in the space of 10 days, again in Ekurhuleni, a municipality that forms part of the wider Johannesburg metropolitan region.
Victims have so far shared a striking demographic profile. Before Saturday's discovery, all of the women whose bodies were found were in their 20s or 30s, and several were discovered either partly or completely naked — a pattern that has fuelled speculation among residents and commentators about the possibility of a common predator.
The first body, found in mid-July, was located naked and bound with cable ties. The victim's boyfriend was arrested shortly afterwards, though no charges were ultimately filed, a decision that has drawn criticism from campaigners who argue it left the case unresolved.
Community leaders and women's rights advocates have expressed growing alarm at what they describe as an epidemic of violence against women. Reporting on the case has described a climate of fear and anger, with one commentary likening South Africa's struggle against femicide to a "war," while the country's gender commissioner has said women feel "hunted" as the crisis deepens.
President Cyril Ramaphosa also used the campaign trail for upcoming local elections to acknowledge the recovery of the 10th victim, telling broadcaster eNCA that he had heard sadly about the body found in Thembisa. He said the discovery filled him with sorrow and called it "a shame on the men of South Africa" that women continue to be killed, adding that the country should not accept such losses as inevitable.
The killings are taking place against a backdrop of exceptionally high national violence statistics. South Africa has one of the highest femicide rates in the world, with an average of about 15 women killed every day, according to widely cited official and civil society estimates. Campaigners argue that official figures frequently undercount gender-related killings, meaning the true scale of the problem is likely larger than recorded.
Attention now turns to what the post-mortems and forensic work can establish. Officials say examinations of the 11th and 10th victims, alongside DNA and digital evidence, may help determine whether the deaths are the work of one individual, a group, or unrelated perpetrators exploiting a climate of fear. Prosecutors will also have to weigh whether cases previously dismissed — such as the first killing, in which charges were dropped — can be revisited as the broader pattern becomes clearer.
For residents of Ekurhuleni, the immediate reality is one of unease and unanswered questions. With four suspects in custody but no confirmed link between the killings, investigators face the daunting task of linking cases that may share only geography, and investigators have repeatedly cautioned that community fears, while understandable, are not yet backed by evidence of a single serial killer.
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