Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Here we go, Welcome back. It's a podcast. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: you're fuck yeah. I don't know why. I don't know
Speaker 2: why I opened it that way.
Speaker 1: Nobody does.
Speaker 2: Nobody's gonna like that, and nobody's gonna be happy with it, Sophie,
Speaker 2: What am I doing?
Speaker 3: I think some of the fans really do like it.
Speaker 3: I don't know if it's like a Stockholm suit.
Speaker 2: They are sickos. They are sickos. You're right about that, Mollie.
Speaker 3: Did it bring you joy?
Speaker 2: Robert?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Nothing does anymore believe that brings me joy is the
Speaker 2: film Twisters, which I'm still gonna talk about. I know
Speaker 2: I talked about it at the Tuesday opening. But you
Speaker 2: know what I really appreciate about Twisters, Mollie, and about Twister.
Speaker 3: Hopefully some of the fans have had time to see
Speaker 3: it since they listened to the first episode, so now
Speaker 3: they're on board.
Speaker 2: You gotta go watch out and see it. You know,
Speaker 2: you gotta go watch it. They're gonna stop making tornado
Speaker 2: movies if we don't watch them, right, and then what's
Speaker 2: gonna happen to Oklahoma's tour?
Speaker 3: You have to support the tornado based economy.
Speaker 2: What I love about these movies is that they all
Speaker 2: decided and this is the smart decision from a filmmaking standpoint.
Speaker 2: The tornadoes had to be sentient like these these are
Speaker 2: tornadoes that have enemies and that have grudges and that
Speaker 2: are targeting city centers to do as much damage as possible.
Speaker 3: Talking about that, that's no.
Speaker 2: There is a scene where the tornado roars at our
Speaker 2: main characters and then throws a semi truck at them because.
Speaker 3: They're fighting, Like these people are trying to destroy tornadoes.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, yes they are. They're going to war against
Speaker 2: the tornadoes sold.
Speaker 3: To just like learn from the tornado scientists. They want
Speaker 3: to when you're.
Speaker 2: Going to escalate. Yeah, the initial movie there, but their
Speaker 2: goal is they want to learn from it so they
Speaker 2: can predict them in so that what's her name doesn't
Speaker 2: have her dad sucked out into the.
Speaker 3: Sky again, right, that was about like predicting for like evacuation.
Speaker 3: This is about like physically fighting it.
Speaker 2: Yes, because no one So one of the through lines
Speaker 2: and twisters is that no one who lives in Tornado
Speaker 2: Alley has ever heard of a tornado or knows what
Speaker 2: to do. None of the houses have shelters, and the
Speaker 2: only people are are heroes who are a bunch of
Speaker 2: like weirdo stormchaser YouTube nerds have to like go into
Speaker 2: towns and warn everyone to evacuate because Oklahomans just don't
Speaker 2: know about tornadoes and nobody.
Speaker 3: Believes these out of towners.
Speaker 2: Well, no, it's always very clear because there's a giant
Speaker 2: tornado the size of an aircraft carrier in the sky.
Speaker 1: Does Glenn Powell just like hip check the tornado and
Speaker 1: his wrangular jeans and.
Speaker 2: No, he drives a very cool truck and shoots fireworks
Speaker 2: into it. So well, actually someone else forgot and irangular
Speaker 2: jeans he's wearing. Well, i'd actually I don't think we
Speaker 2: get a shirt.
Speaker 3: Got sucked into the tornado.
Speaker 2: He's very wet a lot of the time, though, so
Speaker 2: he doesn't get to show off. Yeah, anyway, I guess
Speaker 2: should we talk about this racist Molly?
Speaker 3: I was having more fun talking about a sentient tornado,
Speaker 3: but I knew that couldn't last.
Speaker 2: It's less fun than Glenn Palell. I don't think Glenn
Speaker 2: Palell has killed dozens of people.
Speaker 3: You don't know? You know, actually we found out about
Speaker 3: Army Hammer.
Speaker 2: But here's what I'll say if Glenn Powell has been
Speaker 2: killing people. I'm sure they're an even mix of white, black,
Speaker 2: every color of the rainbow.
Speaker 1: I just feel confident he didn't use dogs.
Speaker 2: Definitely, not a not He would never never stoop to
Speaker 2: dogs for his killing. He might use dogs. He might
Speaker 2: use dogs. It's not a zero percent chance we're back.
Speaker 2: I hope Glenn Powell is not a listener because we're
Speaker 2: kind of being needlessly mean to a man as far
Speaker 2: as I'm aware, hasn't ever done anything bad to anyone.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I said you made Sorry.
Speaker 2: There's there's a Yeah.
Speaker 3: I still don't know who he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's he's very good looking, Molly, but again in
Speaker 2: a way that's kind of off putting. Yeah, he probably
Speaker 2: he has to know that, right.
Speaker 1: I'm sure he knows.
Speaker 2: Lewis fan sure not very good looking in my opinion. Uh,
Speaker 2: As I noted last episode, it's a little bit hard
Speaker 2: to triangulate the price precise length of time that Lewis
Speaker 2: was killing people, but the bulk of his murdering seems
Speaker 2: to have occurred from around nineteen eighty six to nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine. These are the twilight years of the apartheid
Speaker 2: regime and the anxious business owners in middle class whites
Speaker 2: of East London saw Lewis again as a hero. He
Speaker 2: is their own private batman, and that is how they
Speaker 2: look at him. Most of the businesses that contracted with
Speaker 2: his company had silent alarms. When someone broke in, Van
Speaker 2: Sure would be alerted and he would rush to the
Speaker 2: scene to surprise the intruder. He always showed up alone
Speaker 2: in a private vehicle, no sirens, and as was his
Speaker 2: wont he went barefoot. He later told a reporter it's quiet,
Speaker 2: you don't have your shoes squeaking on tiles and stuff.
Speaker 2: So again, his interest is not to stop robberies or
Speaker 2: to arrest people. It is to sneak up on them
Speaker 2: so that he can murder them, very, very brutally.
Speaker 3: I just don't like the idea that he's not wearing shoes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's just extra creepy, right, It's like a
Speaker 2: reverse diehard. Now, he claimed to not turn on lights
Speaker 2: and that he usually avoided flashlights. He's inconsistent on that
Speaker 2: last point, so I suspect he did use a flashlight
Speaker 2: to at least try to shock his targets. But to
Speaker 2: the press he would claim that his primary sense for
Speaker 2: hunting was his sense of smell.
Speaker 3: Qu wait, sense for what now? Hunting?
Speaker 2: Hunting? Yes, that's how he describes this great great he's
Speaker 2: just talking openly about when the press coming like, seems
Speaker 2: like you're shooting a lot of people who's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I love hunting people. You know, I hunt by sense
Speaker 2: of smell. If somebody breaks in, the adrenaline gives off
Speaker 2: an odor and you can pick that up. Okay, I
Speaker 2: don't know that. I think you can. But that's a
Speaker 2: very unsettling thing to say. That's something a monster, says Lewis.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess you know, like gamblers, you have
Speaker 3: a system, you have superstitions, you have these beliefs about
Speaker 3: your craft.
Speaker 2: Yes, and some people have better senses than others. So
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna say, like, it's definitely true that like fear,
Speaker 2: sweat is different, smells different. You can kind of tell
Speaker 2: sometimes if.
Speaker 3: Somebody you can't smell a guy in the back of
Speaker 3: the CBS.
Speaker 2: You're not go I don't think you're going to. But
Speaker 2: maybe Lewis is the predator. You know, he is a predator.
Speaker 3: He spent a long time with dogs, but he did
Speaker 3: not develop any dog like.
Speaker 2: Some of the dogs have taught me their skills. Yeah. Now.
Speaker 2: The adrenalines with Van Schuur were mostly conducted at the
Speaker 2: start of the nineties, before he was charged with any
Speaker 2: crimes for his many murders. He was a subject of
Speaker 2: amusement for a lot of reporters, and their stories helped
Speaker 2: build him a legend and earn him the love of
Speaker 2: many in the local white community. The vast majority of
Speaker 2: his victims were very poor, the kind of people who
Speaker 2: often broke into stores to steal food or cash, and
Speaker 2: as a result, their deaths made very little impact in
Speaker 2: the local papers. If they were mentioned, it usually wasn't
Speaker 2: by name, robbers shot, breaking into pharmacy or whatever. White
Speaker 2: business owners and middle class residents knew of Lewis, at
Speaker 2: least by reputation, and overwhelmingly considered him a hero. Black
Speaker 2: residents also knew him. Stories read in Zosha of a
Speaker 2: bearded man nicknamed Whiskers who would stalk men through the
Speaker 2: streets and make them disappear forever as journalists. Dominic Jones,
Speaker 2: one of the first to report on Lewis, said Lewis
Speaker 2: van Shore was basically going out and murdering people for sport.
Speaker 2: Lewis himself would tell the BBC during an investigation decades later,
Speaker 2: every night is a new adventure, if you want to
Speaker 2: put it that way, I know, I don't.
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't know at all. What do you mean an adventure?
Speaker 3: And this is going on for long enough that he's
Speaker 3: becoming this sort of like real life Boogeyman in these
Speaker 3: communities like they of course he is. And I guess
Speaker 3: they don't know where he's going to be or which
Speaker 3: alarms go to his phone.
Speaker 2: No, and you probably because of how it's being reported,
Speaker 2: some people are probably aware it's all this one guy,
Speaker 2: but like a lot of locals, both whites and blacks
Speaker 2: are probably think this is more a bunch of people
Speaker 2: committing murders because of how many people he's shooting. You
Speaker 2: wouldn't nactually would Why would you? All of these are
Speaker 2: one guy. It's a lot for one guy, right. That's
Speaker 2: very now. At the time, things had changed enough in
Speaker 2: South Africa that Lewis had to claim he never went hunting,
Speaker 2: quote with the intention of killing black people. He just
Speaker 2: found stocking. He does call it hunting a lot, He
Speaker 2: says he just found it exciting. And I do think
Speaker 2: parts of this are true, although not in a way
Speaker 2: that makes it better. Lewis fan sure to me, feels
Speaker 2: like a guy who would have taken a job that
Speaker 2: let him hunt and kill humans in any society where
Speaker 2: that job existed. He's again definitely racist, but I think
Speaker 2: that the killing was more the motivation than the racism.
Speaker 2: The racism provides the opportunity and the legal cover to
Speaker 2: do the killing, right, This is my take on it.
Speaker 2: Lewis reported every murder to the local police, and when
Speaker 2: he was criticized for being a serial killer, he would
Speaker 2: defend himself by saying his actions were quote all within
Speaker 2: the law. This was untrue in a strict textual sense,
Speaker 2: but it was accurate in that the cops supported what
Speaker 2: he was doing. As Lewis said, every officer and London
Speaker 2: knew what was going on. All the police officers knew.
Speaker 2: Not once did anybody say, hey, Louis, you're on the borderline,
Speaker 2: or you should cool it or whatever. They all knew
Speaker 2: what was happening, right.
Speaker 3: So you're saying, like not people didn't know was all
Speaker 3: one guy. But like whoever's processing the.
Speaker 2: Cops, the cops definitely know. Yes, the cops are not
Speaker 2: are fully aware because they also are showing up at
Speaker 2: the scene every time he shoots someone, which is all
Speaker 2: the time. He is always shooting people.
Speaker 3: Is they never a conversation about, like, did you do
Speaker 3: a crime?
Speaker 2: I don't think there's an interest in having that conversation.
Speaker 2: And obviously, as Lewis said, I don't think he's lying
Speaker 2: about this. I think like he seems to be legitimately
Speaker 2: frustrated because he does get in trouble eventually where he's like, look,
Speaker 2: I talked to the cops. None of them said I
Speaker 2: was like a borderline right. Nobody ever said to stop
Speaker 2: shooting people?
Speaker 3: Why are yeah? Like they should have told me sooner.
Speaker 2: They needed to tell me the exact amount of people
Speaker 2: I needed to shoot. Now, obviously we shouldn't. I don't
Speaker 2: necessarily think he's lying there, but we shouldn't take his
Speaker 2: word for it. That said one of the local journalists.
Speaker 3: They didn't stop him.
Speaker 2: They didn't stop him. One of the local journalists who
Speaker 2: put together a team to start looking into Lewis was
Speaker 2: and this is another great South African name, Patrick Goodenough
Speaker 2: literally just the words good enough stuff together. What was
Speaker 2: going on in that country that that became a last
Speaker 2: name for you people? Huh right, yeah, good enough. Oh,
Speaker 2: because you just know every year a journalism school, whenever
Speaker 2: he turns into an assignment, you know his teachers are
Speaker 2: making fun of that name one way or the other.
Speaker 2: You know, Yeah, this is good enough, not good enough,
Speaker 2: not good enough. Sorry, Patrick, I'm sure you had a
Speaker 2: tough road to hoe. You seem to have turned into
Speaker 2: a fine man, because he's going to be one of
Speaker 2: the heroes of this story. Good enough, he said of
Speaker 2: the police in East London. There's the support for him
Speaker 2: was massive. He would not have been able to get
Speaker 2: away with the fraction of what he got away with
Speaker 2: without it. Now, another of the journalists who dug into
Speaker 2: this story back before it was a story was Isad Jacobson,
Speaker 2: who I quoted last episode. Here's the BBC discussing her
Speaker 2: very early efforts to uncover what was going on. In
Speaker 2: the police records held in public archives, Miss Jacobson found
Speaker 2: instances of killings where the officers had been present at
Speaker 2: the time of the shootings at no point that they
Speaker 2: appear to question Van Schure as a suspect. In many instances,
Speaker 2: the police failed to take photos of the deceased at
Speaker 2: the scenes of the shooting. And failed to collect key
Speaker 2: forensic evidence, such as bullet casings. Van Shure was often
Speaker 2: the only witness to his shootings, so this evidence could
Speaker 2: have been crucial for determining what had actually happened. In
Speaker 2: each case, these were cover ups. He had the backing
Speaker 2: from police officer of from police officers from junior rank
Speaker 2: and senior rank. Said mister goodenough, they wouldn't investigate. They'd
Speaker 2: sit down with him and have a cigarette while chatting
Speaker 2: with bodies lying nearby. Yeah, that's not good, pretty gross.
Speaker 2: I think I'm going.
Speaker 3: To guess the cops are doing some of this too.
Speaker 3: He was doing it when he was a cop, likehooting,
Speaker 3: murdering people too. It's just happening.
Speaker 2: It's just understood. He is probably talking shop with a
Speaker 2: guy who also just killed someone a lot of the time, right.
Speaker 3: So it's not like they are too stupid to realize
Speaker 3: he's shot all the back on the ground.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much all of the local like
Speaker 2: white business owners, are aware of the specifics of what
Speaker 2: Lewis is doing, but the cops are. They don't, like,
Speaker 2: they don't they don't give a shit, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: except for you know, a good number of journalists actually
Speaker 2: do like there is a it takes a significant journalistic effort.
Speaker 2: This is actually a case of a murderer who is
Speaker 2: caught by the press and prosecuted.
Speaker 3: And I guess once a hundred guys are missing.
Speaker 2: That is funny you say that, family, because by nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty nine, Lewis has been involved in at least one
Speaker 2: hundred shootings, probably a lot more. No, no, he is
Speaker 2: at least one hundred shootings. And Lewis himself will say, like,
Speaker 2: I have no idea how many people I shot. There
Speaker 2: were way too many of them to keep track of,
Speaker 2: so normally.
Speaker 3: I would say I don't know how many people they've killed.
Speaker 3: Is a very bad thing to say, but I think
Speaker 3: once you get into a certain number, it's gonna be
Speaker 3: bad regardless. Probably better that he doesn't know because he's
Speaker 3: keeping meticulous records.
Speaker 2: That's worse.
Speaker 3: That's worse.
Speaker 2: I talked to a drone pilot once who was told,
Speaker 2: at like the end of his time of service by
Speaker 2: his superior the number of people that had been killed
Speaker 2: in drone strikes he participated in, and it was in
Speaker 2: the thousands, And he was like, why didn't you tell me?
Speaker 2: This is just ruined my life.
Speaker 3: Like, there's no amount of therapy that can undo that moment.
Speaker 2: You should know, right it actually it should be traumatic
Speaker 2: to blow people up with a drone. It's better than
Speaker 2: it's traumatic. Right.
Speaker 3: It just seems like telling him was a rude thing
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 2: It is kind of a dick move from your boss though, right.
Speaker 3: Okay, ay man, good job, jum.
Speaker 2: Want to let you know you've been responsible for the
Speaker 2: deaths of thousands. Yeah, Statistically about a third of them
Speaker 2: were innocent, at least, maybe more like seventy percent based
Speaker 2: on a lot of our analyzes. Anyway, have a good
Speaker 2: time as a civilian.
Speaker 3: We have the Mackenzie Intern figure out how many of
Speaker 3: more kids?
Speaker 2: Yeah, oh a bunch.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, by nineteen eighty nine, Lewis had been involved in
Speaker 2: at least one hundred shootings. Now these numbers are not
Speaker 2: available to anyone, right, They are all buried in a
Speaker 2: police filing system that doesn't always name Lewis and was
Speaker 2: designed to frustrate outside observers, like reporters from the East
Speaker 2: London Daily Dispatch, where Patrick Goodenough worked. He'd gotten good enough.
Speaker 2: There's people are gonna be like, no, it's in South
Speaker 2: African we pronounce it Gowden, weef damn it? How do you?
Speaker 2: How can you not know that?
Speaker 3: But we're not doing that, You're mate, We're absolutely not
Speaker 3: doing that.
Speaker 2: I don't care disrespecting it on bur is Patrick good enough,
Speaker 2: and by god he is.
Speaker 3: So.
Speaker 2: Patrick got onto the story when he interviewed one of
Speaker 2: the men who had survived Lewis, a guy named Ciabanga Tom,
Speaker 2: which is another excellent name.
Speaker 1: Yeah seriously, Now.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately Seabanga Tom is a child when he is shot.
Speaker 2: I think he's like fourteen something. That Patrick had also
Speaker 2: interviewed Lewis, who had bragged the first time the number
Speaker 2: comes out. Is that Patrick is just talking to this
Speaker 2: guy who he started to think might be a serial
Speaker 2: killer because cia Banda Tom says like, I wasn't trying
Speaker 2: to run, he just kind of tried to execute me, right.
Speaker 2: So Patrick comes across a couple other cases of shootings
Speaker 2: this guy is involved and finds out like it seems
Speaker 2: like there's a lot of bodies tied to this guy.
Speaker 2: So he sits down with Lewis, thinking like, all right,
Speaker 2: you know, this is going to be maybe one of
Speaker 2: the tougher interviews of my life. I've got a man
Speaker 2: here that I think is a serial murderer. You know,
Speaker 2: he's probably doing some terrible things and getting away with it,
Speaker 2: and I'm trying to bring him down. He's gonna know that.
Speaker 2: You know, we're going to be playing this game of
Speaker 2: cat and mouse, this real like Hannibal Lecter moment with
Speaker 2: a murderer. And as soon as the interview starts, Lewis
Speaker 2: is like, yeah, I shot more than like a hundred
Speaker 2: people than the last couple of years. It's crazy how
Speaker 2: many guys I'm shooting. Just very funny.
Speaker 3: Oh the vibes in that room, Yeah, insane.
Speaker 2: It's like, yeah, I reckon, I've shot like a hundred people.
Speaker 2: I don't know, can't really count that high. Anyway, what's
Speaker 2: this article about?
Speaker 3: But that wasn't even part of the eneview. He's just
Speaker 3: making small talk.
Speaker 2: No, he just likes He just likes killing. He likes
Speaker 2: talking about killing. He's just a big fan of it.
Speaker 2: You will not be surprised to hear that. This convinced
Speaker 2: Patrick he was onto a big story. Now. He had
Speaker 2: nearly finished an article on the shooting, but unfortunately the
Speaker 2: article was centered because the first survivor he's talked to
Speaker 2: is Ciabanga, Tom right. So his article is centered on
Speaker 2: Tom's experience because Tom also gives him an eyewitness account
Speaker 2: of Lewis breaking the law right him execute, you know,
Speaker 2: just shooting people. Right. The problem is that, like all
Speaker 2: of Lewis's victims Ceabanga, Tom gets charged with breaking and entering,
Speaker 2: and in South Africa they have this thing where if
Speaker 2: someone gets charged, the case is now what they called
Speaker 2: sub justice, which meant you're not allowed to report on
Speaker 2: it until the accused gives a statement in court. Oh,
Speaker 2: I can see why you would have a rule like this.
Speaker 2: I can understand how, even theoretically, it can develop out
Speaker 2: of good intentions. Right, you don't want yellow pressed, tabloid
Speaker 2: journalism or whatever affecting how a court case goes, right,
Speaker 2: So you want.
Speaker 3: And a lot of countries have pretty strict laws about
Speaker 3: how the pass is allowed to report on crime.
Speaker 2: Yes, so I do understand why some of why this
Speaker 2: may have come into place. But in the case like
Speaker 2: you really see the weakness of that here because every
Speaker 2: time Patrick gets close to being able to report on
Speaker 2: Lewis actively shooting people, that person will get charged and
Speaker 2: he can't publish the article. Right. So it's this kind
Speaker 2: of maddening state of affairs for him. So furious, Patrick
Speaker 2: decides that the story he has is not good enough
Speaker 2: and he can contacts a local legal aid charity called
Speaker 2: Black Sash to try to get Seabanga a lawyer. He
Speaker 2: talked with their coordinator, Charlene Craig, about Lewis, who he'd interviewed,
Speaker 2: and let her know, Hey, hey, there's this like white
Speaker 2: former cop security guard who just told me he shot
Speaker 2: one hundred people. You guys are like dealing with, you know,
Speaker 2: legal justice issues in our town. Have you looked into
Speaker 2: this at all? And it turns out that Charlene had.
Speaker 2: She hands him a copy of a statement that she
Speaker 2: had taken a month earlier from a local man named Zumzie.
Speaker 2: Quote and this is from the book The Color of Violence.
Speaker 2: In it, he said he was on his way home
Speaker 2: in October nineteen eighty eight after trying to get work
Speaker 2: at a bakery when a man in a backie it's
Speaker 2: a kind of vehicle asked him if he wanted a job.
Speaker 2: He said, He climbed into the vehicle and the two
Speaker 2: drove a short way to the Turnbull Bowling Club, where
Speaker 2: the man who said his name was Van Schure told
Speaker 2: him to wait outside the window on the left of
Speaker 2: the building. According to the statement, Van Shure then disappeared
Speaker 2: and returned holding a gun without warning. He shot Vzumzie
Speaker 2: twice in the chest and in his left arm. And
Speaker 2: it's from this statement that we get our most conclusive
Speaker 2: answer to the over zealous racist security guard or serial
Speaker 2: killer question, because that is not a story of a
Speaker 2: random bigot. That is the story of a man who
Speaker 2: is hunting and entrapping people and using the imperiod, Like
Speaker 2: that's a serial killer hunting people, right, And you know,
Speaker 2: maybe racism plays a big role obviously him getting away
Speaker 2: with it, but like you didn't need to do that,
Speaker 2: that's I mean, he didn't need to. He wanted he
Speaker 2: wanted to shoot this man. He entrapped the man by
Speaker 2: telling him I have a job for you, and then
Speaker 2: he shot him and then he threw his body on
Speaker 2: a crime scene.
Speaker 3: But even hiss like sort of fake justified shootings that
Speaker 3: he's doing once a week at work, Like is that
Speaker 3: not enough?
Speaker 2: Well? These are these are what a lot of those
Speaker 2: shootings are? Those shootings always get marked down as he
Speaker 2: was responding to a break in what's actually happening a
Speaker 2: lot of the time is he is hunting random black
Speaker 2: men in the street and throwing their bodies into a
Speaker 2: crime scene, right right, Yeah, Like he will fake a
Speaker 2: break in. There will always be something stolen, but it's
Speaker 2: usually a low value item.
Speaker 3: Right, He's also just stealing, he is.
Speaker 2: I'm sure there's some of this is him responding to
Speaker 2: be at ease, but most of this is him fucking
Speaker 2: hunting people and faking it.
Speaker 3: Well, that's it's worse.
Speaker 2: It's much. I don't Yeah, it's they're both bad. But yeah,
Speaker 2: I think there's a good I think this is the
Speaker 2: worst version of this story is the one that happened.
Speaker 2: I'll say that.
Speaker 3: So he really is just a wragular old serial killer,
Speaker 3: but existing within a system that allowed him to be
Speaker 3: yes that way, yes, and congratulated him from behaving that way.
Speaker 2: Yes, Yes, I think that is the most accurate way
Speaker 2: I can I can describe this.
Speaker 3: I don't feel good, Robert, it's neither too.
Speaker 2: I But it's time for ads, so that'll be nice.
Speaker 3: That will soothe my soul.
Speaker 1: Yeah, our spirits will be lifted immediately.
Speaker 2: And we're back, oh man, having a great time. So
Speaker 2: this guy Mazumzi was like all the others charged with
Speaker 2: breaking and entering, so his case could not be reported on. Right.
Speaker 2: So again our boy good Enough keeps getting these really
Speaker 2: important stories and then as he writes it up and
Speaker 2: is ready to hand it to an editor, gets the
Speaker 2: notice that like, oh, this guy's been charged. Can't say
Speaker 2: shit now, you know, got a wait. So the good
Speaker 2: news is that Shyleen and her colleagues are now on
Speaker 2: the case as well, and as a legal age charity,
Speaker 2: they have none of the same restrictions as the press.
Speaker 2: They have collected at this point three other identical accounts
Speaker 2: nearly from men who had been hunted, shot and survived. Right,
Speaker 2: So this is four cases Shyleen brings to him of like, yeah,
Speaker 2: these guys all said that he literally just grabbed them
Speaker 2: off the street. Right.
Speaker 3: That's a strong pattern at this point.
Speaker 2: That's a pattern. That's that's a pretty good pattern. I
Speaker 2: always say, I figure.
Speaker 3: A lot of them don't live. So if you have
Speaker 3: four guys who lived, yeah, does a lot.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of And also one of the things
Speaker 2: that starts to come out is there's a lot of
Speaker 2: families asking, like my son or my husband just disappeared,
Speaker 2: where are they? And in a lot of cases, the
Speaker 2: police are just throwing these dead people into unmarked graves
Speaker 2: and never telling anyone. So again, we have no idea
Speaker 2: how many people he actually killed. You know, some of
Speaker 2: these people do find out, like that their son was
Speaker 2: thrown into an unmarked grave, but the cops are working
Speaker 2: to cover up a serial killer's murders.
Speaker 3: Can I ask you a stupid question that's also surely abhorrent? Yeah,
Speaker 3: why does so many of them live?
Speaker 2: Well, it's because it's a handgun. So this is so
Speaker 2: there's gun stuff. A lot of people don't know handguns
Speaker 2: are handguns and rifles or rifles. Right. A handgun is
Speaker 2: a terrible weapon to kill someone with. It's just the
Speaker 2: most convenient, right, It's easy to have one on you.
Speaker 2: They are not very powerful. It is extremely common for
Speaker 2: people to be shot. I have read of cases. There's
Speaker 2: a one particular case of a couple of bank robbers
Speaker 2: that the FBI ambushed and the FBI shot one man
Speaker 2: fifty times and the other like forty seven times, and
Speaker 2: both men not just lived, but were walked off the
Speaker 2: scene like it is. It's wild how many bullets people
Speaker 2: can take if their handgun bullets and survive rifles are
Speaker 2: a bit of a different case, you know, not that
Speaker 2: people don't survive shots from rifles, but it is a
Speaker 2: very different kind of injury you're looking at.
Speaker 3: I have forty paper cuts on my m has to
Speaker 3: be put on a stretcher, But forty bullet holes it's
Speaker 3: a lot.
Speaker 2: It's a lot. I mean you also have to note that,
Speaker 2: like the nine millimeter of the day is a weaker
Speaker 2: round than the same bullet now because there have been
Speaker 2: advances in ballistics and like just how we make bullets, right.
Speaker 3: I feel like if he's that interested in killing, like,
Speaker 3: is it just the I think these guys are creevously injured. No,
Speaker 3: I just feel like, is it the activity that he
Speaker 3: is interested in? And it doesn't mean yeah, master how
Speaker 3: it ends.
Speaker 2: I think he's trying to kill them, But I also
Speaker 2: think he's probably not. Like checking for a pulse A
Speaker 2: lot of times it's hard to it's not actually, if
Speaker 2: you've ever tried to the pulse of an injury, it's
Speaker 2: like not always easy. He's not smart. I don't credit
Speaker 2: him with being a great planner. I think he's just
Speaker 2: showing guys they lose consciousness because they've been shot repeatedly,
Speaker 2: and some of them wake up, some of them don't,
Speaker 2: you know, that's kind of the deal. So one of
Speaker 2: the Heidi, the person who wrote that book, makes a
Speaker 2: big deal about the fact that he used hollow points
Speaker 2: and how this is like evidence of his murderous intent.
Speaker 2: I actually disagree with that. Hollow points are just kind
Speaker 2: of like it's what everyone who carries a handgun in
Speaker 2: a city is going like anywhere, is going to use
Speaker 2: because they they are better at stopping people, but they
Speaker 2: also penetrate less. So if you are someone like a
Speaker 2: copper security guard and you think you might be shooting
Speaker 2: at someone in an urban environment, you want a bullet
Speaker 2: that is less likely to go through them and then
Speaker 2: hit someone else. Right, Like, it's just whatever damage the
Speaker 2: merchandise or damage the merchandise, but anyway, whatever, it doesn't
Speaker 2: really matter. So sha Lead and her colleagues collect like
Speaker 2: four accounts of guys who have been hunted and shot
Speaker 2: and survived, and they reach out to illegal late aid
Speaker 2: lawyer Dave Pittman, who suggests getting victim statements so that
Speaker 2: they can file for criminal charges. And I'm going to
Speaker 2: quote next from Heidi Hollands, The Color of murder and
Speaker 2: this is her talking to Pittman. I drove to East London,
Speaker 2: where I was joined by Charlene Craig, recalls Pittman, accompanied
Speaker 2: by a a relative of Siabongo. We went directly to
Speaker 2: Frarie Hospital where we found the victim with a bullet
Speaker 2: wound running from his abdomen clear through his back. A
Speaker 2: telling piece of evidence collected from the custody of the
Speaker 2: hospital was the clothing he had been wearing when he
Speaker 2: was shot, notably a synthetic fiber tracksuit. The tracksuit top
Speaker 2: had a gaping hole in front, with indications that the
Speaker 2: fiber had been burned in the vicinity of the hole,
Speaker 2: which would prove Siabonga's allegation that he had been shot
Speaker 2: at point blank range. Armed with ciabonga statement and his
Speaker 2: clothes in the plastic bag, we drove jauntily to the
Speaker 2: Fleet Street police station. I don't know why we needed
Speaker 2: to know jauntily that you drove having a good time,
Speaker 2: but he Heidi knows. These kinds of details are important
Speaker 2: to really make a story come alive. Do them?
Speaker 3: There?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Now, No sooner had they taken a statement from
Speaker 2: Siaboga than there was another shooting in East London police
Speaker 2: noted a security guard had been involved, but refused to
Speaker 2: name him. Obviously, at this point everyone involved in this case,
Speaker 2: the journalists in Black Sash are like, well, it was
Speaker 2: must have been Lewis right, Probably was the guy who
Speaker 2: shoots someone every day. It's the guy who only shoots people.
Speaker 3: It's the human hunter.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now, the victim in this shooting was Muntuzima Titi
Speaker 2: twenty four, a night watchman, so a security guard himself,
Speaker 2: who had been walking home from a late shift when
Speaker 2: a white stranger ran up to him in the night,
Speaker 2: shot him and tossed him in the back of his car.
Speaker 2: When he woke up in the hospital, police charged him
Speaker 2: with breaking an enter ring. Such a nightmare. It sucks,
Speaker 2: just a horrible, horrible situation. Also, you're literally a security guard.
Speaker 3: How much blood is in this man's car. He's routinely
Speaker 3: putting shot like shooting victim.
Speaker 2: I think he's got I think he's got like a
Speaker 2: flatbed and he's just kind of throwing him in there
Speaker 2: and then hosing it off.
Speaker 3: Just hosing it out the way I do it.
Speaker 2: You know, it's the way I've done it. I mean,
Speaker 2: would would. I haven't killed anyone in my truck, Molly,
Speaker 2: what do you drive?
Speaker 3: I'm not giving out that kind of personal information to
Speaker 3: your hordes of deranged fans, right.
Speaker 2: One of them could be like this guy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were just complaining about people texting you in
Speaker 1: sort of messaging on the signal and you're like, hey, Molly,
Speaker 1: what kind of car do you drive?
Speaker 2: Kind of car do you drive? I just want to know.
Speaker 3: My last car got total while I was covering. It
Speaker 3: was a post chase six like you know, free the
Speaker 3: Insurrection Boys rally. My car got totaled, was parked, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a police chase in DC and oh man, and
Speaker 3: they totaled my parked car anyway, but before that, So
Speaker 3: now I have a car that has no giant key
Speaker 3: scrapes on it, Robert, and that is very precious to me,
Speaker 3: because my last car got keyed up by some sort
Speaker 3: of muk and fed weirdodfather's grave. Oh no, I'm not
Speaker 3: telling you why I.
Speaker 2: Drive very specific, very specific. I have a car with
Speaker 2: no blood stains in the bed.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't think there's I don't think there's
Speaker 3: any blood in my car.
Speaker 2: So actually there's kind of a lot of blood in
Speaker 2: the back und anyway, whatever with roadkill, it's fine. So
Speaker 2: by this way, you put it in the car because
Speaker 2: it's a truck. Else you put your roadkill.
Speaker 3: Is this because you read cab you read too, and
Speaker 3: now you're interested. Now you're in.
Speaker 2: I like fresh roadkill, Molly. I would not feed it
Speaker 2: to a hawk. I feed it to people.
Speaker 3: All right, we move on.
Speaker 1: Anyway, you've made a little weird now, Patrick, So there's
Speaker 1: a lot of blood in the car.
Speaker 2: Okay, there's a lot of probably a lot of blood
Speaker 2: in his car.
Speaker 3: But there's a lot of normal reasons why there might be.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, of course. Well, no, he's he's just abducting
Speaker 2: security guards.
Speaker 3: It's just a serial killer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's just a serial kill. By this point, Patrick
Speaker 2: Goodenough had tied Lewis to five fatal shootings, which was
Speaker 2: good but not good enough. He had also found seven
Speaker 2: wounded victims. In June of nineteen eighty nine, Pittman had
Speaker 2: enough to file attempted murder in civil damages against Lewis.
Speaker 2: This gave good enough public victim damage statements that he
Speaker 2: could use in his reporting. Right at this point, the
Speaker 2: victims have put out a public damage statement, so he
Speaker 2: can like theoretically write an article.
Speaker 3: So they're filing a civil suit, so they're not.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's filing criminal charges and a civil suit. His
Speaker 2: attitude is, we should charge this guy with murder and
Speaker 2: like with everything we can, we need to get him
Speaker 2: off the street. Right, That's what Pittman is trying to do, right.
Speaker 2: He wants to stop the guy, this guy from being
Speaker 2: able to shoot people. To figure it out, to agree
Speaker 2: to this, well, he files the charges.
Speaker 3: Right, they just have a different system because you can't
Speaker 3: do that here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I don't know the South African apartheid era,
Speaker 2: I don't know how that worked, right, I'm just reading
Speaker 2: what the reporting on it said. Right, But Pittman has
Speaker 2: these public victim damage statements, which now theoretically Patrick Goodenough
Speaker 2: can report on. But when he gets an article together
Speaker 2: his editor they have an editorial meeting that Goodenough isn't
Speaker 2: allowed in. But it's like very frantic. He can see
Speaker 2: people arguing and yelling, and then his editor says, no,
Speaker 2: you can't publish anything. So Patrick puts together a stripped
Speaker 2: down version of the article, one in which he does
Speaker 2: not name any names but just notes that charges have
Speaker 2: been brought against a security guard who was shooting a
Speaker 2: lot of local people. This too is refused from publication.
Speaker 2: During a phone call with Lewis, the killer boasted to
Speaker 2: the journalist, I'm in full production, full production, basically, I'm
Speaker 2: still working. Nothing about this has hurt me yet, okay.
Speaker 2: And so as all of this kind of like keeps
Speaker 2: winding its way through the courts, there's very little interest
Speaker 2: in the story. When a week later, Van Schure attends
Speaker 2: an inquest for shooting the year before in June of
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty eight.
Speaker 3: Now we're getting an inquest.
Speaker 2: Yes, he has occasionally involved in inquests, and in this
Speaker 2: particular shooting, he had arrived on scene to the site
Speaker 2: of a Wimpy bar, which is a chain of restaurants
Speaker 2: I think, and this one is by the beach, and
Speaker 2: a thirteen year old and a fifteen year old have
Speaker 2: broken into it searching for cash. Lewis had arrived and
Speaker 2: both kids had fled, terrified from the bearded demon now
Speaker 2: hunting them. Lewis caught the boys hiding in a bathroom.
Speaker 2: Unable to run away. He opened fire, hitting hitting the
Speaker 2: two kids seven times and killing one of them. I
Speaker 2: think he kills the thirteen year old. This is what
Speaker 2: really lights a fire under Patrick's ass because he's like,
Speaker 2: this guy's murdered children, and he confirms he starts like
Speaker 2: doing police. He goes physically on site and combs through
Speaker 2: records of every police shooting for the last couple of years,
Speaker 2: and he's able to confirm that Lewis has been on
Speaker 2: the site of more than two hundred and seventy silent
Speaker 2: alarm calls in recent years. That's a lot. He enlists
Speaker 2: other colleagues and they start trolling through inquest records and
Speaker 2: one by one they found more. They find more Lewis
Speaker 2: van Schure killings. Zola Sotfia twenty seven had been killed
Speaker 2: on November fifteenth, nineteen eighty seven. Sidwell Bomba Kobaka thirty seven,
Speaker 2: gut shot in June of nineteen eighty seven, Kukuile Nexo
Speaker 2: shot in the head and stomach. By the time he
Speaker 2: was done on his first day, Patrick had confirmed twenty
Speaker 2: two murders committed by Lewis van Schure. The cases all
Speaker 2: had chilling similarities. At each break in a single low
Speaker 2: value item had been removed. Van Schure was never questioned
Speaker 2: in court, just asked to submit statements that he had
Speaker 2: crafted to comply with the letter of the law. He
Speaker 2: always asserted he'd shouted a warning and claimed that he
Speaker 2: had fired in the direction of the suspects rather than
Speaker 2: at them. This was thin stuff to defend a man
Speaker 2: who had shot so many people, But South African judges
Speaker 2: had the right to close an inquest if they concluded
Speaker 2: there were no live witnesses who could provide added context,
Speaker 2: and since.
Speaker 3: Lewis was usually great way to get out.
Speaker 2: Ale, Yeah, to make sure there's no one else.
Speaker 3: I mean, murder can never really be prosecuted as long
Speaker 3: as you tell everybody who's there.
Speaker 2: Well, we got all the context. The guy who did
Speaker 2: the murder told us everything. So there's really nothing else
Speaker 2: to gain by a trial, you know, or by a
Speaker 2: court case.
Speaker 3: Cool good system.
Speaker 2: As it became clear one of the modern eras most
Speaker 2: prolific serial killers lived in their town, the Black Sash
Speaker 2: and good Enough's reporters were inundated suddenly with information. Heidi
Speaker 2: Holland writes, a massive dossier began to grow against the man,
Speaker 2: whose callous exploits read like a scene from a Dirty
Speaker 2: Harry script. She really likes, comparing this to Dirty Harry.
Speaker 2: I don't think it's very similar.
Speaker 3: I ran to do it more than once or twice.
Speaker 2: No, because also Dirty Harry specifically doesn't shoot people running away.
Speaker 2: Oh well, I guess he probably died. I need to
Speaker 2: rewatch that movie to say that.
Speaker 3: I've never seen a movie.
Speaker 2: Oh it's been a long time. Maybe he does shoot
Speaker 2: some people in the back. I wouldn't be surprised if
Speaker 2: he did. Anyway, I'm going to continue that quote. He
Speaker 2: ran a cross roofs entered dark buildings alone and unafraid,
Speaker 2: with his gun clasped in both hands, arrogantly admitting in
Speaker 2: court documents that he fired seven to eight or even
Speaker 2: ten shots at a time. To everyone's surprise, Van Sure
Speaker 2: himself contributed to the dragnet that was closing in around him.
Speaker 2: After he heard on the radio that investigators believed he
Speaker 2: had killed at least thirty four people, and around midnight
Speaker 2: one night, three days after shooting his latest and last
Speaker 2: victim dead, Lewis telephoned Dominic Jones with one of the reporters,
Speaker 2: to set the record straight. Number thirty nine, Pal was
Speaker 2: all he said. No, again, he's not a bright man.
Speaker 3: That's something that happens on like I don't know, like
Speaker 3: season seventeen police procedural.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but he just called jurors be like, shot another
Speaker 2: guy to EH number thirty nine, feeling fine. Heidi describes
Speaker 2: Lewis in this last period of impunity as the human
Speaker 2: avatar of the apartheid government, exuding a calm, macho era
Speaker 2: of competence and utterly certain violence meant to calm the
Speaker 2: white populace and frighten Black South Africans away from one society.
Speaker 2: He's a human wall. In the last months of his
Speaker 2: long killing spree, Lewis shot a person almost every week,
Speaker 2: and he killed one person almost every three weeks. But
Speaker 2: then in November of nineteen eighty nine, the fever pitch
Speaker 2: of media attention and protests prompted the local Attorney general
Speaker 2: to order an inquiry. This was one of the most
Speaker 2: significant criminal prosecutions of the late apartheid era, a sign
Speaker 2: that the consensus around this evil system had frayed irreparably.
Speaker 2: In nineteen ninety Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Lewis
Speaker 2: and his security firm recognized that the wind had shifted,
Speaker 2: and so did the local cops. In nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 2: Lewis was finally arrested and charged The final credible tally
Speaker 2: of his kills was thirty nine dead and dozens more injured.
Speaker 2: We will never have any clear idea of how many
Speaker 2: people this guy shot, but he kills at least thirty nine,
Speaker 2: which puts him up there. That is top one percent
Speaker 2: of serial killers, right.
Speaker 3: That is a lot, and at a kind of incredible pace.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like especially for three. Like if you hear a
Speaker 2: serial clearcuse like twenty people in thirty years, you're like, wow,
Speaker 2: that's one of the one of the big ones, you know.
Speaker 2: But Lewis is just cranking him out. He's yeah, he is.
Speaker 2: He's really a he's a workman like serial killer. You know,
Speaker 2: he's just putting in the hours. Molly, It's all about
Speaker 2: putting in the hours. Anyway. Here's ads Sabrina. His daughter
Speaker 2: was just twelve years old. And I'm not a serial killer.
Speaker 1: Alarming that this man.
Speaker 2: I just wanted to make I just wanted to make
Speaker 2: that clear.
Speaker 3: I forgot about Sabrina. Yeah, it's alarming.
Speaker 1: He has a daughter.
Speaker 3: I do not like that part.
Speaker 2: Oh you're not You're really not gonna like where her
Speaker 2: story goes? Oh good.
Speaker 3: Although throughout all of this he has like little contact
Speaker 3: with her right, and Sabrina has been with her mom.
Speaker 2: He has very little contact with her. Yes, you would
Speaker 2: think so. So. She's twelve years old in August of
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one when she learns via radio broadcast her
Speaker 2: father was accused of being one of the most prolific
Speaker 2: murderers in the country. She described herself as feeling almost
Speaker 2: dead because quote, I worshiped my father. I was very
Speaker 2: very upset. Well, yeah, and obviously Louis had not been
Speaker 2: super present, but also her mother and her brothers also
Speaker 2: they seem like they were assholes. Like I think her
Speaker 2: whole family kind of sucked. Ass Sabrina's really the only
Speaker 2: one who maybe doesn't.
Speaker 3: Her mom didn't kill like eighty guys.
Speaker 2: No, she she sure didn't. But she kind of likes
Speaker 2: him more because her mom is the one that's around
Speaker 2: all the time, and Louis shows up occasionally for like
Speaker 2: special visits.
Speaker 3: Right, sometimes we're twelve, like your mom grounds you is
Speaker 3: a bit who sucks and like your dad who shows
Speaker 3: up and takes you to the movies as cool.
Speaker 2: Again, she doesn't want, uh, Sabrina to see her dad
Speaker 2: at all, and sometimes he set up like secret visits,
Speaker 2: like would she Sabrina staying with a friend. He'll come
Speaker 2: over to sit and hang out with her. We really weird, grateful, weird. Yeah. Now,
Speaker 2: Sabrina had against her again, against her mother's wishes, started
Speaker 2: reconnecting with her dad in like the months or the
Speaker 2: year or so before he got arrested. She'd even started
Speaker 2: dressing like him and going barefoot to mimic his fashion sense.
Speaker 2: Her mother seems mostly to have wanted to try to
Speaker 2: keep her away from the topic, but the case quickly
Speaker 2: made her dad famous. She remembers the night that they
Speaker 2: found out about this. A cop friend of the family
Speaker 2: drops by and tells her her dad is a superhero. Oh,
Speaker 2: we are talking white people in apartheid South Africa. These
Speaker 2: are not a lot of thin on the ground, nice.
Speaker 3: Folks, melodramatic, but I felt bile rise in my chest.
Speaker 3: You said that.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah. But there is a massive level of popular
Speaker 2: support for Lewis during his trial from the white populace
Speaker 2: of East London. The BBC reports quote one entrepreneurial businessman
Speaker 2: printed bumper stickers with pictures of the security guard. They said,
Speaker 2: I love Lewis next to a heart full of bullet holes.
Speaker 3: The second half of that sentence was so much worse.
Speaker 2: There's like sometimes there's society. I'm gonna get in trouble.
Speaker 2: Since the trial occurred in the dying days of the
Speaker 2: apartheid regime, the justice system still favored a man like Lewis.
Speaker 2: He was ultimately charged with thirty nine murders, but only
Speaker 2: convicted of seven. The other thirty two killings were listed
Speaker 2: as justifiable homicides. Yeah, he should have been seven should
Speaker 2: be enough though, to put you away forever, right, like seven.
Speaker 3: Murders, it is right.
Speaker 2: No, that should be a long sentence. We're not gonna
Speaker 2: get one. Lewis was convicted. He was sentenced of something
Speaker 2: like ninety years, but he was allowed to serve them
Speaker 2: all concurrently, which means he was guaranteed pretty much guaranteed
Speaker 2: less than twenty years behind bars with good behavior. And
Speaker 2: he is a great prisoner. All the guards loved him,
Speaker 2: loved him, super popular with the white prison guards. Relatives
Speaker 2: of his victims were furious, and the case made it
Speaker 2: clear how much work the police had put into keeping
Speaker 2: Lewis free. The dead that good enough were able to
Speaker 2: uncover was just a fraction of the total, which we
Speaker 2: will never know. Many black families in East London never
Speaker 2: recovered the bodies of their family members. Marlene Muhumbi's brother
Speaker 2: Edward was killed by Van Schuan nineteen eighty seven. His
Speaker 2: body was thrown into an unmarked grave and the family
Speaker 2: was left unnotified. For Sabrina, her father's disgrace was a constant,
Speaker 2: confusing through line in her adolescence. In high school, she
Speaker 2: read an article about her dad and realized how little
Speaker 2: she understood him. She decided to She had a school
Speaker 2: project to do an article, to write about an evil
Speaker 2: man and what made them evil. And she's like, well,
Speaker 2: I'll write an article about my dad. And she gets
Speaker 2: a bunch of news clippings from the librarian about her father.
Speaker 2: But she decides not to write the piece because as
Speaker 2: she starts writing, and she can't not write defensively about
Speaker 2: her father, and she notes, most of my friends were
Speaker 2: blacks and colors by then, and I thought it would
Speaker 2: look like I was praising him. So she writes about
Speaker 2: Hitler instead. Oh, good, my dad with Hitler. Yeah, it's
Speaker 2: a lot easier to just write about Hitler. You're doing
Speaker 2: You're doing great hunting.
Speaker 3: Some point, this eighth gree English teacher should have said.
Speaker 3: You know what, I'm going to give you an A
Speaker 3: and I'm going to send you to the guidance count is.
Speaker 2: Going to give you an A here. You don't have
Speaker 2: to write an article about your dad.
Speaker 3: You don't have to do that.
Speaker 2: I'm very sorry that, you know, who never writes articles
Speaker 2: about their fathers? Sponsors of this podcast?
Speaker 1: You know, to do another adds Jesus.
Speaker 2: Sometimes I just in the zone, so if I just.
Speaker 3: Can't, I just love products and services.
Speaker 2: I just can't stop plugging.
Speaker 1: The shell for capitalism.
Speaker 3: I just love, you know so much.
Speaker 2: Sometimes when I go to bed, every time, when I
Speaker 2: go to bed, the only thing with me is Chumba casino.
Speaker 2: You know, it's it's it's my lover, my friend, my comfort.
Speaker 3: But I heard Toyotas have amazing sell value.
Speaker 2: Uh wait, is that is Toyota doing ads? Because if
Speaker 2: that's the case, what are we doing here, Sophie, Get
Speaker 2: me on the horn with the Toyota guys. I want
Speaker 2: to I want to tell the when to bring the
Speaker 2: highlux to the US. You know, do we have juice
Speaker 2: with Toyota? Now? Do we have some.
Speaker 1: Suggest you to the ad people for Toyota?
Speaker 2: That's never going to happen.
Speaker 3: Your show.
Speaker 2: Well, that's great.
Speaker 3: Every mom.
Speaker 2: Roberts.
Speaker 1: Some of them love to do an ad for Toyota
Speaker 1: or to Mobile, and they're like great, good to know.
Speaker 2: The problem is that Toyota people don't want the kinds
Speaker 2: of ads that I would do, which is the kinds
Speaker 2: of ads that will sell toyotas right, because there's no
Speaker 2: there's no car that has been used as successfully in
Speaker 2: as many insurgent conflicts and outright conventional wars in the
Speaker 2: world as the Toyota high Lux. You know, Toyota reliability
Speaker 2: is what you want to put one need.
Speaker 3: An ad plug, get back to the screw. I'm surprised
Speaker 3: I didn't have a high loox in Twisters.
Speaker 2: Oh, you're gonna ship a Trindo paid by Dodge.
Speaker 3: But don't you need a high Lux. Don't you need
Speaker 3: to make a technical to fight a tornado?
Speaker 2: No. Here's what's why I think it's realistic that they
Speaker 2: were all Rams and Twister because the Dodge Ram is
Speaker 2: the official truck of people with seventeen duys, and every
Speaker 2: character in Twisters has numerous duys like it is. These
Speaker 2: guys are Oklahoma storm chasers. Not a one of them
Speaker 2: has ever gotten behind the wheel sober, and that is
Speaker 2: appreciate for a dodge ram. Yeah, it's not safe to
Speaker 2: drive a dodge ram sober. You know you'll flip it.
Speaker 2: So back to the story, Yeah, of course. Sabrina insists
Speaker 2: that her mother and most of the rest of her
Speaker 2: close family were very racist, and I don't think she
Speaker 2: has to go to extreme measures to convince me of this.
Speaker 2: Sounds true to have turned out differently because some of
Speaker 2: her earliest memories were of the maid that her wealthy
Speaker 2: mother hired to raise her. The maid was a black woman,
Speaker 2: and Sabrina often called her mom and she's like, well,
Speaker 2: I grew up with this black lady basically raising me
Speaker 2: because my mom was busy all the time, and it
Speaker 2: just became very aware of how racist everyone in my
Speaker 2: family was. As a teenager, she becomes pregnant and it
Speaker 2: is with a child that is going to be mixed race,
Speaker 2: which is a real big deal in South Africa at
Speaker 2: the time, especially.
Speaker 3: Your dad as the racism murderer.
Speaker 2: Well, here's the thing. Her mom is furious. She claims
Speaker 2: that her dad, who is behind bars at this point,
Speaker 2: like calls her mom and is like be nicer to her.
Speaker 2: About this. She says her dad actually was always very
Speaker 2: supportive of her having a mixed race baby.
Speaker 3: Okay once again, and once again misjudged the killer.
Speaker 2: He's not bad about this. Her mom is, apparently though. Robert.
Speaker 2: She claims that a black friend of hers was the
Speaker 2: only person who listened to her and didn't judge her
Speaker 2: and like helped her decide, you know, to keep the kid,
Speaker 2: which she does now. Over time, her mother's racism began
Speaker 2: to grape more and more on her. Although it may
Speaker 2: have just been how controlling Beverly was, Sabrina was kind
Speaker 2: of the black sheep of the family. Her mother is
Speaker 2: this rich wlcoholic. Her half brothers take over a security
Speaker 2: firm that her mother started, and they give.
Speaker 3: She shouldn't be allowed.
Speaker 2: This family should be doing security.
Speaker 3: I know they're not guilty of this, They're not involved.
Speaker 3: I just should do it.
Speaker 2: She claims. They brag about being affiliated with Lewis before
Speaker 2: he gets convicted, So I think that's saying ass. Yeah. Now, Sabrina,
Speaker 2: you know, again kind of the black sheep, and claims
Speaker 2: she was basically a prisoner in her mother's home. Eventually,
Speaker 2: she reached out to the father of her child, who
Speaker 2: introduced her to a man named Gino, who promised that
Speaker 2: he had a solution to her issues. Murder.
Speaker 3: Is it a gun?
Speaker 2: No, it's a much more brutal murder than that. Now
Speaker 2: there are two versions of this story, maybe both have
Speaker 2: some truth. One is that Sabrina wanted to stage a
Speaker 2: murder that looked random, like a robbery gone wrong, so
Speaker 2: she could take her inheritance and be free. The other
Speaker 2: is that she was just so disgusted by her mom's
Speaker 2: racism that she felt her mother had to die. I
Speaker 2: don't find that last one entirely credible. It's poetic, Yeah,
Speaker 2: maybe maybe.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm sure that's maybe something that she tells
Speaker 3: herself as part of this justification is working up to it,
Speaker 3: but it's mostly because like, your mom's being a bitch.
Speaker 2: Your mom's kind of a bitch, and you want her money,
Speaker 2: right probably? Probably? Yeah, And it's weird. I also think
Speaker 2: maybe she's not super well because there's interviews where she claims, like,
Speaker 2: on the last day of her mom's life, she wanted
Speaker 2: to give her a nice goodbye and tell her she
Speaker 2: loved her and thank her. Down gets you're having a
Speaker 2: man slash her throat. What it's going on. You her
Speaker 2: do her.
Speaker 3: Favorite park one last time.
Speaker 2: You want to go on a walk, mom, don't mind
Speaker 2: the guy looming in the corner. Yeah, it's anyway. She
Speaker 2: also claimed that Gino threatened to kill her and her
Speaker 2: brother if they didn't do the killing after a while.
Speaker 2: And anyway, I don't know a lot of shady stuff here.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much I believe of these claims.
Speaker 2: But Sabrina did have her mother murdered. She hired a
Speaker 2: man to slit her throat and then came upon the
Speaker 2: body and called the authorities. The whole thing was found
Speaker 2: out almost immediately. Sabrina was sent to trial, where she
Speaker 2: was not consistent, claiming at times that her mother had
Speaker 2: loved her mixed race granddaughter and apologizing for what had happened. Still,
Speaker 2: she also became something of a rallying point from any
Speaker 2: of the Black East Londoners who'd spent years terrified of
Speaker 2: her father from the BBC. At her trial in June
Speaker 2: two thousand and two, Sabrina's admirers, the same South Africans
Speaker 2: we'd lived in fear of her father, crowded into the
Speaker 2: public gallery to commend her for striking a blow against
Speaker 2: racism by murdering her mother. Her lawyer, a black man,
Speaker 2: compared Sabrina's need to free herself from her mother's oppression
Speaker 2: to the plight of South Africa's freedom fighters under a
Speaker 2: part which I don't I don't even really know what
Speaker 2: to say about that.
Speaker 3: There's a lot going on, just like a lot of
Speaker 3: psychology going on here.
Speaker 2: There's a lot going on here. You're really feeling that
Speaker 2: rubber band effect of trauma from the apartheid years in
Speaker 2: this case.
Speaker 3: Has she had the baby or is she just like.
Speaker 2: Very she has. I think she's had the kid by
Speaker 2: this point. Because she's separate, she misses out on the
Speaker 2: kid's childhood, you know, but maybe I don't know.
Speaker 3: I just can't imagine a more like it's a visible symbol,
Speaker 3: right that, like this this man who was using apartheid
Speaker 3: to murder she has this mixed race child.
Speaker 1: And then he was like a chill grandpa. Yeah, he
Speaker 1: has kind of a chill great, well not quite serial
Speaker 1: killer grandpa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, killa grandpa. It's just a lot going on for
Speaker 3: port Sabrina. I just I don't know that I falter
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 2: No, No, I don't. I can't really blame her too much, Louis,
Speaker 2: and they didn't.
Speaker 3: They didn't have like forensic miles back then, so she
Speaker 3: didn't know that murder for hire never never said it
Speaker 3: never works.
Speaker 2: As much as we love hitmen and movies, no one
Speaker 2: has ever successfully gotten paid for a murder. It just
Speaker 2: doesn't happen. The only people involved in that industry are
Speaker 2: FBI agents and the mentally unsound. That's that's just it.
Speaker 2: That's the whole business. Now. Lewis publicly because there's a
Speaker 2: lot of articles interview him when his daughter goes to trial.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a huge famous trial, and Lewis is
Speaker 2: very publicly accepting of his granddaughter in Sabrina. I think
Speaker 2: for self serving reasons. For one thing, he's about to
Speaker 2: go up for parole, right, and so he wants wants
Speaker 2: to make it clear I'm not a racist. You know,
Speaker 2: I shot up a lack, but I'm not a racist. Yeah.
Speaker 2: He also he kept being like, if you let me
Speaker 2: out early, I'll be able to raise my granddaughter. Well,
Speaker 2: my daughters, you should be allowed. You should be raising
Speaker 2: a kid. What are you talking about?
Speaker 3: A judge to write up something special that says you.
Speaker 2: Can't do that you are not allowed to be anywhere
Speaker 2: close to children. In fact, when he was brought into
Speaker 2: court as a character witness to try to help mitigate
Speaker 2: his daughter's guilt, he just he spent all of the
Speaker 2: time defending himself and arguing for his parole.
Speaker 3: Look, I'm no a lawyer, This isn't legal advice, but
Speaker 3: if you ever need a character witness for a criminal proceeding, yeah,
Speaker 3: don't invite a serial killer.
Speaker 2: I would say, here's my legal advice, free legal advice
Speaker 2: for all you listeners out there. If you need a
Speaker 2: character witness for a court case, pick a guy who
Speaker 2: shot less than one hundred people. You know, not to
Speaker 2: I guess, never pick a guy who shot anyone, but
Speaker 2: certainly not one hundred people. That's the number, you know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess he does have sort of a
Speaker 3: unique lived experience when it comes to being a bad person,
Speaker 3: So he does have some perspective on that.
Speaker 2: I will say, as a journalist, if I were just
Speaker 2: looking for like critiques on shooting a guy in the dark,
Speaker 2: I would certainly call Lewis right. He seems to have
Speaker 2: been an expert in shooting people in the dark, and
Speaker 2: the back probably would be great at that job. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I don't think that's a job anyway. Him
Speaker 2: being a character witness does not work. She goes to prison.
Speaker 2: She's going to be there for like thirteen years. Lewis
Speaker 2: does twelve years, bars a little longer.
Speaker 3: Oh longer twelve.
Speaker 1: That math really adds up.
Speaker 2: And when he gets out, he'd been telling reporters as
Speaker 2: he was trying to get early released, I've got to
Speaker 2: raise my granddaughter. I want to be there for her.
Speaker 2: He immediately moves to a different city, and he doesn't
Speaker 2: even tell his daughter, does not adopt the grand doctor
Speaker 2: because none of it, gets married right away, gets married
Speaker 2: again to human woman, yes, some lady, and then he
Speaker 2: gets a job on a farm funded by a state
Speaker 2: project to provide poor black people with land and support
Speaker 2: for operating agricultural businesses.
Speaker 3: I have to go.
Speaker 2: South Africa. Baby apart, I's gone, but we're still fucked
Speaker 2: as hell.
Speaker 3: Oh so apart I'd ended while he was in jail.
Speaker 2: Yeah ninety four, Yeah.
Speaker 3: I lost. I lost track of our years. So he
Speaker 3: comes out into a different world.
Speaker 2: Very different world. But he gets he gets right to
Speaker 2: work scamming the government. So I will say I found
Speaker 2: an article some of the people who worked on that
Speaker 2: farm said he was a really good member of the team.
Speaker 2: He was very good at teaching people. He was good
Speaker 2: at scaring off thieves. But the person who makes all
Speaker 2: of these claims in this article, because he gets he
Speaker 2: gets removed, he gets forced out when there's news stories
Speaker 2: that are like, it's kind of fucked up. This guy's
Speaker 2: getting money meant for poor black people to like encourage
Speaker 2: them to farm, after you know, he murdered all those folks.
Speaker 2: The person who makes these claims that like, actually he
Speaker 2: was great and it's really bad that he had to
Speaker 2: leave is Patricia Nugumbalanga, who owned most of the farm,
Speaker 2: and intersperses her claims about how good Lewis was with
Speaker 2: anger at the fact that the government has not sent
Speaker 2: any more subsidies. And nugom Belang also faces criminal charges
Speaker 2: herself from a local security guard who accused her of
Speaker 2: beating him badly after he broke into a building on
Speaker 2: the farm. So I don't know how to parse this.
Speaker 2: I don't know if Lewis was a good worker or not,
Speaker 2: or if there's something weird about this lady. But the
Speaker 2: fact that he is on this farm causes an outroar
Speaker 2: when it gets published right and he is forced from
Speaker 2: the property. From the For the rest of his life,
Speaker 2: Lewis would be visited on occasion by reporters. He claimed
Speaker 2: at the end of his days to be quote happy
Speaker 2: and content and that ninety percent of the people who
Speaker 2: recognized him on the street supported what he'd done. But
Speaker 2: he also expressed disgust at the disgust at the new
Speaker 2: South Africa. Everything has changed people's attitudes, the service and shops.
Speaker 2: It's not the same, Yeah, I bet yeah. The only
Speaker 2: good news I can give you is that by July
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty four, father time caught up with the
Speaker 2: old bastard and did to him what the justice system wouldn't.
Speaker 2: A BBC reporter who visited him before his death noted
Speaker 2: that he had lost all his teeth and had both
Speaker 2: his legs amputated after a heart attack. Lewis fashion he
Speaker 2: accepted only the most brutal form of surgery for the BBC.
Speaker 2: When the surgeon carried out this procedure, Van Sure requested
Speaker 2: an epidural instead of a general anesthetic so he could
Speaker 2: watch them remove his legs.
Speaker 3: He's such a sick.
Speaker 2: You know what shine on to you crazy diamond. It's
Speaker 2: good to know them who you are. Right, it's an option, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess, I guess it's an option. Yes. It's very
Speaker 2: funny because he immediately.
Speaker 3: And hearing your fur saw through it's The.
Speaker 2: BBC article is super funny because it quotes him saying
Speaker 2: I was curious I saw them cutting they sawed through
Speaker 2: the bone, and speaking to the BBC World Service, Van
Speaker 2: Sure wanted to persuade us that he is not the
Speaker 2: monster that people say I am. That's not gonna do it. Man,
Speaker 2: you didn't have to tell anyone that part of the story.
Speaker 3: Why didn't the doctor say no?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 2: Man? Anyway, Lewis dies July twenty fifth, twenty twenty four.
Speaker 2: He just died due to complications from like a week ago. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: very recently.
Speaker 3: He said, robituary and you said that's hell.
Speaker 2: Yeah, who is this motherfucker? One relative of a victim
Speaker 2: told the BBC he got off easy, which I agree with. Sabrina,
Speaker 2: on the other hand, served out her time. She was
Speaker 2: noted by black inmates who served alongside her as being
Speaker 2: different from most of the other incarcerated whites. So it
Speaker 2: does at least seem like the not being a racist
Speaker 2: stuff was legitimate. Although she was sentenced to twenty five
Speaker 2: years for the murder of her mom, like her dad,
Speaker 2: she was released after twelve years or so of good behavior,
Speaker 2: and I wish her the best. Good luck Sabrina and.
Speaker 3: What happened to her child, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Wow, I'm gonna guess honestly, with this family, no good
Speaker 2: news is good news, right, Yeah, just.
Speaker 3: Send them just foster care At this point, that's never
Speaker 3: a good option. It's never better than a family place.
Speaker 3: But I think maybe in this case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, when your dad's yeah, the murder guy. Yeah, An,
Speaker 2: I didn't. I didn't like that that.
Speaker 3: I mean, I thought I thought it was going to
Speaker 3: be pretty bad when you told us that people were
Speaker 3: setting dogs heads on fire. Yeah, actually, long for more
Speaker 3: of that now.
Speaker 2: Every time when you're doing an apartheid South Africa story,
Speaker 2: it's basically always going to be the bleakest shit you've
Speaker 2: ever heard in your life. So that's good.
Speaker 3: Well, thanks, No good South African.
Speaker 2: Molly, you got any Oh my gosh, what do I
Speaker 2: have to plug?
Speaker 3: Oh? They're letting me make a podcast now, Robert?
Speaker 2: Oh good? Really wait, who's doing that?
Speaker 3: Somebody? Very foolish weird little guys. By the time this
Speaker 3: comes out will be out one maybe two episodes, you'll
Speaker 3: be able to go and listen to them. You're gonna
Speaker 3: love them. It's it's a it's s very uplifting kind
Speaker 3: of like this show just a lot of guys just
Speaker 3: doing normal stuff that's not upsetting. Yay uh it's me, Hi,
Speaker 3: I'm them, I'm the problem. It's me more horrible stories
Speaker 3: for your ear holes. No, I really do think people
Speaker 3: are gonna like it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, excellent, excellent. I do too, Mollie, I really do.
Speaker 1: It's very it's amazing, and it's just it's like a
Speaker 1: little creepy Crawley n bedtime horror story and you're in
Speaker 1: and it's amazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Some people have asked, like always it like behind the
Speaker 3: Bastard where there's like a guest, and I think we
Speaker 3: ultimately decided that sort of a spooky bedtime story vibe
Speaker 3: was a little bit better. So it's just me telling
Speaker 3: you a story about something terrible, yeah, but like a
Speaker 3: fun way funny.
Speaker 2: And I assume you will probably also tell them less
Speaker 2: about the film Twisters.
Speaker 1: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: You know, I think by the time I record the
Speaker 3: second episode, I will have seen Twisters, so maybe I
Speaker 3: can work that inside.
Speaker 2: If you really want to be prepped for the podcasting game,
Speaker 2: like I am Molly, you got to watch Twisters and
Speaker 2: then you need to go back and watch the O. J.
Speaker 2: Simpson Show, where what Ross from Friends je all the time?
Speaker 2: It's so funny. Ross from Friends always watching, always a
Speaker 2: good time. That's great, is great. No Ross from Friends though,
Speaker 2: but that's probably for the best.
Speaker 1: I wish I had my own Gary from Beep in
Speaker 1: my life, in the form of a dog who could talk.
Speaker 2: I almost said Ross from Friends doesn't have like Armando
Speaker 2: Iannucci vibes. But actually he could have been in the
Speaker 2: Death of Stalin. All right, I could have cast You
Speaker 2: could have cast Ross from Friends with some like Fadings,
Speaker 2: elderly Soviet deureaucrat. Yeah, he could, he could do it.
Speaker 2: He could do it.
Speaker 1: I think the range I think I would like to
Speaker 1: leave now. Okay, podcast is over you well, I Love
Speaker 1: you by Behind the Bastards is a production of cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our
Speaker 1: website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts,