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South African women are concerned about Thabo Bester, the “Facebook Rapist,” who escaped a maximum security prison by faking his death.
Women’s rights groups cannot believe that Thabo Bester is on the loose, and South African authorities are on a manhunt looking for a rapist who supposedly killed himself.
No information is available on how long ago Bester escaped from the Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein, and it is not clear how exactly he escaped. Reports, however, say the prisoner faked his own death. Investigators’ theories are that he killed someone or found a dead body with an applied blunt force trauma to the head and lit it on fire.
Some time ago, authorities at the prison found the burnt body in his cell and assumed it was him.
Amidst the confusion, Bester made a clean getaway. As a freedman, Bester is reportedly roaming around South Africa and talking to women.
His extravagant jailbreak has South African police wondering how he did it.
“At this point, our priority is to find this fugitive of justice and establish exactly how he faked his death,” police spokeswoman Athlenda Mathe told AFP on Monday.
Some have photographed a person they believed to be the Facebook Rapist grocery shopping in an affluent Johannesburg suburb. Women have said the convicted rapist has been contacting them on social media.
Bester’s reputation as “The Facebook Rapist” is self-explanatory. Still, for further context, he is a convicted man serving a life sentence in prison for the rape, robbery, and murder of a model he victimized in 2012.
He has allegedly lured many victims on the social media platform, where he raped and robbed them.
The Ministry of Justice and Correctional Services is asking the public for answers on Bester’s whereabouts.
“No stone will be left unturned in getting to the bottom of Thabo Bester’s escape, and there will be serious consequences for any party involved,” the ministry said in a statement.
The smooth criminal also ran a scam operation inside his prison cell under a fake name.
South Africa, which has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world, has been a statistically unsafe place for women. The South African Police Service reported 42,289 rape cases in 2020-2021.
However, many cases probably have not been reported, meaning the number of rape cases is likely much higher.