Facebook rapist suspect on his way to Durban

Caryn Dolley

Members of the Hawks are expected to transport the man dubbed the Facebook rapist to Durban today.

Police pounced on the man known as Thomas Bester while he was allegedly kidnapping a woman near Joburg last weekend.

He had managed to evade officers around the country for months until he was arrested in an Alberton house where the woman was being held.

But after the arrest, police did not realise he was one of their most wanted suspects until two days later, when Bester, who has at least 13 aliases, phoned an officer working on the case to say he had been arrested.

The date of his next court appearance is yet to be finalised.

Bester, 22, is suspected of having committed dozens of crimes in Cape Town, Durban and Gauteng, including the murder of a model in Cape Town last month and the rapes of two models in Durban about two months ago. Yesterday Neville Eva, the case’s investigating officer, said police received information that Bester was in Joburg on Wednesday, but by the afternoon they lost track of him.

On Friday Bester phoned Anton Booysen, KwaZulu-Natal head of the psychologically motivated crimes unit, saying he had been arrested on Wednesday. It was his third call to Booysen. Eva said it was after this third call that police realised the suspect arrested in Alberton was Bester.

“What he did in Alberton is still very vague at this stage, but he was caught in the act of a kidnapping a woman,” he said.

According to officers, he had given police a different name when taken into custody. The Hawks, police and community organisations had been trying to track Bester for months. Eva said police were trying to correlate the cases from around the country involving Bester.

National police spokesman Vish Naidoo said so far at least 30 cases had been opened against Bester.

Yesterday the mother of a woman Bester allegedly had raped and stabbed in Durban in August said she and her daughter were relieved he had been caught.