CLOSE to four years of painstaking police work reaped valuable rewards when Empangeni’s notorious ‘sugar cane killer’ was slammed with five life terms and an additional 42 years incarceration.
Sentence was passed down today by the Honourable Judge Nompumelelo Radebe in the Mtunzini High Court.
The accused Ntokozo Shumbuzo Mthimkhulu (36) of Emadaka Reserve was responsible for a reign of terror in 2010 when he lured unsuspecting woman from the Empangeni taxi rank to nearby cane fields where he raped, robbed and murdered his victims.
Members of the Richards Bay Organised Crime Unit together with State Prosecutors presented a water-tight case which lead to a conviction deemed as ‘wonderful’ by families of the deceased, who had packed the court room.
As Mthimkhulu was lead away shackled for transfer to the Kokstad Maximum Security Prison where he will serve out his sentence, the gallery hurled abuse at him, calling him ‘Satan’.
After leaving the court members of the prosecution team joined family of the victims to lay flowers at the scenes where the bodies had been found.
Read the full report in the Zululand Observer Monday edition.
* Watch the video of families paying tribute at the scenes where Empangeni’s ‘sugar cane’ serial killer murdered his victims
