David Thabo Simelane was born in Swaziland in 1956 and grew up in Ngcoseni. He is a Swazi serial killer who caused havoc from the late 1990s until late 2001. His murder spree began in 1997, around the time he was released from prison for a prior conviction of rape. It was one of the many times, about 18, since 1976 that he had been convicted of robbery and rape. The last conviction was significant because he would later claim that he had robbed the woman but he had never raped her. For him, the 28 women and children he would later kill were revenge for the wrongful conviction. Simelane lured most of his victims to the woods of Malkerns with job prospects where he would then kill and bury them in shallow graves. He seemed to have had an accomplice called Vilakati on whose farm the first six bodies were uncovered in July 2000. Two Mozambicans he hired to dig the graves tipped off the police who then launched a manhunt for Vilakati. They found him eight months later and chased him through a maize field before they shot him dead. After his arrest, Simelane led the police to shallow graves in Manzini where 45 bodies were found, including several pregnant women. Many of them had been strangled but some had been stabbed with a knife. Simelane was found guilty of a total of 28 murders and acquitted of six. He was sentenced to death in 2011; seven years after his trial began. A total of 83 witnesses testified against him. He claimed that he had been tortured and coerced to confess to the murders.
