The Disturbing Case Study of Jack Mogale: West End Serial Killer
Jack Mogale was born in Westonaria, South Africa in September 1968. He was also known as West End Serial Killer. He was accused of more than 50 crimes of which Nine kidnappings, nineteen rapes, and sixteen murders were reported. His crime span was around one year between 2008-2009. He was finally convicted on 17 February 2011.
Early Life of Jack Mogale
Mogale was born into a regular African family and was the eldest of all and had a younger sister. He got married and had two children however his wife passed away in 2001. His neighbors never found him to be criminal-minded, instead, he was extremely friendly to everybody around. The priests in the church found him to be a great believer in Jesus Christ and he used to attend services on all Sundays.
Modus Operandi of His Crimes
Jack Mogale’s method of committing the crime was almost the same in all the victims. He either strangled or killed them with blunt force injury. Nineteen of the cases included sexual assault. Most of his crimes took place near his residence at a shed in Westonaria and Lenasia in the south of Johannesburg.
He never really disposed of the bodies and left them on the ground. His neighbors saw him with different women occasionally at his shed but they were all mistaken to be his girlfriends as he did not engage in balanced relationships post his wife’s death.
Criminal Period
Between 2008-2009 he killed 15 women and a child. The rest of them completed the figure around twenty to thirty, fourteen of which were raped.
His first victim was a woman to whom he offered herbal tea for her uterine problems disguising himself as a preacher from Zion Christian Church(ZCC). He forced her into intercourse suggesting that it would cure her problem and exorcise the spirits from her uterus. When she was retracted back to her senses she realized that the herbal tea contained some sort of drug that made her hallucinate.
The second woman was raped and thrown near the shack and she was dead by the next day. He approached the third woman in the disguise of a prophet and gave her a lift. Instead of dropping her home, he took her to a veld near his residence and attacked her. Twenty-four hours later when she regained her conscience, her jaw had been dislocated and wounds were covered with maggots.
He lured three to five more women from the nearby subdivisions, in disguise as priests, prophets, holy men, etc. Some of them were dead the moment he attacked while some of them survived. Fourteen of the rape cases among all the victims were people whom he knew. He offered them marriage and long-term relationships while luring them to his home.
He used their nylon stockings or sometimes the rope from his shack to strangle them. If he could not find both the weapons, he used blunt weapons to stab his victims. His shack had no evidence of body fluids as he cleaned it crystal clear post the murder. However, the dump area did.
Despite leaving all the evidence loose, ironically Mogale never accepted that he committed these crimes. All the evidence and facts were investigated by the police with the help of the victims who survived his cruelty. He claimed that the police, witnesses, and his common-law wife Charlotte Manaka were conspiring against him.
His crime spree went undetected as most of the victims were young students who did not have parents, who weren’t bothered much as they were used to their usual late comings.
Forensic Analysis
The breakthrough in the case was when vaginal and cervical swabs of three of his victims who survived the rape were collected and sent for analysis. Another victim who was dead had a used condom next to her body from which swabs were collected too. All of them on DNA testing pointed towards Mogale.
Even with the presence of such strong evidence, he rejected all the accusations against him repeatedly stating that he was innocent. The victim from whom the swab was collected initially testified against him. However, he stated that they both were involved in a consensual sexual relationship and nothing more than that.
The rest of them he claimed he had no idea about. With multiple trials across the courts of Westonaria, he was sentenced to 16 life sentences which are to run concurrently along with 23 years without the possibility of parole on March 17, 2011.
