Sex workers lured by 'charmer boy never returned'

Every Sunday for the past six weeks a young man has allegedly picked up sex workers on the streets of downtown Johannesburg. 

None of them have returned. 

On Sunday a worker at a building on Stevenson Street next to the Faraday taxi rank picked up an unbearable smell and alerted a business owner on the premises. 

Six bodies were discovered, one in a room inside the building, another in an industrial skip bin while two others were found in separate wheelie bins. The last two bodies were found in two separate vans parked inside the building. 

Police arrested a 21-year-old man who works as a panel beater on the premises. 

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A sex worker who has been in the area for a decade said the young “charming” man would come to where they operate and ask to take one of the girls. 

“He would say let us go for a short time and ask how much you want. If I say R50 he would say ‘let’s book a place, I will give you R250’. He would take a girl every Sunday without fail. None of them came back,” she said. 

“Some of the girls had left with their phones. We would call them and the phone would ring for two or three days and end up going off. He used different cars but we knew him as the light-skinned young man. He was handsome, a gentleman, a charmer boy,” she said.

Another sex worker told how in May she escaped from the man when she realised something was up. 

He allegedly picked her up and promised to take her to a hotel in Rosettenville. But as they reached the building where the bodies were found the man started slowing down his vehicle.

“I knew that there is no hotel in this neighbourhood so I grabbed the steering wheel to stop him. As he tried to reach for an object next to his seat I got out and rushed to security guards. That is how I escaped,” she said.

According to sex workers, the first woman to disappear was reported missing at the Jeppe police station but very little to no effort was made to find her.

“The person who opened that case informed the police that where the girl was taken there are CCTV cameras and the guy who had picked up the girl was driving a branded car. Police did not go to that building. Instead, they called the woman who reported the case asking if she had seen this guy. We then lost confidence that the police were serious about finding our colleague.

“Every time any of the girls disappeared we printed her picture and placed them on the walls of buildings where we work,” said a sex worker. 

The woman gave Sowetan a list of six women who had gone missing over the past weeks.

Sowetan understands that the suspect was handed over to the police by his father. The worker who picked up the bad smell found the first body in one of the rooms. He then called the father of the suspect. The two went to fetch the young man at his place and handed him over to the Johannesburg central police station. Police then rushed to the building where they discovered the remaining five bodies.

The building, which used to produce safety boots, is in a quiet industrial area next to the M2 bridge.

Next to the gate leading to where the bodies were found were young boys washing taxis yesterday. Taxi drivers said they had not noticed  the smell and were shocked at what was found in the building.

Police spokesperson Brig Brenda Muridili said the 21-year-old, who was arrested on Sunday, was seen on October 2 with the woman whose body was the first to be found in the building.

“She was never seen again until her body was discovered on Sunday morning. The clothes she was wearing match the description of one of the missing persons reported recently,” Muridili said.

She said the suspect will be charged with six counts of murder.

As police pieced together evidence yesterday, two groups of people came hoping to find out if their loved ones had been discovered by the police. Both women had gone missing for three weeks. 

Yesterday, at the corner Durban and Polly, Anderson and End streets, where the sex workers operate, was just a normal day. Sex workers were sitting on the side of the road, some speaking on their phones while others stood looking for clients. In one of the buildings two young men were preparing meals that are sold to the sex workers.

In almost all the buildings at this busy intersection there was a picture of a young girl who is missing. Sex workers said school girls had come on Sunday and posted the picture hoping someone would locate her.

dlaminip@sowetan.co.za