Nomaxabiso Xhotyeni vividly remembers the day Facebook rapist and murderer Thabo Bester walked into her Table View hair salon in Cape Town, flanked by five young women, in April 2011.
It was one of the many occasions that police missed an opportunity to stop Bester in his tracks.
“It’s not a day I can easily forget as everything about that day was so dramatic. Even the staff remember it like it had just happened. A conman tried to trick us into doing five girls’ hair without paying a cent.
“He earlier called from the Commodore Hotel at the V&A Waterfront where he was staying with some models that he wanted to bring to the salon."
Bester, who had introduced himself as “Thomas K Bester, CEO of TV channel MTV Base”, soon walked into the upmarket African Hair Kingdom.
“I remember when they walked in, we were stunned by their looks. Bester was a very charming, well-spoken and handsome guy ... everyone gushed about his looks. He gave me his business card with the name Thomas K Bester on it. I kept the business card as a souvenir until I moved houses a few years ago. I decided to discard it after thinking about why on earth why I keeping a business card of a murderer and rapist.”
Xhotyeni described the girls with Bester as “beautiful”. “They looked wealthy, as some carried MacBooks, which I knew were very expensive. He wanted us to do their hair as they were due for a photoshoot at 3pm that day.”
Xhotyeni said she had an “uncomfortable feeling” about Bester after he disappeared without notice and left the women at the salon for hours despite his promise to settle the bill.
“When I called him, he said he was on his way to the airport to get some of his luggage and said he would be back soon. Hours went by. I told my staff to suspend doing the girls' hair as we were not sure if he was going to come back. Three of the girls settled their own bill, but two couldn’t and insisted Bester would pay.”
Her suspicions grew after she called Bester for a second time after the 3pm deadline for the “photoshoot”.
“This time he said he was walking up the street, looking for an internet café so he could pay me. I thought it was strange.
“ We hadn’t discussed the final bill or exchanged bank account details ... yet he was ready to pay me via EFT. I became more curious and started searching for his name on Google, but the only Thomas K Bester that came up on internet search was a white man.”
When Bester finally showed up just before closing, he threw a tantrum and told Xhotyeni he didn’t have money to pay as his wallet was with his lost luggage.
“This man who was initially calm and charming now looked so agitated and was pacing up and down ... he even suggested that I call cops on him when I demanded payment.”
The rest of the bill was eventually paid through contributions from the women and a cab driver.
The police said the guy that I had tipped them off about had killed his girlfriend in Milnerton
“The most outrageous call he made while I was demanding my money was when he started to arrange for a private jet to fetch him and the girls from Cape Town. What was contradictory about the whole thing is that a man who was clearly living the high life couldn’t afford to pay for hair. I thought he was bluffing about the private jet, but it turned out that coming to Cape Town they apparently flew on a private jet, according to these girls.”
But what disturbed Xhotyeni most was that one of the girls told her she had been raped by Bester the previous night.
“As she sat there, I noticed that she was crying. But it was after she and another girl refused to go back with Bester that I tried to get her to talk, and that’s when she confessed that he had raped her the previous night in his hotel room. The other girl said she also had sex with Bester as he called them to his room one by one, but she thought this was acceptable behaviour in the modelling industry.”
When Xhotyeni tipped off the Table View police about the alleged rape “they told me they can’t act on him unless there is a formal case opened against him”. A few months later, in September, the police came back to her after Bester was arrested for murdering his 26-year-old model girlfriend Nomfundo Tyulu at a B&B in Sunset Beach.
“The police said the guy that I had tipped them off about had killed his girlfriend in Milnerton. They wanted to know if I might have any more information on him, but I didn’t have much as that was the first and only encounter I had with Bester. When I called the girl that had been raped and I informed her of the murder, encouraging her to come forward, she told me that she couldn’t as she had never told her parents about the rape.
“Now I wonder how many vulnerable women that were raped by this guy are too scared to come out, let alone those he conned.”
Police had not responded to requests for confirmation on Xhotyeni's version of events at the time of publication.
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