Even though Johannesburg police discovered the murder of Manolis Veloudos last April, only recently did they consider that he might be a fifth possible victim in the recent string of anti-gay murders which have plagued the South African capital over the last ten months. However two details stick out in Veloudos’s murder—the fact that he was killed in a way very different from the other four men and the fact that the police botched his investigation with stunning incompetence.
Like the other four men, police found no signs of forced entry which suggests that they all knew willingly invited their killer into their homes. Veloudos was bound and murdered and had very little stolen, just like the other victims; he also had an online dating profile like a few of the other victims. However, Veloudos died after getting beaten to death with his laptop, rather than getting strangled like the four other victims.
Police collected DNA evidence and arrested a suspect, but the suspect’s DNA did not match the DNA they found, so the police let him go. Also, the victim’s niece, Evita Veloudos, gave CCTV footage of her uncle with an unknown man on the night of the murder to the police, but the investigating officers lost the footage.
The police (in)action on these cases has gotten so bad that even the local Commission on Gender Equality has criticized the Department of Justice for dawdling. The commission’s spokesperson said, “Cases of this nature are not taken seriously by the police or the justice department.”
It’s also surprising that the police have not yet had any luck following up on the personal e-mails traded between the victims and their potential hook-ups before their deaths. Surely commonalities between their inboxes and cell phone records would create a trail to possible suspects.
Andreusz
“The commission’s spokesperson said, ‘Cases of this nature are not taken seriously by the police or the justice department.'”
Wrong. Cases of ANY nature are not taken seriously by the police or the justice department.
South Africa has the most incompetent police force in the world. The average policeman is too illiterate to take a statement, and has no idea how to take fingerprints or why they are useful.
Jperon
I live in South Africa for a time and the police there are not just useless but often involved in criminal activities themselves. In a period of just over a year my partner and I experienced three armed attacks on our home. The third time they grabbed my partner and handcuffed him and tried to shoot me. I smashed a large widow making them think I shot at them and they fled. But when police arrived we learned that the handcuffs that were put on my partner were police issue. Members of the police force were statistically more likely to be involved in armed robberies, bank robberies, murders, etc., than members of the public.
TommyOC
Just to note: Johannesburg is not the capital of South Africa, as Queerty’s phrasing “the South African capital” would suggest. While the city is the capital of Gauteng province, calling it a “South African capital” is akin to calling Carson City – capital of Nevada – “the American capital.”