The family of a man whose body was used by the notorious rapist and murderer, Thabo Bester, to escape from prison has demanded to know how their son died.
The family of a man whose body was used by the notorious rapist and murderer, Thabo Bester, to escape from prison has demanded to know how their son died.
Bester managed to break out of the Mangaung correctional facility last year after faking his own death by setting fire to his cell.
A body was found inside the cell, which was initially believed to be Bester’s but it has now been identified as belonging to Katlego Bereng Mpholo.
In a sit down interview with Eyewitness News, Mpholo’s mother and grandmother said that they last saw their son in March.
A year later, the agonising search for his whereabouts has finally come to a tragic end.
Far from the hustle and bustle of the Bloemfontein CBD lies this unassuming suburb.
This where is Katlego Mpholo grew up, living in a back room at his grandmother Matsietsi Ralilateng’s house.
His belongings are still there, but according to Ralilateng, she has not seen him since March last year.
“How did my son’s corpse land in prison? How did his corpse make it past all those gates? Those men who were here said that Nandipha Magudumana fetched those corpses from there but what I can’t seem to understand is how that mortuary discharged those corpses to someone who is not related to them.
Sitting right outside her grandson’s back room with his picture placed on her lap, she exhaled deeply.
She told Eyewitness News that as the Thabo Bester saga unfolded on every news platform in the county, she had a hunch that her grandson was among the bodies used in Bester’s prison break.
“From the moment they started revealing the corpses, I just had a feeling that my grandson is one of them. I even suspected that the other corpse that was found in the water was his but I especially suspected the burned one. I would watch the news, crying, while also looking at his picture, hoping that he would appear on the TV.”
The police have told the family that their son had collapsed in the city and then died in hospital before he was taken to a mortuary.
But the family said that that did not explain how his charred body ended up in the Mangaung maximum prison.
By: Veronica Mokhoali
For more information visit: ewn.co.za
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