Bizarre murder

In February this year, six people were found guilty of the murder of Thandiwe “Betty” Ketani (37), a mother of three, in 1999. Three of the accused were sent to jail and the other three will probably be sentenced in May. In the mean time the South African prosecuting authority has started the process of having the two alleged murder “master minds” extradited by Australia, where they now live.

One suspect is Monique Neeteson-Lemkes, an Australian air hostess, who was the manager of her dad’s upmarket Cranks Thai restaurant in Rosebank, Johannesburg where Betty was employed at the time of her death. The other is also a former South African, Mark Lister, who later left the country to join the Australian Police.

The cold case of Betty’s murder was only cracked in 2012 by the fluke discovery of a lengthy remorseful typewritten confession about the murder, by a private detective, Carrington Laughton, after which two other alleged conspirators also confessed to the police. The letter was found, under a carpet, by new home owners in the South of Johannesburg, where Laughton apparently left it years ago.

South African star prosecutor Herman Broodryk SC submitted an indictment to the Johannesburg court in 2012, alleging that in 1999 Monique enlisted her private detective boyfriend, two corrupt policemen, and three others to kidnap and kill Betty, who apparently at that time launched a claim against Cranks Restaurant at the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration, following a labour dispute. Monique, at that stage, accused Betty of stealing money from the restaurant.

The conspirators, tasked with “getting rid” of Betty, kidnapped her, took her to a remote location just off the R59 highway in Vereeniging, severely assaulted and stabbed her with a long, thin steel rod behind one ear and left her for dead at the roadside.

Somehow she survived.

When the gang discovered this three weeks later, Laughton and the two corrupt policemen brothers, Carel and David Ranger, went to the Kopanong Hospital where a “mildly brain-damaged” Betty was recovering. They apparently presented themselves as medical staff, rented a wheelchair to make their presentation to the Kopanong hospital credible and kidnapped Betty.

Betty was probably killed later that night and her body cast in concrete and buried in the garden of one of the gang members. In 2004, some members of the gang decided to move the body. They broke the concrete in which Betty’s remains were in-casted, loaded the pieces into bags and dumped them in a public tip. Years later, police only recovered a few small bone fragments of Betty.

According to the newspaper The Australian, which contacted Mark Lister and Monique for comment about their alleged involvement in the murder. Lister said he had done surveillance work for Laughton, but denied any role in Ketani’s alleged kidnapping and murder. Monique, who left South Africa in 2000, also denied harming Betty, calling her a “nice person” and “probably the best cook Dad ever had”. She told The Australian she wouldn’t return to South Africa to clear her name. “I’ve been tried in the media already. I’ll never get a fair trial,” she said.

* Journalist Alex Eliseev, who is writing a book about the case, says he would be surprised if anyone is telling the whole truth. “We may never know why Betty Ketani was killed, how it escalated from thefts from a restaurant to kidnapping and then murder.”