Homicide Inc. - Compelling True Crime Stories
Homicide Inc. - Compelling True Crime Stories
Episode 85 | Infidelity, Greed, a Pregnant Lover and a Hitman | The Shocking Murder of Tshegofatso Pule
In June 2020, 28 yr-old Tshegofatso Pule was found hanging from a tree in Roodepoort, South Africa. She was beautiful and 8 months pregnant at the time. In a nation where gender-based violence and 'femicide' is rampant, this wasn't completely a new trend. But the fact that her boyfriend and father of her unborn child was behind this slaying shocked the country.
After an investigation, police established that Ntuthuko Shoba was responsible for her murder by hiring a hitman to kill her. But why would he do that? It had to do with the fact that Pule wasn't his only girlfriend and his other girlfriend was about to inherit a very large sum of money. ★
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“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees”
When Billie Holiday sang these mournful words, she sang of the African-American victims of lynchings during the Jim Crow era. She sang of the oppressed and downtrodden; those members of society who were not even afforded the right to life. More than 80 years later, this is the plight of many South African women. In South Africa, a woman is killed every four hours. There have been countless unanswered calls for reform, but the murder of brought the discussion of gender-based violence back to the forefront of the collective consciousness of all South Africans.
On a frigid morning in 2020 in Roodepoort, a town on the west of Johannesburg, South Africa, a strange fruit hung from a tree. A resident of the quiet town noticed this strange fruit as it was whipped by the bitter winter wind. As the tree drew the passer-by closer, what he saw was the embodiment of pure evil. There, hanging from the tree was the body of a young woman. Her body, which had once burgeoned with expectant life, now hung bloodied and broken. She had been dead for a while, and the innocent life she had cradled within her womb had suffered the same fate.
The police made quick work of discovering the identity of the woman. The woman was Tshegofatso Pule. She had been missing for four days and her family was fraught with worry. At the time of her disappearance, she was 8 months pregnant, and her family feared that she and her unborn baby may have met a terrible fate. Tragically, their worst fears were confirmed when police notified them that Tshegofatso and her unborn baby were found hanging lifeless from a tree.
In a country where the murder of women is endemic, Tshegofatso’s murder could well have become another statistic. However, it was social media that elevated this case to the level of importance it deserved. The hashtag “JusticeForTshego” trended on Twitter. The public could not believe that even those most vulnerable – that even expectant mothers – were not spared from the violence.
An autopsy was performed on Tshegofatso, and it was determined that she had died from both a gunshot wound to the chest and the pressure to her neck when she was hung from the tree. The scene did not provide investigators with a whole lot to go on, so they decided to go back a few steps. They figured, if they could work out where Tshegofatso was last seen alive, they could ascertain how she ended up at that tree.
Investigators became wise to the fact that, when she disappeared, Tshegofatso was on her way to see her partner, Ntuthuko Shoba. Tshegofatso and Ntuthuko had been together since 2018. The couple had a somewhat causal relationship, but it seemed that Tshegofatso had hopes that, since they were expecting a baby girl, they would become a family. The couple had fallen pregnant in early 2019, but they had mutually agreed to terminate the pregnancy. When Tshegofatso fell pregnant again later that year, she decided that this time, she was keeping it. She must have been unsure of how Ntuthuko would react because she only let him know of the pregnancy when she was three months pregnant.
A reluctant Ntuthuko accepted Tshegofatso’s desire to keep the baby. He would, after lots of prodding from Tshegofatso, attend doctor’s appointments with her and provide financial assistance when needed. What he didn’t provide was any type of emotional availability. He seemed a bit disinterested and resentful of his circumstances. Despite how frayed their relationship was, they continued to date and it seemed like they might try to make a go of it.
So, when Ntuthuko heard of the murder of his girlfriend, he was happy to hand over CCTV footage of Tshegofatso leaving his apartment block. The CCTV footage showed Ntuthuko walking Tshegofatso out to a car that was waiting for her. He told investigators that she had organized for someone to pick her up and take her home. The last he saw of her was her entering the backseat of the car and the car driving away. According to Ntuthuko, what happened to her after that was a mystery to him.
As investigators delved deeper into figuring out who drove that mystery car, they never could have guessed that the answer would lead them only 500m from the crime scene. Investigators managed to get the license plate on that car from the CCTV footage. They linked the car to a man named Muzi Malepane. A man who also happened to live in Roodepoort.
Two weeks after Tshegofatso was found murdered, police made their first arrest. They arrested Muzi and brought him in to enlighten them on what happened that fateful night.
Unbeknownst to investigators, they had an ace up their sleeve. A piece of information that, when revealed to Muzi, would blow this whole case wide open. That piece of information was about how they managed to get the CCTV footage that led them straight to Muzi’s door. When Muzi found out that Ntuthuko gave the footage to the police, he was livid. He was so angry that he made a vow that if he ever saw Ntuthuko again, the consequences would be dire. It is probably not the smartest idea to reveal your murderous ideations to the police but, hey, Muzi is not exactly a rocket scientist.
See, the number one rule of co-conspirators is to never ever sell each other out. As we’ve learnt before, hell hath no fury like a co-conspirator scorned. Muzi decided then and there that if he was going down, then Ntuthuko was sure as hell going down with him. There’s more than enough space in this elevator buddy!
He told investigators of the sinister plot that took the life of two undeserving victims. Muzi revealed that he and Ntuthuko had actually known each other since high school. They were not particularly close, but Ntuthuko knew enough about Muzi to know that he ran in unsavoury circles. It is alleged that Muzi dealt in stolen cars and would also sell illegal alcohol during the period of the Covid-19 pandemic when South Africa had put a ban on alcohol and cigarette sales.
The two high school acquaintances did not necessarily run in the same circles. Ntuthuko was a financial analyst for the Johannesburg Stock Exchange and Muzi was a career criminal. Nonetheless, one month before Tshegofatso’s murder, the two old friends reconnected. How they reconnected is disputed but they both admit that Ntuthuko went to visit Muzi at his apartment in May of 2020. During their casual chat, Ntuthuko revealed that he had a little bit of a dilemma, and he needed some help taking care of a problem.
Turns out Ntuthuko was a two-timer. He was actually engaged to another woman who he’d been with for 13 years. His fiancée would not take too kindly to hearing that he had a bundle of joy on the way with another woman. And Ntuthuko needed to keep the fiancée sweet. She had just gotten an 8-million-rand inheritance (about $450 000). Ntuthuko wanted a piece of the windfall. He could not afford to have his fiancée leave him. His solution? To get rid of the cause of all of his worries: Tshegofatso and, more importantly, her unborn baby.
Ntuthuko initially offered Muzi less than 400 dollars to kill Tshegofatso. That is how much this financial analyst thought her life was worth. In the end, they settled on the grand price of less than $4000. With the price agreed upon, they started to concoct their sordid plan.
The first plan was for Ntuthuko to organize a bogus job interview for Tshegofatso at a McDonald’s. When she arrived for the interview, Muzi would kidnap her and kill her. For some or other reason, Tshegofatso did not show up to the interview and their plans were foiled.
Plan B: they decided that the next time Tshegofatso came over to Ntuthuko’s place, he would convince her that Muzi was an Uber driver who was there to take her home. Muzi would then take her to a bridge where he would hang her from the side in a staged suicide.
This time, the plan worked out perfectly. Well, almost. Tshegofatso was a bit suspicious of Muzi at first, but Ntuthuko assured her that everything would be fine. After she got into the car, Muzi drove to the bridge. The murderous duo had failed to consider how busy the bridge would be at that time of night. It would be almost impossible for Muzi to carry out the plan while evading notice. After driving past the bridge a couple of times, Muzi decided he really couldn’t be bothered with this whole murder plot thing. He was ready to call it a day and head home. On his way, he stopped at an open field and shot Tshegofatso in the chest. He loaded her back into the car and drove to a tree 500m from his home. That is where he decided to hang her body.
One can only imagine the paralyzing fear that Tshegofatso must have felt in those last moments. As she lay bleeding out in Muzi’s backseat, slowly losing her life source, she must have known that soon her body would not be able to shelter her little baby from the horror that followed. All that she could do was give her baby girl one last embrace before they drifted to eternal sleep. No one knows what lies beyond this life, but I can only hope that wherever they are, Tshegofatso and her baby experience the peace which they were denied in the world of the living. I hope that her baby is safely tucked close to her, content in the knowledge that her mommy never left her. Even in the afterlife.
When police confronted Ntuthuko, he of course denied it all. He admitted that he had met up with Muzi multiple times before Tshegofatso’s murder, but he claimed that he only went to see Muzi because he knew that the criminal would have some illegal cigarettes for him. Phone records told a different story. Police were able to link Ntuthuko to a cell number that made multiple calls to Muzi in the days leading up to the murder and on the evening that the murder took place. Police also confirmed that Ntuthuko went to see Muzi on the afternoon of the murder.
During trial, Ntuthuko argued that Muzi’s statements to the police were not only contradictory, but also that the statements were made out of spite. When first questioned by police, Muzi claimed that Ntuthuko was actually at the murder scene and that he was the one that had shot Tshegofatso and hung her up. He would later admit that he told this lie because he was angry at Ntuthuko. He wanted to tie Ntuthuko so closely to the crime that he had no chance of walking free.
Despite the fact that Muzi initially lied to police, the court found that his testimony was believable and that other circumstantial evidence (like the cell phone records) corroborated his story. In the end, Muzi pled guilty and got 20 years in prison. This low sentence was due to the fact that he cut a deal to testify against Ntuthuko in return for a reduced sentence.
Ntuthuko was convicted of murder for hire and received life in prison.
Ntuthuko’s conviction and lengthy sentence was bittersweet for a country that has already weathered so much struggle. It represented a small victory in the fight against gender-based violence and gave hope that, sometimes, the justice system does its job. Despite this small victory, many women are still waging a war that they are ill-equipped to fight on their own.
In the wake of Tshegofatso’s untimely death, mourners gathered in the streets. Clutched in their hands were pink balloons and candles as they sang a song that had been used to protest the apartheid regime so many years ago. “Senzeni na, Senzeni na,” rang from the crowds. “What have we done?” the song asks. What have we done to deserve such suffering.
This story is quite sombre but there is some hope. Since the public outcry for greater focus on gender-based violence, new laws have been enacted to assist in the fight. The President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, has vowed to throw resources into the prevention of crimes against women. We can only hope that real change comes soon and that this vibrant country is finally freed from the clutches of the violence that has ravaged the nation since the first settlers arrived in the 1800s.
Until then, all we can do is join the fight in any way that we can. Sharing stories like these brings greater awareness to the cause. There are many great South African organisations that do great work and provide counselling for women and children who have been victims of gender-based violence. Please consider donating to any of these organisations. Links can be found in the bio.
Reference links:
https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2021/6/5/our-bodies-are-crime-scenes-south-africas-murdered-women
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-53076289
https://ewn.co.za/2022/03/25/summary-the-main-arguments-in-the-tshegofatso-pule-murder-trial
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-60875314
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Tshegofatso_Pule
https://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAGPJHC/2022/174.html
https://briefly.co.za/facts-lifehacks/bizarre-facts/123745-who-ntuthuko-shoba-everything-far/
Donation links:
https://rapecrisis.org.za/donate/
http://www.saartjiebaartmancentre.org.za/donate/
https://shukumisa.org.za/get-involved/
