Nomia Rosemary Ndlovu, a disgraced police officer from Tembisa, Gauteng, is in a fight to clear her name as an alleged serial killer.
Nomia Ndlovu: What is she accused of?
Ndlovu, a former officer of the Tembisa South police district, is accused of masterminding the murders of her niece, Zanele Motha, her sister Audrey and her son Brilliant Mashego, Witness Madaka Homu (the cousin), her boyfriend Yingwani Maurice Mabasa and a relative Mayeni Mashaba.
The six counts of murder she faces are accompanied by four counts of fraud, obstruction of justice and eight counts of conspiracy to commit murder which include an alleged plan to kill her mother Maria Nyavana Mushwana, as well as her sister Nomasonto Gloria Ndlovu and her five children.
According to the State, Nomia Ndlovu has received close to R1.4 million in insurance payouts for the deaths of her family members and the common denominator in all of these suspicious and wildly violent deaths, is the former police officer.
Evidence presented at a Palm Ridge court suggests that Ndlovu allegedly launched her killing spree in 2012 and between then and 2018 when one of her hitmen grew a conscience, the former Tembisa cop had lived off the blood of her relatives.
Four things we know about the alleged serial killer cop
Apart from the incriminating footage taken by undercover cops when Ndlovu was plotting to murder her sister Nomasonto and her five children, where she can be heard detailing the step-by-step process her alleged hitmen was to follow in executing the sordid plan, the State has mountains of damning evidence against the former cop.
Here are four things we know about Nomia Ndlovu.
Cellphone records place her at crime scenes
Detectives who’ve taken the stand thus far have been able to place Ndlovu within the vicinity of a number of the crime scenes. According to Warrant Officer Wynardt Hendrik Venter, Mashego suffered deathly blunt force injuries sustained on his head in January 2018, days after he had confronted his aunt about the death of his mother, Ndlovu’s sister Audrey.
Venter testified in court, on Monday, that cellphone records show that Ndlovu had contacted Mashego several times before he was brutally attacked. Moreover, tower records indicate that the former police officer and her nephew were in the same vicinity when he was killed.
Mashego’s death, it’s believed, was necessary damage control by Ndlovu to cover up her tracks in the death of her sister.
Audrey’s decomposed body was found at her home in June 2013. A post-mortem examination found that she had been poisoned but this is not what killed her. Audrey was strangled to death and according to the State, it was at the hands of her sister whom she was the last person seen alive with.
For Audrey’s death, Ndlovu received an estimated R700 000 in insurance claims.
She allegedly forged details in her insurance forms
So far, financial service representatives from Standard Bank and Frank Financial Services have provided testimony of how they were allegedly duped by Ndlovu.
In one matter, Ndlovu had listed her late boyfriend Mabasa as her live-in spouse in an insurance application at Vodacom, whose insurance sector is underwritten by Frank Financial Services.
Eight months after she’d opened life insurance accounts on her boyfriend, in October 2015, Mabasa was brutally murdered with — wait for it — deathly blunt force injuries sustained on his head.
For this death, Ndlovu received a lump sum totalling R416 357 in insurance payouts. Standard Bank representatives have also revealed in court that the former police officer had taken out life insurance on her nephew Mashego in 2012, years before he was killed, and R40 000 was paid out to her since upon his death in 2018, since he was listed as her son.
Mayeni Mashaba’s insurance situation was never cleared
Another relative of Ndlovu who died under suspicious circumstances, in a similar manner to her other relatives, was Mashaba.
The court heard testimony from witnesses that placed Ndlovu as a central denominator in her cousin’s death. Mashaba was meant to meet up with Ndlovu on that fateful day but he was found dead with a gunshot wound to his head.
It’s unclear, at this stage, if the alleged serial killer cop received insurance payouts for Mashaba’s brutal death.
These are the hitmen she allegedly relied on
The two hitmen who’ve played a crucial role in the State’s case against Ndlovu are Lakhiwe Mkhize and Njabulo Vincent Kunene.
There’s a great belief that other unknown killers may have been used by the former cop but Mkhize and Kunene are the only two with a conscience, it seems.
According to Mkhize, Ndlovu had allegedly paid him R2 600 to execute the murder of her mother Mushwana. The paid assassin told detectives that Ndlovu pointed out her mother’s residence and instructed him to commit the crime.
However, Mkhize claims he failed to conjure up the gall to follow through with the hit after he’d seen how frail Ndlovu’s mom was. So, instead, when he’d made entry into Mushwana’s home, he simply asked for water and walked out.
This show of conscience from a paid assassin did nothing to discourage the former police officer. According to Kunene, he was allegedly approached by Ndlovu after she’d failed to put the lights out on her mother.
This time around, the target was her sister Nomasonto and her five children. She would get nothing out of the deaths of the kids, the youngest of which was five months old.
They were just an unnecessary barrier to her goal which was a massive insurance payout for the life of her sister. Kunene, the State revealed, could not bear the thought of executing children so he turned to police to divulge Ndlovu’s sordid plan.
This prompted authorities to launch an undercover operation where one of her own peers was planted as an accomplice in her conspiracy. In a video that’s surfaced on social media, Ndlovu was seen giving specific instructions on how to pull off a perfect murder as they drove towards her sister’s house to hatch the plan.
Ndlovu was arrested in 2018 as a result of the sting operation. The former cop is expected to take the stand in her defence.
The matter was still being heard in court at the time this article was published.
