This archive report was first published on 23 October 2021.
On October 22, 2021, a South African court delivered a guilty verdict against Rosemary Ndlovu, a 46-year-old policewoman, for her involvement in a heinous murder plot.
Between 2012 and 2017, Ndlovu systematically signed up her relatives for life and funeral insurance, before orchestrating their killings. The court found that she had hired hitmen to ambush and kill her victims, with some being shot or bludgeoned to death.
However, in one particularly chilling instance, Ndlovu personally poisoned her sister's tea and then strangled her when the poison failed to work.
According to the National Prosecuting Authority, Ndlovu cashed in on an estimated 1.4 million rand ($95,000, 81,000 euros) from her crimes, and was arrested before she could complete plots against her mother and another sibling.
Ndlovu had vehemently denied wrongdoing throughout the trial, but was caught red-handed in 2018 when one of her hitmen tipped off the police after she hatched a plan to burn down the house of another sister.
Her sentence is set to be announced at the start of next month.
