22 July 2025

The ABC Killer S1

In 1995, journalist Tamsen de Beer was working the night shift at The Star newspaper when she got a call from someone claiming to be South Africa’s most prolific serial killer.

The kind of serial killer who would go on to be convicted of 38 murders and 40 rapes – all committed in the space of just over a year, in broad daylight, while sober.

“He was our Ted Bundy,” says director Jasyn Howes. The ABC Killer is his second series in a row for Showmax about a 90s serial killer. The first, Boetie Boer, about Stewart Wilken, was nominated at last year’s SAFTAs for Best Documentary Series and Best Editor (Jaco Laubscher, who also cut The ABC Killer).

Alongside re-enactments filmed in the actual locations where the events took place, The ABC Killer features interviews with Tamsen, South Africa’s first profiler Micki Pistorius, and former detectives Ettiene “Vinyl” Viljoen, Frans van Niekerk, and Paul Nkomo, among others.

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