FROM THE VAULT - Thabo Bester: Twisted Firestarter

RedHanded

Wondery | RedHanded

True Crime

4.5 • 18.2K Ratings

🗓️ 16 September 2025

⏱️ 54 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Due to a huge number of requests following a new Netflix doc on Thabo Bester, we're re-releasing our 2023 episode on the shocking, shameless, madder-than-fiction South African saga.

At 2am, on the 3rd of May 2022 – inmates at Mangaung prison in Bloemfontein, South Africa, were woken up by an explosion. Word spread that Thabo Bester, the infamous “Facebook Rapist”, had set himself and his cell on fire. And all that remained after the dramatic blaze were a lighter, and a body, burnt beyond recognition. But that’s far from the end of the story.

With daily revelations from the trial still hitting headlines, expect a farcical morgue-robbing scheme, a massive-scale web of fraud conducted from inside a prison cell, and a glamorous celebrity doctor who’s not quite what she seems.

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Transcript

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1:35.7	I'm Surruti.
1:36.3	I'm Hannah.
1:38.4	And welcome to Red Hand.
1:42.4	Where today, we are on the trail of a case.
1:43.5	The trail?
1:46.6	Yes. We are on the trail of a case that is still at this moment
1:48.5	hitting the headlines
1:49.8	unfurling doing some unfolding
1:51.7	all over the place
1:53.1	like a gymnastics ribbon
1:54.2	or a shit towel swan
	...

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