The official story was that Tebow Bester died in a prison fire, but chaos erupted when he was later spotted shopping for groceries.

In this episode, we're unraveling how a convicted rapist and murderer faked his own death with a stolen corpse and easily walked out of a maximum security prison.

Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast. A true crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I am doing wonderful, ready to record a new episode with you. Oh, I love it. Let's do it. So we're going to get right into the story this week.

This is a wild story. It is actually not from over here in the U.S. This is a story from South Africa.

And it's one of those stories that really just makes the most sense to start at the very beginning.

Because a guy like Tabe Obester is someone who, you know, their red flags were practically waving before he even had a birth certificate.

And I mean that literally. So he was born on June 13, 1986 in South Africa to a woman named

Maisie Mabasso, which is usually a pretty straightforward thing, right? You go to the hospital, you have a baby, you do the paperwork. That's how it always goes. Right. But not this time. Tabo's mother never registered his birth, which I guess I didn't think you could just do that. I thought they made you. Right. I thought they forced you to do that before you left the hospital. But as far as the government was concerned, Tebow didn't even exist.

Part of the reason was the complicated history of registration in South Africa. Tabo's mom,

Maisie, herself, wasn't even registered until 2002, long after she was grown. When she was born in the 60s,

her mom worked on a farm, and her employer wouldn't even let her take the day off work to file

the paperwork. So when Maisie's mom died in 2002, an aunt stepped in and got the whole family

registered under her surname. Masey signed herself and her kids up, except for Tabo because by 2002, he had already disappeared.

So growing up, Tabo was a ghost in the system. He had no ID, no birth certificate, nothing.

He did have some fake passports that he cobbled together later in life.

Tabo said that he was raised mostly by

his grandparents on their farm because his mother abandoned him. But even with grandma and grandpa

stepping in, things were still far from ideal. Both of Tebow's grandparents were actually

alcoholics. Tebow dropped out of school after the fifth grade, and by age 16, he just vanished, which is why he was never registered when the rest of his family was.

Fast forward a few years, and this unregistered kid is running an events business that is somehow pulling in the equivalent of tens of thousands of U.S. dollars per year.

Tebow also became the father of three daughters by three different mothers, all by the time he was 23. The two oldest girls

lived with him in Durban while the youngest stayed in Cape Town with her mom. And then there's Tebow's

...