NEWS of a new law allowing prisoners to be released for two weeks to roam freely has sent shivers down the spines of the people of Luanshya and Kabwe after the discovery thag one such inmate who was temporarily released for good behaviour is responsible for the rape and murder of nine women.
Police were yesterday led to a gruesome scene of maggots and decomposed bodies of three females in Kabwe’s Makuyu area where a supposed reformed inmate buried three of his nine female victims.
According to police sources, Joseph Chiteta was a sleek and smooth-talking killer of women who fooled the prison authorities.
After singing hymns, uttering the most complicated prayer tongues and crying the loudest with rivers of tears during prayer sessions in the prison, the authorities were convinced that Chiteta had reformed from his murderous past.
And in line with their policy, they conferred on him the status of ‘Special Stage’ Prisoner which allowed him to roam Kabwe freely and only return to take a nap whenever night fell as he had served over half of his 20-year sentence.
However, unknown to the prison authorities, Joseph’s repentance was as false as man with a hangover promising not to drink beer again.
Instead of doing piece works in the townships, Chiteta returned to his old habits of using his his free time to rape and kill women of all ages, including infants.
The Kabwe strangler, as some have started calling him, after running out of choice of victims in Kabwe decided not to return to sleep in his cell in Mukobeko Medium Prison but instead took a bus to Luanshya where he killed some more women whose decomposed bodies have been found, among them, a dead teenage girl tied to a tree after being raped and strangled.
However, his luck on the Copperbelt ran out and he was nabbed by police who encouraged him with a bit of pain on his side to lead them to his victims.
Meanwhile, according to Central Province Commissioner of Police Chola Katanga, after police on the Copperbelt are done with Chiteta, they also want him in Central so that he could lead them to more bodies of the females he has killed who are estimated to be more than the nine so far discovered.
Police also suspect that Chiteta lured his victims using a fellow Prisoner who was working in the Prison Registry who obtained phone numbers of female relatives of prisoners from files and gave Joseph.
Chiteta would later call the female relatives of inmates and pretend to be a Prison Officer seeking to arrange for the release of their relative but would instead rape them once they met him.
©Kalemba May 28, 2021