Flavio Hlabangwane has been found guilty of murdering his girlfriend and cousin and storing her body parts in his fridge.
The Johannesburg High Court found Hlabangwane guilty of murder, violating a corpse and defeating the ends of justice on Tuesday after he confessed to killing Tshepang Pitse in November 2021.
The 28-year-old described to the court last week how he lured Pitse to her death because he was suspicious that she was cheating on him.
“I started to search the internet on ways to kill a person and dispose of the body,” he told the court last Thursday.
Between 1 and 13 November, he murdered his relative and lover, and began the process of dismembering her body and storing it in the freezer of his Soweto home.
In a statement read out by Judge Moosa Cassim Ismail on Tuesday, the murderer admitted to burying some of her body parts in a shallow grave.
“I drove to an open field and buried her body parts in an open grave but before I left, I realised that she was not properly buried and was easy to see. I began to dig a deeper hole and in the process, I hit the head of the deceased.”
Hlabangwane was arrested in November after another girlfriend discovered the victim’s remains in his fridge.
He was admitted for mental observation shortly afterwards after he tried to take his own life on two occasions while in custody.
He will appear in court again on 10 February for pre-sentencing reports and sentencing.
Compiled by Arthur Greene
Pictured above: Flavio Hlabangwane
Image source: Twitter
