The Hawks, South Africa’s elite crime-fighting force, have put scores of our worst criminals behind bars. In this book, investigative journalist Graham Coetzer offers us a rare glimpse into the secretive world of this top police unit.

While exposing the deviousness of South Africa’s dangerous criminals, Hunting with the Hawks is also an ode to the hard work and dedication of the best of our police service.

The South African Law of Evidence is the authoritative and comprehensive guide to the law of evidence in South Africa, combining the received wisdom of the past with the imperatives of the 1996 Constitution, and includes more in-depth discussion of such topics as hearsay, admissions and confessions, and privilege.

Constitutional jurisprudence and extensive use of comparative international case-law and literature broaden your understanding of the theory underpinning the nature and problem of proof plus this 3rd edition is more up-to-date and comprehensive.

From 1994 to 2000, when South Africa was a young democracy, the country was stalked by a succession of brutal serial killers. Psychologist Micki Pistorius became the first profiler for the South African Police Service, playing a vital role in identifying and interrogating these killers, as well as training detectives nationally and in other countries. She broke ground with her theory on the origin of serial killers and is considered a trailblazer in her field.

Catch Me a Killer was originally released in 2003 and details the cases she worked on – from the Station Strangler and the Phoenix Cane Killer to Boetie Boer and the Saloon Killer. The book also features legendary detectives such as Piet Byleveld and Suiker Britz, as well as the FBI’s Robert Ressler.

Released alongside a major TV series based on the book, this new edition of Catch Me a Killer includes a new chapter and up-to-date information about some of the cases, such as the parole of Norman Afzal Simons in 2023. This is essential reading for all true crime aficionados.

More riveting cases from the files of former police psychologist and bestselling author Gérard Labuschagne.

In this second instalment of The Profiler Diaries, former South African Police Service (SAPS) head profiler Dr Gérard Labuschagne, successor to the legendary Micki Pistorius, recalls more of the 110 murder series and countless other bizarre crimes he analysed during his career. An expert on serial murder and rape cases, Labuschagne saw it all in his fourteen and a half years in the SAPS. Often stymied by a lack of resources, office politics and legal incompetence, Labuschagne and his team were nevertheless determined to obtain justice for the victims whose cases they were tasked with investigating.

Tracking down a prolific serial stalker, linking the murders of two young women in Knysna, assessing a suspect threatening to assassinate Barack Obama and apprehending a serial murderer of sex workers are just a few of the intriguing – and often terrifying – cases he covers in his second book, The Profiler Diaries 2: From Crime Scene to Courtroom.

As Labuschagne says, catching a killer is one thing; getting them convicted in a court of law is an entirely different ball game. This book shows how it is done in fascinating detail.

When 18 year-old Morné Harmse walked into his Krugersdorp high school, armed with a samurai sword on a Monday in 2008, he had one mission – to commit a massacre. Inspired by the Columbine high school killings, his fantasy to make people "take notice" had been brewing for more than a year. By the time his sword-slashing spree had ended, 16-year-old Jacques Pretorius was dead and three others were brutally injured.

In the aftermath of what was described as “the most barbaric act of schoolboy violence in South African history” the country was left reeling. How does an ordinary boy from a "normal" family become a brutal killer overnight? Was Morné under the influence of a satanic cult? A protégée of mastermind Devilsdorp killer, Cecilia Steyn? Did his obsession with heavy metal band Slipknot drive him over the edge? Now, 14 years later, Morné Harmse is out on controversial parole.Written in mesmerising detail, Samurai Sword Murder finally puts together the pieces of this brutal tragedy.

Cape Town is two cities.

One is beautiful beyond imagining, known since its beginning as the 'fairest cape' in the world. Here tourists come to lounge on beaches, scale misty peaks and dine in fine restaurants. The other is one of the most dangerous cities in the world, where police need bullet-proof vests and sometimes army backup. Here gangs of young men rule the night with heavy calibre handguns, dispensing heroin, cocaine, crystal meth and fear. This is a story of the second city...

In Gang Town, investigative journalist and criminologist Don Pinnock draws on more than thirty years of research to provide a nuanced and definitive portrait of youngsters caught up in violent crime.

’n Blik op die binnekring van die Krugersdorp-kultus

“Daar was bloedspatsels oor die koffietafel, die banke en die banke se kussings. Peter en Joan was oortrek van steekwonde in hul rûe, nekke en agterkoppe. Nicholas het sy pa en ma gesigte na onder in ’n bloedbad op die mat in die sitkamer gekry. Hulle het hul hek en huis vir hul moordenaars oopgemaak, want hulle het ’n afspraak met hulle gehad.”

Elf wrede moorde oor ’n tydperk van vier jaar ruk die gemeenskap van Krugersdorp en haal landwyd nuusopskrifte. Eindelik word al hierdie moorde verbind met Cecilia Steyn en haar kultusgroep, Electus per Deus (uitverkies deur God). Lede van die groep aanbid die grond waarop Cecilia loop en sal selfs vir haar moord pleeg.

Die moordenaars is slim, gewone mense – ’n onderwyseres, ’n finansiële makelaar, ’n kind wat tussen die moorde deur steeds ses onderskeidings in matriek behaal en boonop keuring kry om medies te gaan studeer. Hul slagoffers het bloot ’n sake- afspraak nagekom, min wetend dat dít ’n afspraak met die dood was.

Wie is Cecilia Steyn? Hoe kan een mens vyf ander manipuleer om moord te pleeg en namens haar in die hof te lieg? Watter rol het Satanisme gespeel? Hoe ontduik onervare misdadigers die polisie vir so lank?

Jana Marx beantwoord dié en ander vrae in ’n waremisdaad-verhaal wat gelei het tot een van die opspraakwekkendste moordsake in die land se geskiedenis.

Met behulp van onderhoude uit diegene in die binnekring, hofgetuienis en polisiedossiere oor ’n tydperk van vier jaar poog Marx om die publiek se vrae te antwoord en ’n blik te gee op die binnewerkinge van só ’n kultus.

George Bizos is one of a distinguished group of human rights lawyers who in the dark days of apartheid sought to uncover the state's role in eliminating its opponents.

Some, like Biko, Timol and Aggett, were arrested and died in detention, while others, like Matthew Goniwe, were abducted and killed. As counsel for the families of the deceased, George Bizos was centrally involved in many of the inquests following these high-profile deaths.

He is thus well placed to tell the story of the great courtroom dramas in which, with devastating skill, he and his colleagues pared away the tissue of lies protecting the security forces and the state functionaries—only to be rewarded with the invariable finding that there was 'no one to blame'.

The American mafia has long held powerful sway over our collective cultural imagination. But how many of us truly understand how a clandestine Sicilian criminal organisation came to exert its influence over nearly every level of American society?

In BORGATA: RISE OF EMPIRE, former mafia member Louis Ferrante pulls back the curtain on the criminal organisation that transformed America. From the potent political cauldron of nineteenth-century Sicily to American cities such as New Orleans, New York and the gangster's paradise of Las Vegas, Ferrante traces the social, economic and political forces that powered the mafia's unstoppable rise. We follow the early mob as they provide alcohol to the American public during prohibition, aid U. S. Naval Intelligence during the Second World War, establish a gambling mecca in the Nevada desert - and unofficially take control of the island of Cuba.

Ferrante's vivid portrayal of early American mobsters - among them Lucky Luciano, Vito Genovese, Frank Costello and Meyer Lansky - fills in crucial gaps of mafia history to deliver the most comprehensive account yet of the world's most famous criminal fraternity.

This volume is the first in a groundbreaking new trilogy from a man who has seen it all from the inside. Ferrante's masterful account journeys from the group's inauspicious beginnings to the height of their power as the most influential organised criminal network in America.

Mzuzephi Mathebula, also known as Jan Note and later as Nongoloza, founded the Umkhosi Wezi-ntaba (Regiment of the Hills), forerunner of the notorious "28" gang. He became known as the King of Nineveh, a man who sought social justice, paradoxically, through antisocial means. Nongoloza's story is also the story of South Africa's violent and racially accentuated past and, to an extent, provides clarification for the criminality that afflicts the present-day society.

Nongoloza Mathebula’s life is a poignant illustration of how political circumstances affect lives and how those lives encourage myths, setting in motion a spiral of events that eventually neither politics nor people have any control over. Van Onselen’s insightful biography tells the story of how a young man became a hardened criminal as the result of a minor incident.

Nongoloza Mathebula’s life is a poignant illustration of how political circumstances affect lives and how those lives encourage myths, setting in motion a spiral of events that eventually neither politics nor people have any control over.

From the Baillie Gifford Prize-winning and Sunday Times bestselling author of Empire of Pain and Say Nothing comes a riveting story of wealth, violence and deceit at the heart of a glittering city.

In 2019, a London teenager, Zac Brettler, fell to his death from a luxury apartment building on the banks of the Thames. On a desperate quest to understand how their son had died, his grieving parents made a terrible discovery: Zac had been leading a fantasy life, posing as the son of a wealthy Russian oligarch.

Patrick Radden Keefe follows Zac’s parents on a dark journey to find out what brought him to the balcony that night – and how a teenager’s life of make-believe drew him into the city’s terrifying underworld.

In this unprecedented deep dive into inner-city gang life, Mark Bowden takes readers inside a Baltimore gang, offers an in-depth portrait of its notorious leader, and chronicles the 2016 FBI investigation that landed eight gang members in prison.

Sandtown is one of the deadliest neighborhoods in the world; it earned Baltimore its nickname Bodymore, Murderland, and was made notorious by David Simon’s classic HBO series “The Wire.” Drug deals dominate street corners, and ruthless, casual violence abounds.

Montana Barronette grew up in the center of it all. He was the leader of the gang “Trained to Go,” or TTG, and when he was finally arrested and sentenced to life in prison, he had been nicknamed “Baltimore’s Number One Trigger Puller.” Under Tana’s reign, TTG dominated Sandtown. After a string of murders are linked to TTG, each with dozens of witnesses too intimidated to testify, three detectives set out to put Tana in prison for life. For them, this was never about drugs: It was about serial murder.

Now an acclaimed journalist who spent his youth in the white suburbs of Baltimore, Mark Bowden returns to the city with exclusive access to the FBI files and unprecedented insight into one of the city’s deadliest gangs and its notorious leader. As he traces the rise and fall of TTG, Bowden uses wiretapped drug buys, police interviews, undercover videos, text messages, social media posts, trial transcripts, and his own ongoing conversations with Tana’s family and community to create the most in-depth account of an inner-city gang ever written.

With his signature precision and propulsive narrative, Mark Bowden positions Tana – as a boy, a gang leader, a killer, and now a prisoner – in the context of Baltimore and America, illuminating his path for what it really was: a life sentence.

At the very dawn of the country’s brave new democracy, Cape Town was at war. Pagad, which started as a community protest action against crime, had mutated into a sinister vigilante group wreaking death and destruction across the city. Between 1996 and 2001, there were more than 400 bombs – most famously at the popular Planet Hollywood restaurant at the V&A Waterfront – and there were countless targeted hits on drug lords and gang bosses.

The police were at their wits end. The new ANC government was alarmed. The citizens of Cape Town were living in fear.

Mark Shaw tells the incredible tale of how the police’s response pulled together former foes – struggle cadres and the apartheid security apparatus – to break the Pagad death squads. It is a story that has never been told in full and was not possible until recently, when many were released from prison or had retired and were finally willing to talk openly about this revealing chapter in South Africa’s recent history.

On 23 August 2021, Babita Deokaran – a hardworking single mother and chief accountant at the Gauteng Department of Health – was shot down in a hail of bullets outside her home in Mondeor, Johannesburg. She had just dropped off her daughter at school. The izinkabi paid to kill her were caught, but the question remained: Who ordered her murder, and why?

Investigative journalist Jeff Wicks set out to find the answer. This quest would profoundly change – even endanger – his life, as he bravely followed the leads Babita had left behind. Leads that the Hawks, who were officially investigating her assassination, had failed to act on.

In The Shadow State Wicks uncovers an audacious web of crooked officials, criminal syndicates and ANC politicians, siphoning away billions meant for patients in Gauteng’s public hospitals. An explosive, fast-paced investigation into greed and state capture, this book is also a moving tribute to the courage of one woman who, when confronted by powerful wrongdoers, refused to keep quiet.

As a medical detective of the modern world, forensic pathologist Ryan Blumenthal’s chief goal is to bring perpetrators to justice. He has performed thousands of autopsies, which have helped bring numerous criminals to book. In Autopsy he covers the hard lessons learnt as a rookie pathologist, as well as some of the most unusual cases he’s encountered.

During his career, for example, he has dealt with high-profile deaths, mass disasters, death by lightning and people killed by African wildlife. Blumenthal takes the reader behind the scenes at the mortuary, describing a typical autopsy and the instruments of the trade. He also shares a few trade secrets, like how to establish when a suicide is more likely to be a homicide.

Even though they cannot speak, the dead have a lot to say – and Blumenthal is there to listen.

SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER 'If you think the UK isn't corrupt, you haven't looked hard enough ... This terrifying book follows a global current of dirty money, and the murders and kidnappings required to sustain it' GEORGE MONBIOT, GUARDIAN AN ECONOMIST AND WASHINGTON POST BOOK OF THE YEAR 2020 'When you pick this book up, you won't be able to put it down' MISHA GLENNY, author of MCMAFIA 'Gripping, disturbing and deeply reported' BEN RHODES, bestselling author of THE WORLD AS IT IS In this real-life thriller packed with jaw-dropping revelations, award-winning investigative journalist Tom Burgis reveals a terrifying global web of kleptocracy and corruption. Kleptopia follows the dirty money that is flooding the global economy, emboldening dictators, enriching oligarchs and poisoning democracies. From the Kremlin to Beijing, Harare to Riyadh, London to the Trump White House, it shows how the thieves are uniting - and the terrible human cost. A body in a burned-out Audi. Workers riddled with bullets in the Kazakh desert. A rigged election in Zimbabwe. A British banker silenced and humiliated for trying to expose the truth about the City of London - the world's piggy bank for blood money. Riveting, horrifying and written like fiction, this book shows that while we are looking the other way, all that we hold most dear is being stolen.

The Basic Guide to Criminal Procedure explains the law of criminal procedure in understandable language and with reference to the rights in the Constitution of South Africa.

Useful discussions of relevant cases are included throughout the book. The important forms used in criminal procedure are also provided as annexures at the back of the book.

Contents Include:
1. Basic concepts in criminal procedure
2. The pre-trial phase
3. The plea phase
4. The trial phase
5. The sentencing phase
6. The post-trial phase
7. Annexures (forms)
- Written notice to appear in court
- Age estimation of child
- Warrant of arrest
- Guilty statement in terms of s 112(2)
- Plea and sentence agreement
- Not-guilty statement in terms of s 115(2)
- Bail receipt
- Application for leave to appeal
8. Glossary of Latin terms

As ’n eietydse mediese speurder het die forensiese patoloog Ryan Blumenthal al derduisende outopsies uitgevoer wat tot die arrestasie van ’n groot aantal misdadigers gelei het. Dit is sy groot doel en strewe om oortreders aan die pen te help ry.

In Outopsietafel beskryf hy van die moeilike lesse wat hy as ’n jong patoloog moes leer en hy vertel van die ongewone en dikwels grusame sterfgevalle wat hy al teëgekom het. Hy het gedurende sy loopbaan byvoorbeeld al etlike hoëprofielsterftes hanteer, sterftes weens natuurrampe en ook mense wat deur weerlig of wilde diere gedood is.

Blumenthal bied ’n fassinerende blik op alles wat agter die skerms gebeur by die lykshuis. Al kan die dooies nie praat nie, het hulle nogtans baie om te sê – en Blumenthal is daar om te luister.

Wat dryf ’n beeldskone jong ma van drie daartoe om haar man wreed te laat vermoor? Waarom wou Suretha Brits só graag van haar Leon ontslae raak?

Danksy inligting uit die binnekring van vriende, familie en mense ná aan die polisie-ondersoek, sit die joernalis Charné Kemp die stukkies van die legkaart bymekaar en vertel die volle verhaal van die opspraakwekkende huurmoord op die geliefde Pofadder-hotelbaas.

’n Boeiende ware misdaadverhaal wat draai om geld, diamante, Krugerrande, seks en verraad.

Foreword by topselling author, Gerard Labuschagne.

A criminal's fate is often sealed by what is found on the autopsy table and Dr Hestelle van Staden has been crucial in the conviction of numerous criminals. As one of South Africa’s leading forensic pathologists, she has conducted over 7 000 autopsies. She has seen the worst South Africa has to offer and has been a voice to numerous murder victims.

In Blood Has a Voice, she walks us through nine of her most compelling cases, cases that stand out from among the many autopsies she has conducted. There is the tragic story of baby Letitia Meyer, whose mother alleged she fell from her pram; the unexplained death of a young mother during labour; and the case of the musician Lucky Dube, who was shot and killed . . .

Blood Has a Voice gives a rare glimpse into the investigation of death and the quiet heroism behind the unsung work of forensic pathologists.

What was supposed to be a short business trip to Equatorial Guinea turned into a journey to the depths of hell.

Black Beach, located on Bioko island off the mainland of Equatorial Guinea, is one of the world’s most feared prisons, notorious for its brutality and inhumane conditions.

In 2013, South African businessman Daniel Janse van Rensburg set off to the West African country to finalise a legitimate airline contract with a local politician. Within days, Daniel was arrested by the local Rapid Intervention Force and detained without trial in the island’s infamous ‘Guantanamo’ cells, and was later taken to Black Beach. This is his remarkable story of survival over nearly two years, made possible by his unwavering faith and the humanity of a few fellow inmates.

In this thrilling first-person narrative, Daniel relives his ordeal, describing the harrowing conditions in the prison, his extraordinary experiences there, and his ceaseless hope to return to South Africa and be reunited with his family. A story of courage in the face of overwhelming adversity, Black Beach demonstrates the strength of the human spirit and the toll injustice takes on ordinary people who fall foul of the powerful and corrupt.

Vir agt jaar het die sogenaamde Stasiemoordenaar die Kaapse Vlakte in sy greep gehou – van 1986 tot 1994 verdwyn 22 jong seuns spoorloos en die gemeenskap leef in vrees. Sommige van die seuns se liggame word later gevind, begrawe in vlak grafte in bosse en
sandduine, met hulle hande agter hul rûe gebind. Meeste van die misdade is egter nooit opgelos nie en talle ouers soek steeds na die waarheid.

Norman Simons, ’n laerskoolonderwyser, is in hegtenis geneem, maar is in 1995 slegs skuldig bevind aan een van die moorde. Ná 28 jaar van gevangenisstraf is Simons op parool vrygelaat in 2023, met talle onbeantwoorde vrae. Waarom het ooggetuies destyds ’n ander
man beskryf? Aan wie behoort die DNA wat op tonele gevind is?

Die gesoute joernalis en skrywer, Julian Jansen, volg die spoor van die Stasiemoordenaar en ondersoek hierdie donker raaisel wat steeds by die families en gemeenskap spook.

A hard-hitting, character-driven investigative narrative following a group of South African mothers who uncovered a pattern of medical abuse at the hands of a celebrated midwife and the investigative journalist who never stopped telling their story.

It started with one mom who asked too many questions. Then another, and another. More and more babies turned up either injured or dead. And all the evidence pointed to one midwife. Separately, they were grieving moms, lost in the system, but together they became a collective that the system couldn’t ignore.

Through deeply personal testimonies and a first-hand investigation, the book exposes how one midwife allegedly drugged her patients without their consent, ignored the warning signs, and refused to transfer them to hospital when their babies were clearly in distress. It also exposes the system that failed every single one of these babies and allowed the midwife to thrive from province to province.

Told through the voices of the mothers, the narrative moves from grief and isolation to unity and justice. As the women begin to connect the dots, they form an unlikely alliance, one that ultimately pushes the case into the public eye and towards criminal accountability. This is a story about loss, but more importantly, it is a story about refusing to stay silent.

From the bestselling author of The Lost City of Z, and the Number One international bestseller The Wager, comes a true-life murder story which became one of the FBI’s first major homicide investigations.

In the 1920s, the richest people per capita in the world were members of the Osage Indian nation in Oklahoma. After oil was discovered beneath their land, they rode in chauffeured automobiles, built mansions and sent their children to study in Europe.

Then, one by one, the Osage began to be killed off. As the death toll climbed, the FBI took up the case. But the bureau badly bungled the investigation. In desperation, its young director, J. Edgar Hoover, turned to a former Texas Ranger named Tom White to unravel the mystery. Together with the Osage he and his undercover team began to expose one of the most chilling conspiracies in American history.