[imagesource:showmax]

It seems like yonks ago that the convicted ‘Facebook rapist’ Thabo Bester was spotted shopping at Woolworths after everyone was told he had burned to death in his prison cell.

It turned out that Thabo had faked his death and placed a body decoy in the prison cell with help from his accomplice and girlfriend, Nandipha Magudumana. She is alleged to have smuggled the body of Katlego Bereng into the prison with the help of several prison officials in 2022, who are now on trial along with Bester and the disgraced former celeb doctor.

Now, this whirlwind of a story is coming together in a new true-crime docuseries to be released on Showmax, called Tracking Thabo Bester.

The show is directed by Nikki Comninos, who made her Showmax Original debut in Convict Conman about a South African running a media business from inside jail. She would have felt quite familiar with Thabo then, who is alleged to have done the same to some extent.

“We tend to discuss Thabo Bester like it’s an isolated case but it’s clearly not,” said Comninos.

“Bester has been depicted as some kind of anomaly for being able to run a business while incarcerated. This raises questions about what is happening with the South African prison system.”

Primedia+ reveals that the first episode of Tracking Thabo Bester follows GroundUp award-winning journalists Marecia Damons and Daniel Steyn who broke the story following an anonymous tip-off. They also put all their investigative work in a book, called The Thabo Bester Story: The Facebook rapist, the Celebrity Doctor and the Escape from Cell 35, which is likely the primary source material in the docuseries, too.

“I think the story has so many touch points that we experience as South Africans. There’s corruption, crime, and incredibly excellent journalism that I wanted to give a nod to,” said Comninos.

“We go into the nooks and crannies and see the flabbergasting details but also the kind of important stories that are connected to this wider narrative… There are a wide array of voices coming together to make this story.”

Subsequent episodes look at why Bester was called the Facebook rapist and in jail originally, how a celebrity doctor fell for a convicted criminal and left her children behind to go on the run with him to Tanzania and who really died in Cell 35.

The trailer looks thrilling:

Bester and his co-conspirator Magudumana were supposed to begin their new trial last week but it has been postponed to June 5.

As South Africa’s most-searched person on Google in 2023, everyone is looking forward to checking out Tracking Thabo Bester, which is set to premiere on 15 March on Showmax.

[source:primediaplus]