Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

The Rosemary Ndlovu case is one of South Africa’s most shocking true crime stories, involving a former police officer who orchestrated the murders of six family members for insurance payouts. Between 2012 and 2018, Ndlovu took out fraudulent life insurance policies on her loved ones before having them poisoned, strangled, or beaten to death. Her murder spree ended in 2018 when undercover police recorded her plotting to kill her mother and sister, leading to her arrest.

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My whole world is falling apart right now. It's chaos. Watch the Hulu original series. The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. Now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for Bumno subscribers. Terms apply. So this South African cop ends up going crazy and eventually becomes a serial killer. The story's wild.

Now her name's Rosemary, and Rosemary is in her 30s. She's a police sergeant in South Africa. But Rosemary has a problem. A gambling problem. She's an addict. Not only that, she has an issue with loan sharks because she owes them a lot of money. And now they're after her. And these guys are scary.

So one day, in 2012, she comes up with an... absolutely insane plan to not only pay off these loan sharks but to make herself a little bit of money as well and she comes up with a scheme to murder her own cousin and collect insurance money off of it so first she takes out a life insurance policy on this cousin and I guess in South Africa there's not as much due diligence on life insurance policies because they're just like okay approved next Rosemary lures this cousin out to a remote field and that is when she grabs a big-ass rock and suddenly, pow, she hits him with it.

And then she hits him again and again and again until she unalives him. Then later, Rosemary collects the insurance payout for his death and she gets over 131,000 rand, or about 7,000 US dollars. And I guess no one suspects it was her. Now the bad thing is not only did she just commit murder, but her plan worked perfectly. And now she knows how to make money. from unaliving people. And so she decides to keep going. Fifteen months later, she strikes again. One day, she sets up life and funeral insurance policies for her sister. She pretends to be her

own sister and she contacts the insurance company and she sets up a policy. And of course, Rosemary makes the beneficiary of this policy, Rosemary, herself. Then once that's set up, Rosemary goes over to her sister's house and she's like, let's have some tea. You go buy some bread and I'll stay here and make the tea. So, sister's, She leaves to go buy the bread while Rosemary starts making the tea. But she spikes it with some kind of poison. And when her sister gets home, she unknowingly drinks it. And I don't know if the poison didn't work well enough or what, but after that,

boom, Rosemary ends up strangling her sister until she unalives her. Then later she collects the insurance policy for her sister's death, and she gets $717,000,000, or about $39,000 US dollars. US dollars. Now at this point, Rosemary decides to lay low. Like maybe she's chilling, maybe she's spending her money, I don't know, but a couple of years go by, and it's now 2015. And I don't know if she's out of money at this point or what, but here she decides to strike again and go after her own boyfriend. And so she goes and opens 16 life and funeral insurance policies in his name. But this time, she hires a hitman to help her do the unaliving. And one night,

Boyfriend is leaving the house and suddenly, boom, a hitman is standing out in his yard. And the hitman points a pew-poo right at him and he pulls the trigger. Click. Lucky for boyfriend, it jams. And then the hitman runs away. So boyfriend is safe. But then one day he's asleep in his bed, taking a nap. And suddenly, pow, his house catches on fire.

And he wakes up in a panic and he runs outside. And so he makes it out alive. But later, when they investigate, they find that someone, likely Rosemary, put four bottles filled with fuel underneath his bed, hoping he would burn up with the house. Now, after all this chaos, this is just way too much for boyfriend to handle. Like two close calls with death? And so he breaks up with Rosemary and he moves out. He's like, fuck all this. But unfortunately, a few weeks later, he's out somewhere, I'm not sure where, and someone confronts him and they have a knife and pow, they stab him again and again until he's unalived. He was stabbed 76 times. And it's assumed that Rosemary was behind this too because later

she collects the insurance policy for boyfriend's death and she gets 131,000 rand or about $7,000 US dollars. And oh, she just keeps going because you know why stop there? The following year in 2016 she unalives her own niece, beats her to death. And she collects some insurance money after that, like the equivalent of $6,500 US dollars. Soon after that, Rosemary's own daughter, a toddler, dies. And no one knows if Rosemary's responsible for this one, but it's just a tragically weird coincidence. After that, she unalives her own nephew. Apparently he was beaten to death as well.

After that, she takes out a couple of funeral policies on her other nephew. And this nephew is actually the son of the sister that she had poisoned a few years before. So she takes out these policies on him and then she unalives him too. He was apparently hacked to death. Now, just to be clear, I'm showing images of Rosemary committing these murders, but it's actually unclear if she physically committed most of these herself or if she like hired someone else to help her do it, like, you know, maybe a hitman or something. But regardless, so far, she's unalived six of her own family members, possibly seven,

and she's collected over 1.4 million rand from this, or about 70s. $26,000 US dollars. And I don't even know what she's doing it for at this point. And like surely her loan sharks are paid off by now. I mean, she has a steady job. She's a police sergeant. So I assume she's collecting this insurance money and just gambling it away. But whatever, despite that, as of now, she hasn't been caught. And it doesn't seem like she's ever going to get caught. Until. Here's the thing. What Rosemary doesn't realize is that there's already some suspicion growing around her. Specifically, a local police sergeant gets suspicious about all of this, and he decides to contact some insurance companies and ask for the details of the payouts made from these debts.

And the more he digs into this, the more he's starting to see a pattern. The pattern, obviously being that Rosemary has received a lump sum of money every time one of these family members of hers has died. However, unfortunately, as shady as that is, that's not exactly enough evidence to convict or even accuse her of any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Rosemary is still going, and she decides her next victims are going to be her own mother, her sister, and her sister's five kids. And that is a lot of people. So Rosemary decides she's going to need some help with this, and she's going to hire a hitman. And so she meets up with this hitman, and she tells him the plan. And I guess he ends up having a conscience because Bro goes right to the police, and he reports her.

So then the police get involved and they investigate and they set up a whole sting operation. And this hitman meets up with Rosemary again. But this time, not only is he wearing recording devices, but he's taken an undercover cop with him posing as a second hitman. And so, of course, during the meetup, they record her talking about the crime. And this is all the evidence they need. And so, bam, they arrest her. And I don't have a mugshot, but this is actually a picture. of her in real life. Oh, but it gets worse. Not only did she unalive all of these people in her own

family, but a long time ago, before any of this started, she used to have a husband who one day died of mysterious circumstances, and people now suspect that she may have been responsible for that. Not only that, a few years after that, her baby son died, and I believe he was poisoned. So now people also suspect that she may have been responsible for that. Basically, anyone who died around her at any point in her life, people now think she had something to do with it. Anyway, she gets life in prison. Good.