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About Uwe Gemballa
Uwe Gemballa (1955 – 2010)
Brief overview:
Uwe (55), was kidnapped from OR Tambo airport and taken to a house First Avenue Elma Park, Edenvale before he was killed. It was in this house that Gemballa was held for several days, his head covered in grey duct tape. His hands were tied behind his body with tape; his feet were bound together. After three days his kidnappers attempted to secure a ransom from his wife, Christiane, in Germany. They put Gemballa on the phone and, speaking in English, he told her to prepare €1‑million and he would let her know where to deposit the cash. But he never called her back. Inside the house on First Avenue, Gemballa’s kidnappers sat on his back, forcing every last breath out of his body. The German was starved of oxygen, and died of suffocation. They then wrapped his body in a black plastic bag and secured it with more duct tape. The men tossed him in the boot of a car and drove all the way to western Pretoria, where they buried the body in a shallow grave in an old cemetery in Lotus Gardens, near Atteridgeville. Gemballa lay undiscovered for months as the mystery about his disappearance lingered.
An edited extract from "In Ministry of Crime: An Underworld Explored", Mandy Wiener describes the way organised crime and powerful political figures joined forces to subvert the law. she details the murder of German ‘car tuner’ Uwe Gemballa in 2010
Brief Biography:
- Other Victims/Family
- Funeral/Memorial
- The Street/Suburb
- The Region (Land disputes, other incidents etc.)
Attack Details:
- Date and time of attack
- Weapons
- Items Stolen
- Investigative officer/SAPS Case No:
- Torture, Gratuitous violence
- Indications of Hate Crime? Threats etc.
Perpetrator details:
- Number and Descriptions
- Arrests
- Name/s and age/s of Perpetrator/s
- Thabiso Mpshe/Mpye (28), Thabo Mogapi/Mohapi, Kagiso Ledwaba and Garlond Holworthy,
- Country of origin of Perpetrator/s
- Trial/Conviction
- On October 29, 2010 Thabiso Mpshe, from Pretoria, pleaded guilty to charges related to his involvement in the murder of Uwe Gemballa in Johannesburg. Under the terms of the plea agreement, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In 2015, three additional men, Thabo Mogapi, Kagiso Ledwaba and Garlond Holworthy, were also convicted of charges relating to the kidnap and murder of Gemballa. Their sentencing hearing was expected to begin on 30 November 2015. The mastermind is suspected to be Czech criminal fugitive Radovan Krejčíř
- The judge ordered that Mohapi be sentenced to 25 years for the kidnapping and murder, with 10 of those years running concurrently with his current 34-year sentence. What this means is an overall sentence of 49 years for all of Mohapi’s crimes, meaning he would be eligible to apply for parole only in about 33 years.
- Holworthy was sentenced to 25 years in prison: 25 years for the murder, with a five-year sentence for the kidnapping and two-year sentence for theft of Gemballa’s belongings, both running concurrently with the murder sentence.
Additional Biographical Information:
Links to Media articles:
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Uwe Gemballa's Timeline
| 1955 |
1955
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| 2010 |
February 17, 2010
Age 55
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Edenvale, East Rand, GP, South Africa
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