Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
The Cop Who Was a Serial Killer - The Rosemary Ndlovu story
Tue, 18 Mar 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.
Who is Rosemary Ndlovu and what is her story?
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. 15 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 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 rand or about 39,000 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-pew right at him and he pulls the trigger.
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