I tracked down my aunt's killer on Facebook

Telegraph

6 days ago

On July 30 2014, Lehanne Sergison was in Pizza Express with a friend when a South African number flashed up on her phone. She assumed it must be her aunt Christine Robinson who had lived in the country for the past 12 years. Instead a female voice said, 'Lehanne, Christine has been murdered '.
'It was brutal,' recalls Sergison, the shock still raw 11 years later. 'The waiter was passing me a pizza and I was taking in what I'd been told.'
Her 59-year-old aunt lived nearly 6,000 miles away in Thabazimbi, South Africa. The pair were close, however, speaking on the phone every Sunday and writing emails.
And now Robinson had been found, raped and murdered, in the lodge that she owned.
Initially it was thought to be a farm killing, but then it emerged the 26-year-old gardener, Andrea Imbayarwo (then known then as Andrew Ndlovu), had disappeared along with £1,400.
With such an obvious suspect, Sergison and her family reasonably expected his arrest and trial to be swift, but as days became weeks, and then months turned into years, any chance of justice seemed to slip away.
Catching Robinson's murderer became something the South African authorities, the UK government and, eventually, even her own family back in England gave up on. Everyone in fact, except Sergison, a retired chartered surveyor from Bromley, who never quite stopped believing that it might be possible to bring him to justice.
The start of a six-year journey
So began a quest that would eventually, six years to the day after her beloved aunt was murdered, result in the man responsible being arrested. That he was finally caught was all thanks to Sergison, who had single-handedly made contact with the main suspect, honey-trapping him into messaging with her on Facebook and ultimately leading the police to his whereabouts.
What made her achievement even more incredible was that Sergison did all of this without ever visiting South Africa. How she managed to secure the conviction of Imbayarwo is the subject of a new documentary, The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching a Killer, available on Amazon Prime Video from July 27.
Today the 54-year-old still feels astonished by her role in securing justice. As someone who has always led a quiet life, taking part in a documentary isn't something that came naturally to her. She was driven firstly by a desire for justice for the aunt who she had always shared a close bond with, but while she acknowledges that nothing she has done will bring her back, the past 11 years have proven to her how femicide is allowed to happen virtually unchallenged. In South Africa, 153 rapes are reported each day and eight women are murdered.
'I think life is cheap there. It's accepted. Even when they find the men responsible, cases fall apart because the systems aren't robust enough. And then you start to read UN reports about femicide, rape and gender-based violence and they show that right across the world women have no value.'
That her plucky, vivacious aunt was all too easily reduced to yet another female murder victim photograph, a headline in a newspaper, is something she still rails against.
'She was a real person, with a real life and lots left to live, and that was taken away from her in the most violent way possible.'
Christine Robinson's life and death
All her life, Sergison had looked up to her aunt as someone who embraced life to the fullest.
The teacher from Liverpool had lived everywhere from Moscow to Kuwait, and had travelled to the Galapagos, China and Australia.
'You'd sit next to Chris on a bus and you'd know her life story; she was chatty and funny. She had many friends all over the world. She grew up very poor but she had ambition and she wanted to travel.'
'She would come home with a suitcase full of photographs of the kids in her class and she'd talk about them as if they were her own children. She was nurturing as a teacher I suppose. She wanted children but it just didn't happen.
And in 2002, after meeting and marrying Robbie, the love of her life, in her forties, the couple bought a game park near the Botswana border.
While she and Robbie had been concerned about violence, the life they opted for was a long way from any of South Africa's violent townships.
They had CCTV and two Alsatian dogs that were trained to protect. 'She did everything you were supposed to do,' says Sergison. And life was good. That was until Robbie was diagnosed with cancer. In 2012 he died with Robinson by his side in his native Ireland.
Afterwards, still deep in grief, Robinson made the decision to return to South Africa to continue running the 30-guest lodge.
'I was driving her to the airport and I said: 'You don't need to do this, Chris. We can get a lawyer to sort it out'. But she hadn't been back for 18 months. There were all these legalities to go through, plus she had memories there to revisit and enjoy.
By the time Sergison took the call in Pizza Express two years later, Robinson was in the process of selling the lodge with the intention of returning to the UK. The day of her murder she missed an appointment about the sale.
The same day that Robinson was found wrapped in a duvet, her throat slashed, Imbayarwo fled to his native Zimbabwe.
That someone close to her aunt, who had worked there for six years, could do such a thing shocked Sergison. 'I think there had been some petty theft, but nothing like this. Afterwards I scoured all the emails Chris had sent me, looking for mention of him, and there was never a story about him. She wrote about the chefs, and the maids, but never him.'
A 'frustrating' investigation
What followed was a painfully inadequate attempt to extradite him from Zimbabwe.
'There were three or four attempts at extradition but the paper work was always wrong in some way. They'd tell me it was getting done but it wasn't. The authorities were so incompetent.'
Sergison found her dealings with the Foreign Office to be equally frustrating. 'Our government wouldn't put enough pressure on them to get it sorted. I went to one meeting that had been in the diary for two weeks and the case officer knew nothing about the case. He hadn't even had the decency to open the file and look at the details. All he said was: 'I'll do better next time.''
It wasn't until she made contact with the charity, Murdered Abroad, that she realised her experience was all too common. 'Everyone thinks of the Madeleine McCann case where the police swoop in. But that doesn't happen,' says Sergison plainly.
And even the South African non-profit organisation Action Society, that focuses on working for reform in the justice system, especially regarding gender-based violence, went quiet.
'They'd moved on to the next case. While that's frustrating, you understand they've got to put the resource where they can.'
Going to South Africa herself was out of the question due to her own health problems – Sergison suffers from severe asthma that has seen her hospitalised in intensive care.
Via text and email she maintained contact with the likes of Noelle Denis, the lodge manager as well as Robinson's friend. It was through her that, in 2015, she was told about a sighting of Imbayarwo; he was back in South Africa, living in Johannesburg. Sergison told the South African authorities. Nothing happened.
Taking matters into her own hands
His Facebook page had been inactive since he fled in 2014, but in 2016, turning sleuth, Sergison discovered he had three other profiles, under which he had posted more recent photos. Frustrated by the lack of any other investigations taking place, she decided to take matters into her own hands, creating a fake profile of her own; a flirty twenty-something air hostess called Missy Falcao – an amalgam of her two retired racing greyhounds' names – to reel him in.
Having befriended some of his Facebook friends, she messaged him flirtatiously telling him he was 'so hot' and had 'sexy eyes'.
Imbayarwo took the bait and over the next six months Sergison gleaned new information that she passed on to the South African authorities.
'I told him I was a stewardess as it meant I wasn't always contactable. I had to keep it light; I didn't want to tie myself up in lies that I couldn't remember. I thought if I kept him flattered, it would keep his interest,' she says of her messages.
Sergison didn't tell her family what she was doing. She had learnt not to raise their hopes. The loss of her sister had hit Sergison's mother horribly and she was conscious of protecting her from more distress.
Throughout, Sergison's husband Simone was apprehensive but supportive, she says. 'He's not one to put his head above the parapet and I wasn't before all this. I'm quite shy but when something drives you, you have to do something.'
Still, there were moments when she backed off: 'Because I thought, 'This isn't healthy'. I needed to manage my health and wellbeing. The messaging was often late at night. It was difficult. And I had no support over what I should be saying or doing.
'I remember one time I was out for dinner with a friend and Andrew texted and I texted back. And I thought: 'What are you doing? Stop this!' I couldn't let it consume me.'
Her information led to a failed triangulation of his location by the authorities in 2017. And then when a sting operation failed after Imbayarwo didn't show at a meet-up, the trail went cold in 2018. Sergison was left feeling like it had been all for nothing.
Throughout, she had been told by the Foreign Office not to do anything with the information she had, that the South African authorities were dealing with it.
That was no longer enough to keep Sergison quiet.
'He was still out and enjoying his life. And the South African police were too overwhelmed to be doing anything beyond ticking boxes,' she says. 'The British government had never posted his image online and foolishly I had listened to them. But I had all these new photos. I wondered if I posted them, would someone recognise him now?'
On July 30 2020, the sixth anniversary of Robinson's murder, Sergison decided to go for it. Writing: 'Six years ago today this man raped and murdered my aunt Christine Robinson. Andrew Ndlovu is still a free man enjoying his life after taking hers.'
Ian Cameron, of Action Society, shared the post, causing it to go viral, with more than 70,000 people sharing it.
The same day a woman named Melissa got in touch; Imbayarwo had been working for her family for the past five years and living in her yard for the last year.
Justice – at last
That evening he was arrested.
'He'd worked for them for years and was trusted,' says Sergison.
It was an incredibly swift result, after so much time. However in South Africa, conviction rates for femicide are shockingly low due to the lack of thorough evidence and prosecution.
Statistics from the Medical Research Council reveals that less than one in five sexual offence cases end up in court and only 8.6 per cent of all sexual offence cases are finalised with a guilty verdict.
Here, luck was finally on the family's side.
Six months before Imbayarwo's arrest, the prosecutor had looked through the case and asked for holes to be filled. As a result, police got a statement from Imbayarwo's girlfriend at the time of the murder, recounting his confession to her.
While the DNA evidence against Imbayarwo was strong, he pleaded not guilty, claiming the sex was consensual.
At the court case in April 2022, Sergison employed a watching brief to report on the trial. Not only was she too ill to travel to South Africa but she was in intensive care in hospital with suspected tuberculosis. Against the odds, Sergison managed to write a Victim Impact statement to be read in court.
'It was important the judge heard that she wasn't a nobody. She had family, she had friends. She was real. She wasn't just a photograph in the evidence docket,' she says.
Imbayarwo was found guilty of murder and rape eight years after killing and raping Christine Robinson. Sergison has subsequently been told he had a girlfriend whom he was living with at the time of his arrest.
'She was in pieces apparently. I just assumed he was a loner, because I couldn't bear to think otherwise. But she lived with him and had a relationship with him.'
'There was a life left for her to lead and someone took that away from her for £1,400'
Her grief for her aunt remains raw.
'Sundays come when we would always speak, but the phone calls don't come and the emails don't come. Wherever she was in the world you'd get a birthday card and the oddest gift. She returned from Moscow one Christmas with a suitcase full of caviar and waistcoats,' laughs Sergison as she holds back tears.
'There was a life left for her to lead and someone took that away from her for £1,400. I'm sure she would have given that to him. She could be dippy but she knew the value of her own life.'
She worries about what will happen in the future. 'At least for the next 22 years he will be in prison. But if he gets parole and is released, he'll only be my age today.'
How has her experience changed her?
'I've become more vocal. I was very much a wallflower, not one for public speaking. But once you've learnt about what's happening to women and misogyny continues and femicide is accepted you feel obliged to do something.'
'My friends that have known me for a long time are shocked to know I had that fire in my belly.'