Leigh Matthews: The Ransom That Wasn't Enough
Eish, That's DarkPlay episode
Show notes
Leigh Matthews was kidnapped the day after her twenty-first birthday in Johannesburg, in July 2004. Her family paid the ransom. She was never returned. Twelve days later, her body was found in an open field outside the city.
Her killer pleaded guilty and got life. But the judge who sentenced him found that he'd lied and had help, the pathologist's own evidence didn't match his confession, and more than twenty years later, the case is still working its way through South African courts. This episode gets into the kidnapping, the ransom drop, the detective who cracked it in five weeks, and the fight over who this man really is that's still playing out today.
Stay safe and stay skeptical.
