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TWENTY-ONE-YEAR-OLD Tinashe Maruta recently made headlines for all the wrong reasons.
Last week, he was condemned to 60 years behind bars following his psychotic reign of terror that involved rape and robbery.
Maruta and his partner in crime Frank Mafati, who is now cooling off at the Chikurubi Maximum Prison Psychiatric Unit, turned Whitecliff suburb into their own dystopian playground.
Armed with a machete and pistol, the duo prowled the streets looking for unsuspecting victims. The pair did not just steal — no, for them, that would have been too boring.
They robbed and sexually assaulted multiple victims, including a woman they dragged into a maize field and a couple they humiliated in the vilest way imaginable.
The first instalment of the real-life horror unfolded on January 24, when Maruta and Mafati ambushed a woman seeking shelter from the rain. They dragged her into a maize field, stole her belongings and took turns to rape her. A couple of weeks later, on February 7, they upped the ante.
This time they followed a couple down a footpath, before robbing and sexually assaulting the woman in front of her helpless husband.
Things got even more disturbing the next morning when the woman, who was trying to cleanse herself in the bath, made the shocking discovery — one of the assailants had inserted stones into her private parts during the assault.
The grotesque and degrading act added a horrifying layer of cruelty to the crime, showing that Maruta and his accomplice were not only after valuables but also sought to inflict the maximum amount of physical and emotional suffering on their victims.
But the victims were not going to let these monsters get away with it. They filed police reports and medical examinations confirmed the assaults. Soon enough, the cops caught up with Maruta and Mafati.
Maruta’s courtroom defence was so bizarre it sounded like pure fantasy. He actually claimed he had a medical condition that made it impossible to sleep with women without causing their deaths. Imagine the audacity!
This numbskull thought he could convince the court by making such an outlandish claim.
But the magistrate would not hear of it.
He sentenced Maruta to 60 years — 20 years for each rape and 10 years for each robbery. Two of the robbery sentences run concurrently.
It is hard to decide what is worse: Maruta’s crimes or his delusional defence? And now, thanks to his brilliance, he will have plenty of time on his hands to reflect. He now has the next 60 years to reflect on his heinous crimes.
Online Reporter