Gareth Thomas clubbed former Durban mayor Mike Lipschitz to death, now he’s teaching under an assumed name.
|||Durban - Gareth Thomas, the man convicted for the gruesome murder of former Durban mayor Mike Lipschitz, has lied his way into a job as a high school teacher.
The Sunday Tribune has uncovered that Thomas, 30, changed his name, duping the principal, pupils and the governing body of Futura High School about his real identity.
The headmaster and parents at the school have reacted with shock to Thomas’s real identity and his history. The Department of Correctional Service said it would investigate.
He was released on parole in 2010, after serving eight years of his 20-year sentence for the July 2001 killing.
Thomas has been teaching life orientation at the Durban school since March, working under the alias of Daniel Joseph.
In a tearful confession before the Durban High Court in 2002, he pleaded guilty to the brutal slaying of Lipschitz, in a case which laid bare a sordid saga of sex and drugs. Thomas, who was 18 when he was arrested, bludgeoned Lipschitz to death with a brick after he gave him a massage at his upmarket Pinsent Road home.
Lipschitz, a one-time National Party member and Durban’s last apartheid-era mayor, had picked up Thomas and his friend Dirk Ackerman and paid them for a massage, which led to the teens being described as “rent boys”.
Both boys were arrested later the same day when police traced calls made from Lipschitz’s cellphone. Ackerman turned State witness.
In his confession, Thomas said he had taken four lines of cocaine, four Ecstasy tablets and three shots of whisky. Lipschitz was naked save for a T-shirt when his body was discovered by a domestic worker.
Now described as a “man of God” who had turned his life around and made a positive impact on his pupils, Thomas has taken a second ID and is married to a Chatsworth woman with a one year-old child.
The Department of Correctional services said it would investigate Thomas’s decision to change his name.
Meanwhile, Futura school, billed as “the school of second chances”, has since come under criticism from Lipschitz’s widow, Carolann, for its failure to do a background check on Thomas. Its governing body is due to meet this week to decide what action to take.
Principal Roger Owen reacted with shock when told of Thomas’s past. “I have never heard anything about that (his past conviction) before, but I have nothing to do with the hiring of teachers; that is handled by the governing body. I don’t know whether the governing body looked very deeply into his background. I don’t think it would be a normal thing to employ someone with a criminal past,” he said.
Owen said background checks when employing staff were a “luxury” the low-cost private school could not afford.
“We would not knowingly do anything to jeopardise our school and our pupils. He certainly has not done anything untoward during his tenure here. In fact he has been very ethical. One doesn’t want to ruin the rest of his life if he has paid the price for his crime,” Owen said.
He described Thomas as a “very committed Christian” who had had a positive effect on a lot of the pupils.”
The Department of Education said that former convicts deserved another chance, provided they did not pose a threat. But their employment could be terminated if new and incriminating information came to light.
But Carolann Lipschitz questioned whether he was ready to be entrusted with the lives of school children. “This is a terrible story. I can’t believe it.”
Asked whether she had forgiven Thomas, she said, “I’ve given it a try, I don’t know… it’s not for me to forgive. This happened, I don’t want to bear a grudge against him.
“I was just hoping he would start a new life, and make a new start. But this is not a good start. No principal of any school would want to have someone like that on (their) staff, maybe have him as a speaker at one of the sessions of drug rehabilitation. But not be in the school as a teacher, not as a life skills teacher.”
Thomas declined to be interviewed this week as he, according to Owen, had been instructed by the parole board not to speak to the media.
Thomas’s attorney, Keith Mothillal, said his client was never asked whether he had a criminal record when he was recruited. And when this was glossed over he decided to omit it in his interview.
“At no point during the application process did they ask him anything about a criminal record. If they were willing to accept him on that basis then it’s entirely up to them. The application form never canvassed that aspect of his life. If he had been asked he would have volunteered all information.”
Mothillal said the school had been looking for a life orientation teacher with a “bit of a rough past”.
“He’s doing quite fine there, the students look up to him and nothing negative has come forth. His past is inescapable, but it is his future that we are now concerned about and this will count against him if it is viewed in the wrong light,” Mothillal said.
Futura’s school governing body chairman Warren Clark said, “We weren’t aware he’d been convicted of murder… It is a bit of a shock, but having said that, ‘Daniel’ did disclose that he’d had a bit of a drug problem in the past, and he’d rehabilitated himself.”
He described Thomas as the “type of person that we were looking for”.
“A lot of our kids come from backgrounds with social problems. The person we wanted to teach those kids was someone who’d been down the wrong street and then turned his own life around. He did tell us he’d taken drugs before.”
Clarke said Thomas had told the governing body that he had taught at Westville prison, but not that he’d been incarcerated there.
The governing body would be meeting this week to decide on Thomas’s fate, and Clark said he did not want to pre-empt the process.
“We’ll make a judgement call…. There’s the school’s reputation to worry about, and the kids to worry about.”
Nokuthula Zikhali, Correctional Services spokeswoman, said Thomas had undergone rehabilitation programmes and was found suitable for parole.
Thomas was supposed to be working for Old Mutual as an insurance broker representing Eagle Eye.
“The department is not aware of him trading under the name of Joseph and of his school job. Therefore we cannot comment about any declaration by him to the school.
“We will investigate the matter of him allegedly working at the school and the change of his name,” She said.
Zikhali said the department encouraged former convicts to find employment, and no job could be seen as a violation of parole conditions.
“We don’t bar people from gaining employment. They can even join the police service, as long as that department’s policies allow it.”
Education spokesman Muzi Mahlambi said a person with a criminal record could not be barred from working with children.
“Constitutionally when a person serves their time, and they are released as a free man, we have to give them a chance provided they do not cause a danger. Whether they have a record of rape or stealing, we have to look at the merits of each case,” he said. “But contracts clearly state that employment can be terminated at any stage if new and incriminating information comes to light. “
Mahlambi said if a person was struck off the register by the SA Council of Educators, they would never be allowed to teach. – Additional reporting by Charmel Payet
Sunday Tribune