Body count grows in slaying of S. African strip-club owner

By some accounts, the body count is 10, among them a bouncer and a private investigator said to have worked for a Czech businessman living in South Africa who is wanted in his homeland on fraud and other charges.

Mr. Dlamini said he could not confirm reports that any of these deaths were connected, and police had no suspects in the deaths of the strip-club boss’s lawyer or his former business partner.

But police said the man who made that May 2010 phone call is a suspect in Jackson’s killing.

The man, known as George Smith or George Louca, fled to Cyprus after Jackson was killed. From there, as authorities wrangle over his extradition, Mr. Smith-Louca has given interviews to South African reporters, claiming that if he were brought back to South Africa, he would implicate others in money laundering, bribery and other crimes.

“We’re still making those efforts to get George Louca, or whatever his name is, from Cyprus,” McIntosh Polela, spokesman for an elite South African police unit known as the Hawks, told AP.

Mr. Polela said the investigating was stalled until the suspect can be brought to South Africa, but that police would look into possible links to other killings.

“But we don’t want to speculate,” he said.

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