Prime suspect in British safari lodge owner's murder arrested after six-year campaign by niece

The prime suspect in the murder of a British safari lodge owner has been arrested after her niece posed as a love interest on Facebook to track him down.

Christine Robinson, 59, was raped and murdered six years ago at the 125-acre Rra-Ditau lodge she ran alone on the Botswana border, but her killer has remained at large.

She had drawn out around £3,500 to pay staff on the eve of the attack in July 2014 and was found in a bedroom the next morning, her throat slashed.

The gardener suspected of the horrific attack - Andrew Ndlovu, then 24 - subsequently disappeared and was thought to have slipped over the border to his native Zimbabwe.

As police interest in the case waned over the years that followed, Ms Robinson’s niece, Lehanne Sergison, mounted her own attempt to track down her aunt’s suspected killer.

The 49-year-old from Kent had struggled to keep public focus on the murder despite delivering a petition to Downing Street in 2014 urging David Cameron to take action.

She claimed both the Foreign Office and the South African Police Service said it would take three years for a formal extradition to take place from Zimbabwe if he was found.

Rumours soon started to circulate, however, that Mr Ndlovu had returned to South Africa.

Ms Sergison - frustrated by what she felt to be a lack of interest from the police - set up a bogus Facebook account to befriend those close to Mr Ndlovu in the hope of tracing him.

She posed as an attractive South African air stewardess and soon discovered his new Facebook account, which she traced to a profile used on dating sites.

Ms Sergison told the man whom she suspected of killing her aunt that “he was hot” and over time befriended him, before arranging a date in Johannesburg.

In the fortnight leading up to their date, her plans came a cropper when the South African refused to set up a sting operation.

“I nearly got him with a honey trap but the South African Police could not get their act together and when I got photos of him the Foreign Office warned me not to post on social media,” Ms Sergison said.

Mr Ndlovu soon dropped off the radar until February this year, when Ms Sergison said she spotted new activity on his Facebook page and messaged him.

She claimed that, by this point, he had grown wary of his supposed love interest and stopped responding to messages.

Finally, on the sixth anniversary of her aunt’s death this week, Ms Sergison decided to defy official advice by sharing a picture of the suspect on social media.

Her call for help was picked up by a campaign group called AfriForum, representing the minority white population, which circulated the picture on social media channels.

There was then a stunningly quick breakthrough, when a member of the public came forward to say they recognised the suspect and provided details of where he worked and, crucially, lived.

"When I reposted and retweeted Lehanne's post it was shared over 70,000 times and then I got this message out of the blue from someone who knew him and gave his details," said Ian Cameron, a senior executive at AfriForum.

The South African Police Service were handed the details and - within 12 hours of the original facebook post - they had raided the house of the suspect.

He was arrested in Brixton, Johannesburg and driven back to Thabazimbi district, where the crime had been committed.

Police confirmed that a 30-year-old man had been arrested in connection with the rape and murder of Christine Robinson, 59, in 2014 and would be interviewed on Friday.

Ms Sergison said: “This morning I posted on Facebook an appeal to find my aunt’s killer and went to my local garden centre to buy lavender which she loved and the next thing I know we have an arrest.

“I was never going to give up on my aunt.”