EXPRESS KIDNAPPINGS: Researcher Steven Gruzd met alleged killers at Airbnb, court hears, as Grindr link emerges

{JSON.stringify(article.attachments[0], null, 2)} --> The circumstances of Steven Gruzd’s murder point to possible links to criminals targeting men who have sex with men, following a recent rise in ‘Grindr gang’ incidents.

Almost seven months after the murder of senior researcher Steven Gruzd , court details indicate he met his assailants at an Airbnb in Corlett Gardens, Johannesburg, which they had booked and paid for, and where the murder allegedly took place.

Gruzd (53) was the head of the African Governance and Diplomacy Programme at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA). He was reported missing on Friday, 27 March, after he had left to attend a meeting in Corlett Gardens.

His body was found the following day at George Goch Hostel in Jeppestown, 20km away. A postmortem determined the cause of death to be blunt force trauma to the neck.

Five men were arrested on the day Gruzd’s body was found. Thabiso Ngcongco, Nkosenhle Zuma, Siyanda Mzolo, Buhle Zuma, and Nsikelelo Njali are facing charges of robbery with aggravating circumstances, kidnapping, murder, and defeating the ends of justice. They have all pleaded not guilty.

On Friday, 16 October, at the Johannesburg Central Magistrates’ Court, Lieutenant Colonel Johan Potgieter testified that the suspects’ fingerprints were found at the murder scene and inside a white Toyota Corolla driven by the assailants.

The police also found bloodstained linen from the murder scene and a rope with Gruzd’s DNA in the car. CCTV evidence showed the suspects and Gruzd entering the premises separately.

The case has been investigated as a suspected “express kidnapping”. This refers to a crime in which victims are held against their will while being forced by their assailants to withdraw cash from multiple ATMs and send cash transfers to other accounts.

These incidents are the main driver of kidnappings in Gauteng, which records the highest kidnapping cases nationally.

The circumstances behind the death revealed in police evidence and through a Daily Maverick investigation point to an alarming trend in express kidnappings, about which LGBT+ activists have been raising the alarm since 2023.

The SA Police Service did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The police have not officially established how the accused and Gruzd knew each other, and they do not appear to have had an established relationship.

A Johannesburg resident, who requested anonymity, told Daily Maverick that he had matched with Gruzd on Grindr, a dating app for men who have sex with men. He confirmed that Gruzd, whom he also knew outside of the app, was “very active” on the site and regularly confided in him.

This detail, along with the circumstances of his murder, points to the possible involvement of criminal syndicates that create fake accounts on Grindr to lure men who have sex with men to secluded locations for robbery and extortion.