A theme that straddles the blood-curdling dossiers of most serial killers in this country, especially in the past two decades, is their common victims - who were mainly jobless women.

A theme that straddles the blood-curdling dossiers of most serial killers in this country, especially in the past two decades, is their common victims - who were mainly jobless women.

This common denominator recurs with eerie frequency in the country's criminal records.

Luring their victims with offers of phantom jobs - and ultimately to their deaths - has been a ruse commonly used by several serial killers and multiple rapists since 1988.

Notorious serial killer Moses Sithole had used the same ploy to deadly effect in the late 1980s and early 1990s. And, in doing so, he penned a resonant script later followed by other copycat serial killers and rapists.

In the end, Sithole had taken the lives of 38 women - all of whom he had enticed through false promises of jobs before being strangled.

In recent weeks, another serial killer shot into public infamy by targeting jobless women on the KwaZulu-Natal South Coast.

Yesterday, police arrested the suspected serial killer and five accomplices in connection with the death of five women.

While we welcome the arrests following the killings in the KwaZulu-Natal sugarcane fields, we are saddened though by the fact that more women are still likely to fall victim to the same ruse in the future, of being lured to non-existent jobs and killed.