How I catfished a killer: When Christine was found with her throat slashed, police failed to act. Then her niece Lehanne tracked the suspect down on Facebook, posed as a sexy air hostess – and the story took a wild twist
By LISA SEWARDS FOR WEEKEND MAGAZINE
Published: 11:56 BST, 27 June 2025 | Updated: 11:58 BST, 27 June 2025
When Lehanne Sergison waved goodbye to her aunt at the airport, she could never have imagined the trauma that would follow and how she would spend the next six years trying to avenge her brutal murder.
Now an astonishing new documentary tells how Lehanne helped capture her aunt Christine’s killer from her sofa at home in the UK, some 6,000 miles away from the tragedy in South Africa.
The story begins two years after that fond farewell at Heathrow, when ‘kindly’ Christine Robinson’s body was found bundled in a duvet, her throat slashed with the knife still left in her neck on the 125-acre Rra-Ditau game lodge in 2014.
Fistfuls of the £3,500 wages she’d withdrawn to pay staff were missing. A retired teacher from Liverpool, Christine, 59, ran the sprawling estate alone after the death of her husband Daniel from cancer in 2012.
Andrea Imbayarwo, the gardener, who then called himself Andrew Ndlovu, became the prime suspect after he fled the 30-guest estate on the night of the murder. But police said they were powerless to act after CCTV footage showed him heading towards his native Zimbabwe.
After delivering a petition to Downing Street in 2014 calling for action, Lehanne realised it was up to her to hunt him down. ‘He could feel the sun on his face and the wind in his hair when she couldn’t,’ says Lehanne, 54, a retired chartered surveyor.
‘Hearing of Christine’s murder was like an electric shock running through my body. We’d always been so close. It was a brutal, traumatic death for a lovely, kind, generous woman.’
Lehanne decided it was futile leaving it to the hard-pressed authorities in South Africa, where around 11 women are killed every day. ‘My health [she suffers with debilitating asthma] was the only barrier to me going to South Africa to investigate so my only tool was the internet.
Lehanne’s pivotal message about the killer, which she shared on her social media channels
Christine Robinson’s body was found bundled in a duvet, her throat slashed with the knife still left in her neck on the 125-acre Rra-Ditau game lodge in 2014
‘My stomach was in knots when I found “Andrew” on Facebook. There he was having an active life. He was posting comments on some dating pages, which really concerned me. So I thought, “If he wants female companionship, let’s see if he bites.”‘
Without a thought for the potential danger, Lehanne, who’s married and from Kent, set up a fake Facebook account, posing as flirtatious air hostess Missy Falcao. ‘I sent him a message saying, “You’ve got sexy eyes.”
‘Then I panicked. I was going down a route, but I didn’t know where. My emotions were a rollercoaster. When he replied, I could barely breathe. My stomach was doing somersaults. My husband was shocked that he’d replied, but we agreed the important thing was to keep him hooked in.’
Thus began a ‘romantic’ online relationship with her aunt’s killer. ‘I realised I had to make up a backstory for Missy Falcao,’ says Lehanne. ‘I decided she was a young, sassy air stewardess from Ghana. He was flattered; I knew flattery would keep him interested.
‘As the messaging continued he wanted to meet on FaceTime, which would have blown my cover. But there was also the fear that as he wasn’t getting what he wanted, he’d walk away.
‘It hurt every time I contacted him. I wanted to say, “I know who you are and what you’ve done.” But I did what I felt I had to do to get justice.’
Having found out the phone number of the killer – who now claimed to be an electrician and living alone in Johannesburg – Lehanne tipped off South African detectives for them to arrange a sting operation. To her exasperation, the phone tracking failed because his phone was switched off. ‘I was angry and disappointed. I contacted Andrew but there was no response,’ recalls Lehanne, who tells her story in Prime Video’s gripping new documentary, The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching A Killer.
‘A couple of days later I got a message from him explaining that his phone had been stolen. It seemed very coincidental this had happened the night of the sting,’ she says.
Lehanne Sergison helped capture her aunt Christine’s killer from her sofa at home in the UK, some 6,000 miles away from the tragedy in South Africa
‘There was an exchange of messages, then a chilling, “Are you for real, Missy?” It was the first time he’d actually questioned anything. I knew then that I’d lost hold of him.’
Lehanne handed over Missy Falcao’s Facebook account to the South African police but Imbayarwo either lost patience or became suspicious, and he ceased messaging Missy altogether.
The trail went cold for nearly two years – until the sixth anniversary of Christine’s death in 2020. ‘It was about 4am and I couldn’t sleep, so I checked his profile. He’d posted a picture of himself. There was a ferris wheel in the background and I realised he was still in Johannesburg,’ she says.
Incensed, Lehanne decided to post this message on Facebook: ‘Six years ago today this man raped and murdered my aunt Christine Robinson. Andrew Ndlovu is still a free man, enjoying his life after taking hers.’
More than 70,000 people shared the post, and it was picked up by Ian Cameron, an anti-crime activist in South Africa who posted it on his social media, sending it viral. Ian was approached by Imbayarwo’s boss at the company where he worked installing garage doors, and within hours he was arrested.
‘When it came to his arrest, I was on a video call with Ian telling me live what was happening,’ says Lehanne. ‘I was shaking so much I couldn’t believe it. The next thing is I’m seeing him in handcuffs. I just wanted to shout from the rooftops.’
Imbayarwo was finally convicted two years later and given two life sentences. ‘If this long, traumatic journey’s taught me anything, it’s to never give up,’ says Lehanne.
The Facebook Honeytrap: Catching A Killer, from Sunday 6 July, Amazon Prime Video
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How I catfished a killer: When Christine was found with her throat slashed, police failed to act. Then her niece Lehanne tracked the suspect down on Facebook, posed as a sexy air hostess – and the story took a wild twist
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