James Starkey had female guest before killing: source
Date: November 2 2016
Aislinn Laing, Patrick Begley
Australian banking consultant James Starkey brought a female guest into his upmarket Johannesburg apartment the night before he was found brutally killed, a source close to the case says.
Mr Starkey is believed to have been found naked and tied to a chair and appeared to have had boiling water poured on him.
The 36-year-old had been nearing the end of a three-month project in South Africa working for the London-based consultancy firm Catalyst.
On the evening of October 7, Mr Starkey and a woman entered the Raphael Penthouse Suites where he was staying, the source said.
Both Mr Starkey and the guest were seen by the complex's staff as they entered through the front entrance, where a biometric security system picks up guests' faces before they walk to the lifts.
The guest was not asked to sign the visitor book as she was accompanied by Mr Starkey.
No one else is thought to have entered his room before a colleague called on the complex the next day to check on him. Mr Starkey was found dead, allegedly with burn and strangulation marks.
The general manager of the Raphael Penthouses, David Stroud, has said: "This incident was not a breach of security in the building and took place between the tenant and his invited guest in a private apartment."
Police, who are treating the death as a murder, have said they have no suspect. They have not commented on Mr Starkey's injuries or released CCTV footage of the night. It is not known whether anything was stolen from his room.
"The police have an idea from the footage who they're looking for but they need to tread carefully and not scare the suspect away, people can go deeper underground if they think they are being looked for," the source said.
Mr Starkey had worked in Australia and more recently London for a series of financial services firms including Goldman Sachs, Macquarie Bank and JP Morgan.
"James lived life to the full and certainly had everything to live for, having recently become engaged and planning to return to settle in Australia in the near future," his family said in a statement.
He chose South Africa's Pilanesberg National Park to propose to his girlfriend in September, staying in the high-end Black Rhino safari lodge.
"You always think they will be happy together for the rest of their lives and then something like this happens, it's just awful," the lodge manager said.
Mr Starkey wrote on Facebook: "The staff here will live in my memory as they made our stay very special."
His body was repatriated to Australia and buried in Macquarie Park cemetery on October 21.