As a child Micki Pistorius’ natural curiosity was cultivated by both her parents and developed into an insatiable interest in history, art and literature. She enrolled for a BA degree, majoring in Psychology and Languages at the University of Pretoria. She has studied German in school and French at university.
Her very first appointment was as a research assistant in industrial psychology at the Gordon Institute of Business Science, University of Pretoria, followed by a stint as a publications officer at the Office of the Commission for Administration. She jumpstarted her career in public relations and client liaison, organising events and compiling press releases. Soon she was lured by the printing press and she crossed over to journalism. At a local newspaper she covered general news, entertainment, literature, and tertiary institutions. She then joined the SA Broadcasting Corporation as a radio news journalist and occasionally covered stories for television news.
She relocated to Cape Town and wrote for a local women’s magazine. She was then appointed as Assistant Manager Publications and Educational Services at the SA Nature Foundation, World Wide Fund for Nature WWF in Stellenbosch. She wrote articles for the quarterly newspaper “Our Living World”. She relocated to Pretoria and her interest in nature conservation continued as Assistant Manager Public Relations and Publications Officer at the National Zoological Gardens in Pretoria.
Micki made a career detour from journalism to psychology and was accepted into the University of Pretoria’s Psychology Honors and Master’s programmes. The title of her Master’s degree dissertation was: “A cross evaluation of theories regarding the Oedipus complex by example of a case study”. She acquired both degrees cum laude. She published a few scientific articles and contributed a chapter to the book Forensic Criminalistics. (1996, Editor: Jacob van der Westhuizen, 2nd edition)
Whilst completing her Master’s degree dissertation, she commenced researching the topic of serial killers. This interest, by default, had her appointed as the South African Police Service’s first psychological profiler. She completed her Doctorate Philosophiae degree with the thesis: “A psycho-analytical approach to serial killers”, within her second year of appointment.
Micki could not stop writing and researching and within a year she had compiled the curricula for the Basic and Advanced Investigative Psychology courses. Her courses opened an innovative investigative avenue, specialising in the detection of serial killers, serial rapists, stalkers, child molesters and other psychologically motivated criminals. She presented both courses annually for the next six years and trained hundreds of selected murder and robbery detectives, commanders and crime scene technicians.
As founder and Commander of the Investigative Psychology Unit, she dealt with more than thirty five serial killers, several serial rapists and child molesters as well as stalkers, arsonists and other high profile crimes.
As a mechanism to purge from the stress and horror she resorted to writing. Due to her international acclaim as profiler, a publisher in the United Kingdom invited her to write an autobiography and she converted her private notes into a book. Penguin SA bought the manuscript and “Catch me a Killer” became a raging international best seller in 2000, with an updated reprint in 2023 and it was turned into a television series, Catch me a Killer for Showmax, featuring Charlotte Hope in the lead role.
Upon resigning from the SA Police Service, Micki joined a private investigation firm, and she wrote “Strangers in the Street: Historical overview of SA serial killers” which was published in 2002 by Penguin SA. The book compared South African serial killers with their international counterparts. Her research uncovered serial killers as early as 1934 in Milnerton, Cape Town.
After eight years of hunting various criminals and recovering from the trauma thereof, Micki decided upon another change of scenery and returned to television journalism. She joined Zyron, the television production company of actress Sandra Prinsloo and producer Jan Groenewalt. Micki wrote the scripts for the television crime documentary series “Donker Spore” and “Justice in the Line of Fire” and she co-presented with Sandra. By then she had featured in numerous local and international television crime documentaries. These include the SABC, M-Net, KykNet, BBC, French national news, “Frei Dosier” in Hungary and Nippon in Japan. Canal Plus in France aired a documentary titled “Micki et le vent noir”, (Micki and the Back Wind) which captured her career and three of the most notorious serial killer cases she had investigated. Several French magazines, including Paris Match featured articles on her.
Penguin SA commissioned her to write “Fatal Females”, covering the crimes of fifty one female perpetrators in South Africa and providing a forensic psychological take on the different types of crimes, committed by these women. Micki focussed on turning out three books in as many years.
Fatal Females was published in 2004, followed by “Profiling serial killers and other crimes” in 2005, explaining the process involved in profiling serial killers, rapists, stalkers, arsonists, child molesters and intelligence profiling. Her fifth book Skimme in die Skadu” the Afrikaans translation of “Catch me a Killer”, was published in 2006 by Penguin SA.
One of the greatest pleasures of her life, was writing the fictional historical novel “Sorg” in 2004. Penguin SA decided to launch Afrikaans books and “Sorg” was chosen as one of the pilots. The plot depicts the epic rise and fall of the fabulously wealthy Ostrich farmers and their descendants and spans an era dating from the Creation to the 21st century. The book was well received and there is an option out to turn it into a television series.
Micki’s career took another turn when she opened her private practice as psychologist and consultant. Apart from a few newspaper articles, serious writing and research were delayed for a while, as she invested her energy into her practice. Micki produced in-house articles on various psychological topics such as stress management, child discipline, neuro-psychology, communication styles, for the consumption of her patients.
By 2010 she could no longer resist her true calling to write and research and she enrolled for an Honnours degree in Biblical Archaeology, since ancient antiquity has always been one of her lifelong passions. She researched and wrote fifteen articles in one year to complete the degree. She has followed the Iliad’s Agamemnon from his stronghold at Mycenae in Greece to the beaches of Troy in Turkey and she followed the more recent footsteps of Alexander the Great to Taxila in modern day Pakistan.
In 2015 she developed an interactive book “Heroes, a psychological insight into men’s perceptions on relationships” on the website www.heroes-warriors.com. She interviewed many men and captured their unique and seldom expressed views on love, sex, marriage, divorce and platonic relationships. She employed Greek mythology as metaphoric setting.
Once more her career ventured into a different, although not unfamiliar territory when she designed neuro-psychological workshops specializing in soft skills training for adults and for the leadership identification and development of learners. After a decade of conducting career counselling for hundreds of learners and adults and writing countless reports, incorporating psychometric tests, Micki developed a comprehensive program, designed to reach a larger population than the limited capacity her private practice could accommodate.
She joined Ancient Origins as consultant Premium site editor and author and has written an array of articles on archaeological topics all over the world.
The author Micki Pistorius has semi- retired on an island where she writes on the beach, in between her travelling adventures to explore archaeological sites.
