The WhatsApp crying-baby-as-bait crime alert circulating in SA is a dated urban legend

South Africans have begun forwarding a dramatic WhatsApp message claiming that criminals are leaving a crying baby outside people’s gates at night to lure them out, before staging a robbery. Andrew Thompson explores how the story runs like a budget true-crime thriller, minus the truth. A message circulating widely in South Africa at the moment, to the point that WhatsApp has labelled it “forwarded many times”, details a heinous crime in which someone “intentionally” left a baby, wrapped in a white cloth, in front of someone else’s gate. “The baby cried for over 30 minutes, then stopped,” the message reads. “A man dressed in black, hidden behind our wall, crawled up and hit the baby again to make it cry. When he realised no one was coming out to check on the baby, he crawled out to carry it off the road, and a few minutes later, a taxi arrived and they left.” The message, which carries the earnest but threatening hallmarks of a 90s chain letter, says the sender “decided to share it so we can all be vigilant”. It is presented as eyewitness testimony – the writer’s “family and I” supposedly watched the whole thing unfold from their
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