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Doubled Stupidity: The Arrogant Affair That Turned a Missing Boy Search Into a Framed Murder Plot · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's set the scene. It's two thousand and two.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: We're in gar Al Sophie, Jordan. This is a place,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: you know, nestled between mountains and the Dead Sea, historically
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: known for being incredibly safe, right.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: The kind of place where neighbors know each other, kids
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: play outside without a second thought, real trouble, genuine alarm.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: It just wasn't really part of the daily fabric there.
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: Until it was suddenly. Terrifyingly, that feeling of security just
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: evaporates when a seven year old boy disappears.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: Just gone one minute playing, the next vanished, and for.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: The next twenty four hours it's chaos, not the normal
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: sounds of life, but desperate searching. You can almost hear
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: the fear in the air, can't you. Shouts, running footsteps,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: just utter disbelief.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: How could a child just disappear, especially there, It's unthinkable.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: And right into this swrilling panic walks a figure who
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: well doesn't quite fit, a man named Ayad.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, in his thirties, nobody really knows him. He says
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: he's just visiting his brother in law, a local guy
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: named Ali, but his behavior is intense.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: He throws himself into the search with this incredible energy,
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: almost like he's got more at stake than anyone else, tireless.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: It's immediately a bit strange, isn't it? And this is
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: where the case takes such a weird turn. We often
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: look at crimes, you know, focusing on the killer's cunning.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: Right, the mastermind idea, But this case.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: What really defines it is something we might call doubled stupidity.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: It's not just the way the crime was carried out,
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: but the motive behind it is just bafflingly simple, almost.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: Petty, a really bizarre combination of intricate, awful planning and
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: yet fundamentally flawed logic.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: Exactly arrogance meeting, just complete incompetence dressed up as something clever.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: So let's dig into that first layer. Yeah, the stranger.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: He actually manages to gain the trust of the boy's
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: family pretty quickly.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: Well, they're frantic, right, consumed by grief and desperate hope.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: They'll listen to anyone offering a plan, any kind of.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Direction, and IODD steps right into that void. He starts organizing,
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: suggesting where to look, directing people to dos. He becomes
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: the uh unofficial guide.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: But while he's doing this, leading these search parties. He
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: keeps asking this question, a really unsettling question.
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: He asks them again and again, where are the closest cemeteries,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: any graveyards around here?
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: Imagine hearing that you're searching for a missing child, holding
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: onto hope, and this guy is asking about burial grounds.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: It must have sent chills down their spines. But you know,
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: in their desperation, maybe they rationalize it. Maybe he thinks
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the worst has already happened.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: Perhaps they're unnerved, but they follow him. What else can
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: they do? They follow his lead towards a local graveyard.
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: The mood must have been incredibly heavy, expecting well, who
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: knows what they were expecting, but probably not this.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Here and there he is inside the cemetery grounds, just
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: lying there, the body of the seven year old boy
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: fully closed.
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: Oh, horrific.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: And signs of violence, yes, clear marks around the neck,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: obvious signs of a struggle of violence.
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: The scene erupts. I imagine total chaos, screaming.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: Grief, pandemonium. Family neighbors just fall apart. But amidst all
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: that raw emotion, one person stands out, odd y odd,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: completely calm composed, while everyone else is reeling. He's the
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: one who picks up the phone the first one to
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: call the security forces and report the body.
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: That composure looking back, it's just deeply chilling, isn't it.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: Absolutely so security forces arrive, they lock down the scene,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: forensics starts their work.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: And they confirm its murder, happening around the time he disappeared.
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: Right, strangulation or maybe choking. But there's something else too,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: something odd. A very fine precise cut around the.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: Neck area, like from a blade, exactly.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: Very sharp, very thin. They're thinking maybe a razor blade
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: or even a medical scalpel. It's an unusual detail and.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Crucially, no other signs right, No theft, no assault.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: None which points away from random violence or you know,
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: a crime of opportunity. This feels targeted, personal like revenge.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: And then they find the clue, or rather the planted clues,
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: right near the body.
• 4:02
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, deliberately placed. It seems an old cigarette pack
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: crumpled up and some matching cigarette.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: Butts, and the brand is specific.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: Very specific. The neighbors immediately recognize it. They say, oh,
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: only one person around here smokes that brand.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Let me guess.
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: Ali Ali y Odd's brother in law, the Manni Odd,
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: claimed he was visiting wow.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, and it gets worse, doesn't it.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: It does. They also find a small scrap of paper
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: handwritten on it a name and a phone number, Ali's
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: name and number, Bingo, Allie's name and number, lying right
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: there near the murdered child.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, so for the police this must be confusing. On
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: one hand, it's screamingly obvious.
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: Right, any experienced detective looks at that and thinks, come on,
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: nobody's as stupid leaving your own name, your unique cigarette
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: brand right at the scene. It absolutely stinks of a
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: frame up, someone who's trying to pin this on Ali.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: But you can't just ignore physical evidence, no matter how
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: suspicious it looks.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: You can't. So they have to bring Ali in. They
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: search his place, and that's when things get really concrete
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: and really scary for Ali.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: They find the potential weapon.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: Hidden above the awning on his balcony, a razor or
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: maybe a scalpel, matching the type of instrument suggested by
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: that weird cut, and it has traces of blood on it.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: Oh man, Okay, that's bad.
• 5:19
  Speaker 2: And it gets worse. Remember the cigarette butts from the cemetery. Yeah,
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: they run DNA tests on the saliva. It's a match
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: to Ali.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: So now the police are caught. The planted evidence feels fake, illogical,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: but the DNA is real science. The weapon is in
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: his hume exactly.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: It's a paradox. Rational deduction says frame job. Hard evidence
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: points squarely at Ali. What do you believe?
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: You have to follow the evidence? I suppose, but maybe
• 5:46
  Speaker 1: with reservations extreme caution.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: Ali, for his part, is sticking to his story. He's innocent.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: He's saying, look, how obvious this is. It's clearly a trap.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: And the victim's family do they believe Ali could do it?
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: They actually defend him. They say he loved the kid,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: he'd never heard him. So the police are holding Ali,
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: but they know something isn't right. They need something more.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: They need to find the person who had set this.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: Trap, so they wait and watch. They put all these
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: apartment under covert surveillance.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Right thinking maybe the real culprit will come back, maybe
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: check on things, maybe contact someone inside.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: And patience pays off. This is where the arrogance really
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: bites the perpetrator.
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: He really does. Two days later, the surveillance team spots
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: someone trying to get into Ali's apartment.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Not through the door though no no.
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: Scaling the outside of the building, climbing up onto the balcony.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: The exact balcony where the razor was hidden, the.
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: Very same one. The police move in immediately, make the arrest,
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: and the climbers Yad are a dedicated search volunteer, the
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: calm caller, the helpful stranger.
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable, But the arrests itself trigger something else, right, a
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: stroke of.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Luck, a huge stroke of luck. As they're leading Yad away,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: a woman in the neighborhood rushes up to the officers.
• 7:00
  Speaker 2: She's got something urgent to tell them.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: She says that the day before the boy even went missing,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: Yodd had approached her. He claimed he couldn't read or write, okay,
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: and he asked her, this woman, to write something down
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: for him on a small piece of paper, specific name
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: and a phone number.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: No, don't tell me.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: The officers, thinking fast, pull out the piece of paper
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: they found next to the body in the cemetery. They
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: show it to her. She confirms it instantly. Yes, yes,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: she says, that's my handwriting. That's the paper I wrote
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: for him.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Wow. Just like that, the whole case flips. The planted
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: note now has an author and it's Eod.
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: The entire focus shifts onto Iod and under questioning, the
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: whole story comes pouring out. He confesses everything.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: So the motive, this doubled stupidity, What was it all about?
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: It was about an affair. Yod was having an illicit
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: relationship with Ali's wife, his own sister in law.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, classic in a tragic way.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: And apparently the wife started getting paranoid. She thought all
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: he was getting suspicions, close to finding out.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: So she tells Eod what end it be? More careful?
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: No, she tells him to solve the problem. Solve the
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: problem of Ali potentially discovering the truth.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: And Iod's solution wasn't just ending the affair.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: His solution was murder frame Ali for something so terrible,
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: killing a child that he'd be locked away for life
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: or even executed, leaving Eod and the wife free to
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: be together.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: That is breathtakingly awful and incredibly convoluted. Instead of the
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: simple solution, he opts for this monstrously complex plan.
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: That's the double stupidity right there, The sheer unnecessary horror
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: of it all, driven by such a mundane, solvable problem.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: So he puts the plan into action.
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: He gets the wife involved in the setup.
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he has her get him a pack of Ali's
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: unique cigarettes and some used butts from an ashtray evidence gathering.
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: Then he targets the child.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: Lures the little boy who is just playing nearby, probably
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: promised him sweets or money, takes into the cemetery, kills.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Him, and plants the evidence the cigarett, threttes the note
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: the neighbor wrote for.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Him, meticulously places them near the body. He thinks it's
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: full proof.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: But then he hits a snag in his own plan.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: A big one. The next day, as the community is
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: searching everywhere but the cemetery, he realizes his mistake.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Nobody would naturally look there for a missing kid right away.
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: It's too morbid, too final.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: Exactly the body and crucially, the planted evidence pointing to
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: Ali might not be found quickly enough, or maybe not
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: at all.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: So he has to intervene. He has to join the
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: search you orchestrated.
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: He has to become the helpful guide, the concerned outsider,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: nudging them suggesting morbid possibilities like cemeteries, until he steers
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: them right to the spot.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: He had to risk exposing himself just to make sure
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: his frame job worked on schedule. Incredible.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: The arrogance is just staggering, and it peakues with his final.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: Act, trying to climb back onto the balcony.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: Two days after the murder. Two days after finding the
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: body and calling the police. He genuinely believed everyone was
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: convinced Ali was the killer. He thought it was safe
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: to sneak back to visit his mistress, Ali's.
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: Wife, right into the police surveillance net. His own ego,
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: his belief, and his flawed plan led them straight to
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: him completely.
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: The aftermath was swift. Ali's wife was arrested too for conspiracy,
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: and her sentence life imprisonment with hard labor. For Eod,
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: the architect of the whole thing, the sentence was death.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: It's just a staggering failure, isn't it. They genuinely thought
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: they'd pulled off this master plan.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: A fool proof plot in their minds. But the clues
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: they left, the note, the specific cigarettes were so clumsy,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: so unseubtle, they practically screamed set up to the investigators.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: From the start.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: It alerted the police they were dealing with manipulation, not
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: just a straightforward killing.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Right The sheer awfulness of murdering a child contrasted so
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: sharply with the frankly idiotic simplicity of the planet evidence.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: It was doomed from the beginning because the setup was
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: just too stupid to be believable. Yet the crime itself
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: was horrifically real.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: So this case wasn't cracked because the killer was brilliant
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: and left some tiny clever clue. It was solved because
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: he was so arrogant, so convinced of his own flawed logic, that.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: He couldn't resist inserting himself into the investigation, couldn't resist
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: trying to control the narrative, and ultimately couldn't resist going
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: back to the scene. His ego essentially signed his own confession.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: It really makes you think, doesn't it. How often does
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: that happen? How often is it not the detective's genius
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: but the criminal's own vanity, their need to oversee their
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: own masterpiece that leads directly to their downfall.