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The Whisper Campaign Murder: Two Days of Torture, a Canal Dump, and the Ex-Husband's Calculated Revenge · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So let's set the scene. It's Cardassa, Giza, twenty sixteen.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Think low lying rural fields, quiet, lots of irrigation canals,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: you know, these terrats.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: Very agricultural, pretty isolated. And it's that isolation that probably
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: played a role here.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Because one morning some local spot something, yeah, well, something
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: really out of place in one of these canals near
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: the bank.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Not just debris. It was this big, heavy sack
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: a shwall and you could tell even from a distance
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: it was heavy weighted.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just floating freely. It seemed lodged, almost pinned
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: down exactly.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: Someone had gone to a considerable effort to make sure
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: whatever was inside stayed submerged, stayed on the canal floor.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: The immediate thought, obviously was pretty grim a body.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: So security forces are called, they arrive and they start
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: the process of getting this sack out of the water.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: And that's when the level of let's call it meticulousness
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: really becomes clear. This wasn't just dumped, no.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Not at all. The sack was bound with tons of rope,
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: like crisscrossed, tied in really complex not It wasn't just functional,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: It felt almost obsessive.
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: And then there was the stone, a large heavy stone
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: deliberately tied to the bottom. The intention was unmistakable, keep
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: this hidden forever.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: That level of detail, that planning. Yeah, it screams premeditation,
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: doesn't it? Not panic?
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, it tells you this was personal, calculated. So they
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: finally cut through all those layers of rope and cloth
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: and a human body, but it was in a really
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: advanced state of decomposition. Making identification and figuring out what
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: happened incredibly difficult right from the start.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: So you immediately have this double mystery. First, who is
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: this person?
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: And second why go to such extreme, almost baroque lengths
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: to conceal the body and eraser identity?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the usual starting points just weren't there. No local
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: missing person's reports matched, no obvious crime scene nearby. They
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: were basically starting from zero, just with the body.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: Itself, well, not quite zero. The forensic team still had
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: something to work with despite the decomposition. The initial medical
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: report confirmed the victim was female.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: Okay, any idea on age.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: The estimate was late twenties, maybe around twenty eight, and
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: the cause of death was clear strangulation. Kannak.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: But you mentioned the concealment. The meticulousness. Did the body
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: itself show signs of that kind of intensity? Oh?
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Yes, And this is where it gets even darker. The
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: report confirmed what the disposal method hinted at. The murder
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: wasn't quick. It was the end of a period of
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: prolonged suffering.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: Torture, courture before she was strangled.
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: Correct extensive bruising contusions on her hands and feet. The
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: pattern suggested she'd been tightly bound with ropes for quite
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: some time before.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: Death, bound for a long time.
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: And there was something else. Forensic analysis found traces of
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: wood fibers embedded in her skin tissues.
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Wood fibers. Wait, so she was beaten with like a.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Stick or something, that's the strong implication, repeatedly beaten. This
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: wasn't a sudden rage killing. This points to planned, methodical
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: cruelty unfolding over time.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Wow, okay, so strangulation, yes, but only after being bound
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: and beaten exactly.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: It paints a picture of calculated punishment, not a spontaneous act.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: The report also gave two other small but vital pieces
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: of personal information.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: What were they?
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: She had been married previously, and she had given birth
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: at some point in her.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Life, so she had a family network connections, people who
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: should have noticed she was gone, which makes the lack
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: of a missing person's report even stranger.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Precisely, that silence was a huge red flag in itself,
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: and because nobody local was reporting someone like her missing,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: the police had to cast a much wider net, far
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: beyond Curdosa, beyond Giza.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: Even How long did that take? About?
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: Two weeks? Two frustrating weeks. Then finally a potential break
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: an alert came in, but not from nearby, was from Alexandria, Kisconduria, Alexandria.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: That's quite a distance. What was the alert?
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: A missing person's report had been filed by an elderly
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: man for his daughter Seima. She was twenty eight years old.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Age matches. But what was strange about it the timing.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Mainly, he reported her missing after she'd already been gone
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: for two full months, sixty days.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Two months, and he's only just reporting it.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: And apparently his demeanor was off, very calm, no real
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: sense of regency or suspicion towards anyone, just matter of
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: factly reporting her gone for two months.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: That is deeply suspicious. So did they connect her to
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: the body.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: They showed the father photos of the clothing found on
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: the victim, He identified them immediately. They belonged to his daughter, Seama.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: So the victim has a name, Shama. What happened when
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: they started digging into her life? Did it explain the
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: father's odd behavior?
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: It certainly started to. The picture that emerged was complex
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: and deeply dysfunctional. Also, while investigators learned the father wasn't
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: just a concerned parent, He was known in some circles
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: as a pimp, a call wad, and Shama had been
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: involved in his operations.
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, that changes the dynamics significantly.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: It does. Her life involved multiple non traditional marriages, She
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: traveled a lot. The primary goal, it seems, was often
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: financial gain, and her father knew all about this, even
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: seemed to facilitate it.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: So, given the brutality that torture the disposal, revenge seemed
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: like a very strong motive now rooted in this turbulent background.
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, the investigators really honed in on that this wasn't random,
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: This felt like payback, something deeply personal.
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: Do they look at her current husband, the one in Alexandria.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: They did quickly, but he seemed almost entirely indifferent. So
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: she often disappeared for long stretches. He considered it normal
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: for her. He was ruled out pretty fast.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: So if not the present, they looked to the past exactly.
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: That led them to her previous husband, a man named
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Amr El Scheimy. He was thirty eight, a fairly prominent
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: fruit and vegetable merchant, a Tajir Kodhar Wafakiya. They had
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: officially divorced about a year before Seima's disappearance late twenty fifteen.
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: A fruit and vegetable merchant. Okay, and this is where
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: things start clicking into place. Right the location.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Bingo Ammerel Shamy owned a storage warehouse a mason and
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: its location.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Let me guess, near the canal.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Not just near it. It was located on the exact
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: same path as the section of the canal where Shima's
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: body was pulled out.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's a huge connection. The ex husband's.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: Business is right there, a massive geographical link. But it
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: wasn't just the where. It was also the what the sack,
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: the very sack she was found in. It was identified
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: as a specific type commonly used in his line of
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: work for packaging and transporting fruits and vegetables, a schwal
• 6:30
  Speaker 2: cut Harwaffakiha.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: So the location and the materials used to hide the
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: body point directly to his business.
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: Yes, you have the victim, you have the ex husband,
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: you have his warehouse on the canal path, and you
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: have the exact type of sack he uses daily involved
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: in the murder concealment. It formed a very tight, undeniable triangle.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: Too many coincidences to ignore what happened when they confronted him.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: They got a warrant, went to the warehouse and Amerrel
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: Scheimy apparently showed immediate sign of stress, real visible tension
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: to water.
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: Did they find anything incriminating inside the warehouse? Oh?
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah. During the search they found stacks of sacks identical
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: to the one Shama was found in, and huge amounts
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: of rope the same kind used to bind her body
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: and weight the sack. The materials were just part of
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: his everyday business inventory.
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: The evidence was literally surrounding him. Did he confess eventually?
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, he broke down and confessed, and the story he
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: told filled in the gaps, revealing just how toxic their
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: history was.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: How did they even meet?
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: It started back in twenty eleven, And remember Seama's father right,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: Apparently the father essentially engineered the connection, seeing Amer's wealth
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: as an opportunity. Amer and Seama got married secretly, an earfy.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Marriage, secretly meaning his first wife didn't know exactly.
• 7:49
  Speaker 2: For two years it was completely clandestine. Then Shama had
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: a son. After the baby was born, Amer decided to
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: make the marriage official formalize it. He wanted his son
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: raised with his other kids he had six with his
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: first wife.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: So they were officially married for another two years while
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: he was still married to his first wife.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Correct a recipe for disaster. Really, the first wife was
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: understandably consumed by jealousy. The pressure she put on Omor.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Was immense, constant, until he couldn't take it anymore.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: Pretty much. He divorced Seama in late twenty fifteen, largely,
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: it seems due to the relentless pressure from the first wife.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: She likely thought she'd won that Shama was.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Out of the picture, but she wasn't, was she no.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: Only about four months after the divorce, Shamer reached out
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: to Omer again. The initial reason given was that she
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: could see their son, plausible enough, but it didn't stop there.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: They resumed their relationship, though not formally remarried this.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Time, and Seamer's father and her new husband in Alexandria.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Were they okay with this?
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: Cassidly yes, because money was involved. Emma was wealthy and
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: that seemed to smooth things over for them. But someone wasn't.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: Okay with it, the first wife.
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: The first wife found out they were seeing each other again,
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: and this time her approach was different, more insidious.
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: How so what did she do?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: This is what investigators started calling the whispering campaign al
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: zan a la al we done, literally like buzzing in.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: The ears, a whispering campaign. What does that mean?
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Instead of direct confrontation, she started planting seeds of doubt poison.
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: She constantly, relentlessly chipped away at Ahmer's mind about what.
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: She didn't just complain about the affair. She started insinuating
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: things about the past, accusing Shama of cheating on him
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: during their marriage, and crucially, she began questioning the paternity
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: of their son over and over again. Wow, so psychological
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: warfare exactly, pure manipulation, constantly suggesting he'd been deceived, that
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: the child might not even be his. She fed his insecurities,
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: stoked his ego, painted Shama as this treacherous figure who
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: had dishonored.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Him, and Amer, despite being the successful merchant, fell for
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: it completely.
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: This constant drip drip drip of suspicion and accusation drove
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: him into this state of extreme paranoia. It warped his perception,
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: made him see Shama not as a former partner, but
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: as someone who had utterly betrayed him. The sources describe
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: his state as almost barbaric homogia. The Whispering campaign manufactured
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: this intense, almost blind rage.
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: So that paranoia, fueled by the First Wives campaign, led
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: him to plan the murder.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Yes, he decided to take revenge. He devised a plan
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: to lure Shama to the warehouse. He knew she was
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: staying alone in Cairo at the time, away from her
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: family or current husband. Easy target, and the lure was simple,
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: deceptively simple. He told her to come to the warehouse
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: to see their son, something she clearly wanted to do.
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: So she walks right into the trap she did.
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: As soon as she arrived, he overpowered her, locked her
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: inside a room he'd apparently prepared within the warehouse, and
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: the torture began then that night. According to his confession,
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: the abuse lasted for two full days two days. Two days,
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: he beat her. Then he bound her tightly to a bed,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: hands and feet, using those same ropes from his business.
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: He started this around midnight, knowing the area was deserted,
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: no witnesses, no one to hear anything.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Just unimaginable cruelty drawn out over forty eight.
• 11:10
  Speaker 2: Hours, calculated sustained cruelty. After those two days, when he
• 11:14
  Speaker 2: decided he was done torturing her, he strangled.
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: Her with a rope and then back to meticulous planning.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Immediately, he transitioned right back into the careful merchant mode,
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: bound her entire body with more ropes, placed her inside
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: one of his large fruit sacks. Then he got the
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: heavy stones and secured them to the.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Bottom, ensuring it would sink and stay sunk precisely.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: Then he waited until about three am, the dead of night. Again,
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: he called a coworker, someone who drove one of his
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: transport trucks.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Did the coworker know what was happening, No, omer lied.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: He told the coworker they needed to dump some spoiled
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: produce that was starting to smell. Said they'd take it
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: to a distant part of the canal, away from the
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: main routes.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: So the coworker unknowingly helped him dispose of the body.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Exactly, thinking he was just getting rid of some rotten
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: fruit and vegetables. He drove Amor and the heavy sack
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: to the spot and they dumped it into the canal.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: Mr must The thought he'd gotten away with it completely
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: planned down to the last detail.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: He probably did, But that meticulous waiting, the very thing
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: meant to hide her forever, ironically led to the discovery
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: when the sack got snagged near the bank. Two and
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: a half months later.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: When he was caught, did he try to justify it?
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: He did. During the investigation, he attempted to frame it
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: as an honor killing rad Schiaff, claiming he was defending
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: his honor after being deceived.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: But the investigators didn't buy that, not for a second.
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: An honor killing is often argued as a crime of
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: sudden passion, uncontrollable rage. This involved days of planning, two
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: days of cold blooded torture, elaborate concealment. It was the
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: opposite of spontaneous. Ammar was clearly a calculating individual.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: And the court agreed they did.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: His defense was dismissed. Amer Elsheimy was found guilty of
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: premeditated murder?
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: What was the sentence?
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: He was sentenced to death?
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Ali dum brutal story obviously rooted in Shama's difficult life circumstances,
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: but the real catalyst seems to be external.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, while her family background made her vulnerable, perhaps the
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: direct trigger, the mechanism for the murder was that whispering campaign,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: that persistent toxic manipulation from the first wife. It proved
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: incredibly destructive, arguably more so than any direct confrontation could
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: have been. It turned Ahmher's jealousy into homicidal rage.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: It really makes you think about the power of that
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: kind of sustained psychological pressure, that insidious influence. For Emmer,
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: the poison wasn't really in his direct interactions with shame anymore.
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: No, it was in the lies, the doubts, the accusations,
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: constantly whispered or maybe shouted into his ear by someone else.
• 13:44
  Speaker 2: It leaves you with a really chilling question, doesn't it.
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: How often is prolonged malicious psychological manipulation the unseen driver
• 13:52
  Speaker 2: behind tragedies that we might otherwise label simply as domestic
• 13:55
  Speaker 2: violence or crimes of passion. Something to definitely think about.