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The Sewer Bone That Cracked Egypt's Most Infamous Serial Killer Case · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's set the scene. It's nineteen twenty picture Alexandria, Egypt.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Not the glamorous parts, but a dense residential area. It's hot, dusty, noisy.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd hear metal clanging, workers shouting. There's this big problem.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: A main sewage pipe is burst.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: It's a mess, a total civic headache. So you've got
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: guys down in a trench, wading through muck trying to
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: fix this huge broken pipe.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Absolutely exhausting work, right, I'm pretty disgusting. But then one worker,
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: he's clearing out the blockage inside the pipe itself, and
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: he pulls out something, well, something that definitely isn't sewage
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: or debris.
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: It looked like bone, small, pale, strangely smooth bone.
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, so panic or just confusion, More like confusion, maybe
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: a bit of annoyance. The police initially treated it like,
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: you know, maybe an animal bone, just part of.
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: The mess, a routine thing they had to deal with exactly.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: So they handed it off, send it up the chain.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: This little bone fragment travels hundreds of kilometers south all
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the way to Cairo.
• 0:57
  Speaker 2: To the forensic Medicine department YEP.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: And directly into the hands of the top guy there,
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: doctor Sydney Smith. Ah, the doctor Sidney Smith, acclaimed expert.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: The very one, And this is where everything changes. He
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: takes one look, does his examination, and there's no doubt
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: it's human.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Wow. So instantly this broken pipe problem becomes.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: A homicide investigation, a full blown, serious criminal case. The
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: focus shifts entirely.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Okay, so now the task is huge. They have this
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: tiny piece of bone found in a sewer. How do
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: they even begin to trace that back to a source?
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: Well, they had to work backward, didn't they following the flow. Essentially,
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: they started mapping out the drainage systems for the houses nearby.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Checking which pipes fed into that main line where the
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: bone was.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Found precisely, and they trace the fragments back through the
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: system to one specific house.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Just a regular house in the neighborhood.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nothing special from the outside, simple kind of run
• 1:51
  Speaker 2: down looking, actually worn walls, some floor tiles missing, look
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: like poverty honestly.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: But the sewage didn't lie.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: The sewage didn't lie. So security forces went.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: In and doctor Smith was he brought back to Alexandria,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: to the house itself.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: He was he needed to see the scene and looking
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: at that house, knowing where the bone fragments came from. Well,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: his next instruction was pretty clear. We dig dig under
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: the floor.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: Just inside the house, under the dirt floor.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: Inside the house, beneath those missing tiles, under the packed earth,
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: and they didn't have to dig far.
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: What did they find first?
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: The first discovery was grim a skeleton buried shallily, a
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: young woman.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, and could they tell anything right away?
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the state of the remains suggested she hadn't been
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: buried for very long. And crucially, even in that initial look,
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: they could see signs of manual strangulation marks on the neck.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Horrific. One body is terrible enough, but I get the
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: feeling this wasn't the end of it, not even close.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: This is where it goes from a single murder to
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: something unprecedented for Egypt at the time.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: What happened is they kept digging.
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: It just escalated. They realized the bodies were stacked deliberately.
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: Layers stacked like one on top of the other.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Yes, they unearthed seven bodies packed together like a mass grave,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: dug right inside this little house.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Seven That's unbelievable.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: Oh wait, it gets worse. Beneath that first layer of seven. Oh,
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: they found seven more buried deeper.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Fourteen fourteen bodies in one house in a crowded.
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: Neighborhood, fourteen female bodies of it buried right under the floorboards.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: How is that even possible? I mean, the logistics, the smell,
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: wuden neighbors notice something. Fourteen burials.
• 3:37
  Speaker 2: That's the million pound question, isn't it. How could this happen?
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: And perhaps even more baffling for the police at the time,
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: why how could fourteen people vanish without a single missing
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: person report being filed? Not one?
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's the key, isn't it. To understand that, you
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: have to understand who these victims were exactly?
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: So all fourteen bodies went back to Cairo, back to
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: doctor Smith for really thorough forensic examination, a deep dive
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: into who these women were.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: What did he find? Were they all similar? Were their patterns?
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: Oh? Definitely, patterns, tragically consistent ones. All victims were adult women,
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: ages ranged from about eighteen to thirty five, and the
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: cause of death the same for every single one. Manual strangulation.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: He confirmed the marks on all their necks.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: So a specific method, targeting a specific demographic over what
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: period did this happen.
• 4:26
  Speaker 2: His analysis showed the burial spanned about two years. The
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: oldest victim had been down there for roughly that long.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: So this wasn't a one off killing spree. It was
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: sustained methodically for.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: A two year campaign of murder. Okay, so age method timeline.
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: What else? How did doctor Smith start to build a
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: picture of their lives their identities?
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Well, a couple of things stood out. First, All the
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: victims showed signs of female circumcision at that time in Egypt.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: That strongly pointed towards them being Muslim women.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, that gives a cultural context. What else?
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: This is where it gets really interesting forensically speaking, Looking
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: at their perfect structures, many showed signs of having given birth,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: maybe once or twice. Right, And this was the crucial clue.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: All of them still retain their puba.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Care, retain their cubic care. Why Why was that significant?
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: Because you have to remember the context. In early twentieth
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: century Egypt, prostitution was actually licensed and regulated by.
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: The state, right I remember reading about that.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: And one of the sort of unofficial standards or sometimes
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: even requirements for women working in the licensed brothels was
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: the removal of Cubic hair.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: Ah I see. So the fact that these women hadn't
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: removed it suggested what It suggested that.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: They were likely involved in prostitution, given their age, lack
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: of identification, and how they died, but maybe operating outside
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: this strictly licensed system, or perhaps newer to it. It
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: gave the police a social profile.
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: To work with, and that piece of information suddenly answers
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: the other huge question why no missing persons reports were
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: ever filed exactly?
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: It clicked into place. If these women were involved in prostitution,
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: especially unlicensed, their families might well have disowned them. It
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: was common then.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: So if you're disowned a strange from your family, who's
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: gonna notice you're gone? Who's going to report it?
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Precisely, they were already socially invisible in a way, erased
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: before they were murdered.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: Making them tragically easy targets.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Terribly easy. So, armed with doctor Smith's forensic profile and
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: this new social understanding, the police started checking the registration
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: records for licensed sex workers, looking for potential matches or connections.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: And did that lead them back to the house?
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: It did. The trail cross referencing records and local knowledge
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: quickly pointed back to the tenets of that house of whoores?
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: Who were they?
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: Two sisters, Rayah ali Hamam and Sakina ali Hama and
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: their husbands, Hasabala and Abdel.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: All the sisters and their husbands living in that house.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Living right on top of the bodies. They were all arrested.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: We need to understand how this alliance came to be.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: Who were Riyah and Saquina before all this? What drove them?
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: Well? Their background is key. They came from Upper Egypt,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: probably near Aswan. Riyah was the older one, born around
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: eighteen seventy five, Sakina about ten years younger. Their early
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: lives were tough, marked by real poverty.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: What about RYA's story.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: Rayah married young, then her husband died. She ended up
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: marrying his younger brother Hasabala. Apparently she had to support
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: him financially quite a bit, almost bribing him to stay
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: with her. They worked odd jobs like in cotton ginning,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: and Zakina scan His path seems to have involved prostitution
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: much earlier. She also struggled terribly with alcoholism, sometimes so
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: bad she'd apparently sell the clothes off her back for
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: drink money.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: So extreme hardship for both of them. What brought them
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: together in Alexandria.
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: Economic desperation intensified by the times. This was post World
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: War One Egypt facing a severe economic depression. Jobs were scarce,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: crime was rising.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: A tough environment very.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Sakina moved to Alexandria first married a man named Ahmed Raba.
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: Riyah followed later, especially after her husband Asibala got jailed
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: for theft. Raya actually served three months for him on
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: a related charge.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: She served his time. Wow.
• 8:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, When Hasabala got out, the pressure was immense. Sakina
• 8:09
  Speaker 2: had basically gone back into prostitution full time just to
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: keep everyone float, herself, her husband Ryan Hasibala. It was
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: survival mode.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, survival mode is one thing, but how does that
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: curdle into systematic murder of other women in the same position.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Greed seems to be the catalyst. Sakina eventually divorced her
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: first husband and married abdelah All. Now you have the
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: core four living together, Raya and Astabala, Sakina and abdellah Al.
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: They needed a better income stream.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: So they decided to formalize things pretty much.
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: They decided to run their own operation. They ranted a
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: two story house. The plan was a bar like a
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: tavern on the ground floor and the prostitution business upstairs.
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: A joint venture. Did they get help, Yeah, they.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Brought in a couple of associates or Rabbi Hassan and
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: Abdel Rezik. They helped run the bar and acted as
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: you know, security or muscle.
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: Are they operating legally with permits?
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: No, And that was a constant problem. Because Rayah and
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: Hasibala had criminal records, they couldn't get the official licenses,
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: so they kept having to move locations whenever the authority
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: is caught on.
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they're running this illicit bar in brothel. What
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: pushed them over the edge into murder?
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: It seems to have been Riya's idea, driven by envy.
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: She saw the women working for them, or maybe just patrons,
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: wearing gold jewelry, gold jewelry. Yeah. Back then for women
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: in that position, gold wasn't just adornment, it was savings.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: It was their security, easily traded. Riyah saw this gold
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: while her own husband, Hasabala reportedly took every penny she earned.
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: So she resented it deeply.
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: She developed this plan lure women, rob them of their gold, and.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: That plan quickly became lethal. What was their method their
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: modus operandi.
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: It was terrifyingly efficient mm hmm and cold. They'd identify
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: a target, usually another woman working in prostitution who seemed
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: to have.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: Some gold, and Rayah and Sakina would lure her in
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: exactly they were the bait.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Bring the woman back to the house, maybe offer her.
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: Drinks at the bar, get her comfortable, unsuspecting right.
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: Then they'd ply her with strong liquor, maybe even slipper
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: sedatives until she was completely incapacitated, drugged.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Or passed out, and then the men took over.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: Then the men Hasabala, abdel all Robbie and abdel Razak
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: would step in. They'd tie the victim's hands and feet.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: While she was unconscious, usually.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Yes, helpless. Then the strangulation with.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: The wet handkerchief you mentioned earlier that seems.
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: To have been the common tool. Yes, quick quiet, after
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: she was dead, they stripped her bare, took everything everything
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: the gold obviously, but also her clothes, even her undergarments.
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: Then they'd bury the naked body in a deep hole
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: they dug under the floor, cover it up, tile over it.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Eventually and Raya and Saqina's roll. Beyond luring, they were.
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: Crucial for getting rid of the loot. They'd take the
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: stolen gold and sell it quickly, turning the proceeds into
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: cap It was a horrifyingly complete system.
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: And somehow they got away with this for two years.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: How was law enforcement just not looking It.
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: Seems that way. Sadly, for a while, any whispers or
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: reports of missing women from that milieu were either ignored
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: or maybe more conveniently, blamed on someone else entirely. There
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: was another notorious killer active around that time further north,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: mahmood Alam, known as the Tanta Assassin. He confessed to
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: similar crimes, so the police might have just assumed he
• 11:28
  Speaker 2: was responsible for disappearances in Alexandria.
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: Too, a wrongful assumption that let Riya and Sakina keep killing.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: It certainly seems to provided cover. Yah allowed them to
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: operate without scrutiny for far too long.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Until the final count was made. Fourteen bodies were They
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: all found in that one house where the bone was traced.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: The majority were yes. That was Raya's house the main site,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: but the investigation eventually uncovered three more bodies buried at
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: one of Sakina's previous residences.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: The place where they had first started the bar in
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: brothel operation.
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: That's right, spreading the horror across multiple locations.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: So the trial in May in nineteen twenty one, it
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: must have been sensational. What was the outcome?
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: It was decisive. The evidence, especially doctor Smith's forensic work,
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: was overwhelming. Riya Sakina, Hasabala ab Lll and Arabi Hassan,
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: the core group, were all found guilty and the sentence
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: death by execution for all five of them.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Which was historically significant in Egypt.
• 12:25
  Speaker 2: Wasn't it hugely significant? Rayah and Sekina became the first
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: women to be executed in modern Egyptian history. It was
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: a landmark case.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Did they show any remorse facing the gallows?
• 12:36
  Speaker 2: Apparently not. The accounts are quite chilling. Sakina reportedly laughed
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: as she went to our execution, ft laughed, and abd
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: el Aal, one of the husbands, is said to have
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: claimed he was some kind of hero doing Egypt to
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: favor by killing Harlot's utterly unrepentant.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Just unbelievable. And finally we have to touch on the
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: mythology that grew up around them later this idea that
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: they weren't just killers but maybe revolutionaries.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: Right, that's a myth that somehow took root much later,
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: this bizarre narrative that they were targeting British soldiers or
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: collaborators during the occupation.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: But the official record, the actual evidence, completely refutes that.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: There's zero evidence for it. The forensic findings, the police investigation,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: the trial records, they all point to the same stark truth.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: Every single one of their fourteen victims was an Egyptian woman,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: mostly involved in prostitution, killed purely for their golden possessions.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: So they weren't patriots or freedom fighters in some twisted.
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: Way, not at all. They were cold, calculating serial killers
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: running a robbery homicide ring driven by pure greed and envy.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: They operated with brutal efficiency until quite literally the ground
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: beneath them gave way and exposed the truth.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: It's a really dark reflection, isn't it, on how society itself,
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: through things like licensed prostitution and the way it allowed
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: families to just cut ties, created this environment where people
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: could disappear without a trace.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: It absolutely did that societal alienation, that classification of certain
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: lives is less valuable, less visible. It provided the perfect
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: terrible cover for Riya and Sequina's crimes. The horror was
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: hidden in plain sight, buried just beneath the floorboards, waiting.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: For something as mundane as a broken sewage pipe to
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: crack the whole thing open.
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: Makes you wonder, doesn't it? What other truths, What other
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: hidden stories might still be lying dormant, just inches beneath
• 14:25
  Speaker 2: the surfaces we walk across every single day. What else
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: is buried under the floorboards of history?