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The Butcher of Gharbia: How a Secret Life of Trauma and Dismemberment Led to Egypt's Calculated Serial Killer · Crime Night

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  Speaker 1: A picture of this. It's early March twenty twenty four,
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  Speaker 1: nearby one of the agricultural canals in Egypt's Garbia Governorate,
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  Speaker 1: just before dawn. You can smell the damp earth, the
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  Speaker 1: irrigation water. It's Ramadan, so it's mostly.
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  Speaker 2: Quiet, quite except for the preparations for swo hour, the
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  Speaker 2: pre dawn meal exactly.
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  Speaker 1: But then that morning something breaks the quiets and floating
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  Speaker 1: near the bank. Yes, it's a single human leg decomposing.
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  Speaker 2: And for police finding something like that, yeah, but it's
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  Speaker 2: immediately chilling, obviously, but it's also very specific. Finding a
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  Speaker 2: whole body often points to panic, you know, a quick disposal,
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  Speaker 2: but just one limb deliberately cut off, that suggests something
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  Speaker 2: else entirely, something much more calculated, like the killer wasn't
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  Speaker 2: just trying to hide the body, but dismantle the very identity,
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  Speaker 2: spread the evidence.
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  Speaker 1: Out, and as they started looking around that calculation became
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  Speaker 1: horrifyingly clear. Near the canal they found a heavy sack
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  Speaker 1: inside black plastic bags, and inside those two arms in
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  Speaker 1: a ribcage. They could tell the victim was a woman,
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  Speaker 1: maybe in her twenties from the fingernails, but no clothes, nothing,
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  Speaker 1: just these pieces.
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  Speaker 2: It's incredibly methodical, and that's what we're diving into today,
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  Speaker 2: the full story of Abra Bou, who became known as
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  Speaker 2: the Butcher of Garbia. We're looking at the whole chain
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  Speaker 2: of events. Really, how did this outwardly normal man turn
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  Speaker 2: into such a calculating killer? What factors were at play?
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  Speaker 1: So the police are faced with this puzzle. They've got
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  Speaker 1: parts of a body, but zero leads, no identity. They
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  Speaker 1: basically have two things.
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  Speaker 2: To go on, right what were they?
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  Speaker 1: First the forensics a woman twenties, probably dead three or
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  Speaker 1: four days. Second, a witness statement. A local farmer saw
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  Speaker 1: someone near the canal late at night carrying a heavy sack.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, and did the farmer think anything of it?
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  Speaker 1: He thought it was just trash. But the thing that
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  Speaker 1: stuck with him, and this is crucial, was how calm
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  Speaker 1: the man seemed, just normal, walking steadily, no rush, no panic.
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  Speaker 2: That right there, that's a major psychological marker, isn't it.
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  Speaker 2: That detachment It suggests this wasn't impulsive, this was planned control.
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  Speaker 2: It's a huge red flag.
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  Speaker 1: Then came the breakthrough, but it wasn't nearby. It was
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  Speaker 1: from a town some distance away. Zephta reports of another
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  Speaker 1: discovery more body parts. Yeah, a head and another leg
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  Speaker 1: found in a sack, just like the others, with the
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  Speaker 1: same kind of distinct deliberate cuts.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so connecting those two fines geographically separate, that's huge.
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  Speaker 2: Forensics confirms it's the same victim.
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  Speaker 1: Exactly same victim, So now the investigation can focus. They
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  Speaker 1: look at missing personals reports, specifically in Zephta.
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  Speaker 2: Around that time, and they get a match.
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  Speaker 1: They do. A woman named Fatima known as Bata, reported
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  Speaker 1: missing by her ex husband Ah.
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  Speaker 2: The ex husband usually the first person police.
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  Speaker 1: Look at, right, typically yes, but in this case they
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  Speaker 1: cleared him relatively quickly. Turns out they actually had a
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  Speaker 1: decent relationship and he seemed genuinely horrified by what happened.
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  Speaker 1: He wasn't their guy, So that.
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  Speaker 2: Allowed them to dig deeper into Fatima's life, bota life.
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  Speaker 1: Right, and that's where things started to connect. They found
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  Speaker 1: out she had a history of well illicit relationships, often
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  Speaker 1: involving money. This opened up a whole new, very specific
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  Speaker 1: circle of people she might.
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  Speaker 2: Have known, and ober Boboo's name came.
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  Speaker 1: Up kept coming up. He was her neighbor, lived right
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  Speaker 1: across the street actually owned the building. Then he was
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  Speaker 1: the last person she had contacted.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, so neighbor, last contact. Did he have any kind
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  Speaker 2: of record.
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  Speaker 1: None, no criminal record at all. He was forty seven,
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  Speaker 1: also had a history of let's say, similar illicit activities,
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  Speaker 1: but outwardly just a regular building owner. The police went
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  Speaker 1: to his door.
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  Speaker 2: In his reaction when they apprehended him.
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  Speaker 1: Apparently, he seemed composed, almost shocked. Not shocked that he'd
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  Speaker 1: done something wrong, but shocked that they'd actually figured it out,
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  Speaker 1: that they connected him to it.
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  Speaker 2: Wow. That composure didn't last long, though, I gather.
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  Speaker 1: No. Once they presented the evidence, it crumbled. He confessed immediately.
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  Speaker 1: But then the confession got bigger, much bigger.
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  Speaker 2: He did just confessed to killing Fatima.
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  Speaker 1: No, he admitted he'd killed three other women before her.
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  Speaker 2: Three others, so four victims total that he confessed to.
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  Speaker 1: Initially, good heavens, which forces us to ask, how does
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  Speaker 1: someone get to this point, a seemingly ordinary neighbor, a
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  Speaker 1: building owner becoming a serial killer. We have to go
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  Speaker 1: back right look at his.
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  Speaker 2: Past absolutely and his early life. In Zephta. It lays
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  Speaker 2: a terrifying groundwork constant intense fighting between his parents daily. Then,
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  Speaker 2: when he was just six years old, his father died
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  Speaker 2: and his mother, she apparently just shut down emotionally, became cold, distant.
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  Speaker 2: That safety net, that parental connection, it just vanished for
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  Speaker 2: him at a critical age.
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  Speaker 1: And right then, at age six, that's when the first
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  Speaker 1: incident happened.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, horrifically. He was playing with a neighbor's baby girl.
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  Speaker 2: He suffocated her with a.
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  Speaker 1: Toy at six years old, and.
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  Speaker 2: When he told his mother what he'd done, her reaction
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  Speaker 2: wasn't help or understanding the trauma. It was brutal. She
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  Speaker 2: beat him, locked him away for days, no food, no water,
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  Speaker 2: and enforced total silence about it.
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  Speaker 1: Pide it bury it so violence is met with violence
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  Speaker 1: and suppression. What a terrible lesson.
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  Speaker 2: And the trauma didn't stop, it just changed shape. By
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  Speaker 2: age eight, he started seeing things compromising situations the reports
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  Speaker 2: called them between his mother and his uncle Musa, the
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  Speaker 2: man who used to mediate the family fights.
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  Speaker 1: His uncle Ah the confusion for child.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly, he loved them both. This went on for years
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  Speaker 2: until he was fourteen, when he finally grasped the reality
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  Speaker 2: of their relationship. He reacted strongly, kicked the uncle out,
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  Speaker 2: and then he and his mother moved permanently into that
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  Speaker 2: apartment building in Zepta.
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  Speaker 1: The building that would become the crime scene, the primary
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  Speaker 1: crime scene. Yes, and another critical piece here. Around that
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  Speaker 1: time he dropped out of school. And what did he
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  Speaker 1: become a professional butcher? He did that until Lose twenty one?
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  Speaker 2: A butcher.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: The skills involved, the anatomical knowledge, the comfort with cutting.
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  Speaker 2: That's not just a job detail, is it. That's preparation.
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  Speaker 1: It feels like chilling preparation in high sight, doesn't it?
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  Speaker 1: And the violence escalated after he returned to Zepta. After
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  Speaker 1: first marriage failed, he married again, a woman named Sahara.
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  Speaker 1: Seven months into the marriage, Sahar was three months pregnant.
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  Speaker 1: He went into the room while she was sleeping and
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  Speaker 1: strangled her for ten minutes straight. Apparently, no argument, no
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  Speaker 1: obvious trigger.
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  Speaker 2: Ten minutes and what happened? Did anyone suspect? This is
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  Speaker 2: where the story takes another tragic turn. Sahar's family found her.
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  Speaker 2: The doctor who examined her body suspected foul play, but
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  Speaker 2: the family described as kind maybe naive. They refused an autopsy,
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  Speaker 2: refused what they wanted, immediate burial permission. They called it
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  Speaker 2: God's will. I didn't want her body dissected. They wanted
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  Speaker 2: to avoid the potential shame or scandal.
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  Speaker 1: Perhaps, so he got away with it cleanly, completely cleanly,
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  Speaker 1: and that experienced that lack of consequence.
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  Speaker 2: It seems to have been a psychological turning point. He
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  Speaker 2: learned he could kill intimately violently by strangulation and face nothing.
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  Speaker 2: Reports say he got a strange pleasure from it, followed
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  Speaker 2: by intense depression.
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  Speaker 1: And that changed his path.
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  Speaker 2: It seems so he gave up on marriage entirely after that,
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  Speaker 2: dedicated himself to those paid illicit relationships, using the Zepta
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  Speaker 2: apartment as his base.
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  Speaker 1: So Sahara was victim number two. If we count the infant,
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  Speaker 1: then who was next?
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  Speaker 2: The third adult victim was a beer in March twenty twenty,
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  Speaker 2: another woman he met through these relationships, strangled her in.
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  Speaker 1: The apartment and disposal, still trying to hide the whole body.
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  Speaker 2: At this point, Yes, he waited until dawn the calder Prayer,
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  Speaker 2: providing some cover, used his small truck and dumped her
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  Speaker 2: body in some remote farmland, still focused on concealment.
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  Speaker 1: But then something shifted.
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  Speaker 2: Yes, Victim number four sou Har in twenty twenty three,
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  Speaker 2: She fought back hard when he strangled her. She was
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  Speaker 2: also physically larger than the previous victims. He realized dumping
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  Speaker 2: her whole body was too risky, too difficult to move
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  Speaker 2: and hide without being seen.
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  Speaker 1: And this is where the butchery skills come in.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly face with this logistical problem, he fell back on
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  Speaker 2: what he knew. He decided dismemberment was the answer. He
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  Speaker 2: took her body to the bathroom, used saws, sharpened knives,
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  Speaker 2: the tools of his former trade.
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  Speaker 1: How long did that take him?
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  Speaker 2: Chillingly efficient, only about two hours to cut up the body,
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  Speaker 2: bag the pieces, and get ready to scatter them.
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  Speaker 1: Two hours. He'd found his method.
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  Speaker 2: He had and he used it again almost immediately. Victim
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  Speaker 2: number five rita later in twenty twenty three. This one
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  Speaker 2: started over money. Apparently a friend owed her some and
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  Speaker 2: she came to the apartment to collect. They had a relationship.
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  Speaker 2: She fell asleep watching TV and he strangled her. Then
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  Speaker 2: the same routine dismemberment in the bathroom, bagging, scattering the parts.
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  Speaker 2: The pattern was set precision efficiency dismemberment.
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  Speaker 1: Which brings us full circle back to Fatima Bada. In
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  Speaker 1: March twenty twenty four, the leg and the canal. What
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  Speaker 1: was the trigger?
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  Speaker 2: This time? Money? Again, a debt. He owed her three
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  Speaker 2: thousand Egyptian pounds, they argued, She started yelling.
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  Speaker 1: And he reacted in the way he now knew, Yes.
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  Speaker 2: Used a scarf, strangled her, then began the dismemberment process,
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  Speaker 2: just like Wassue hair and Rita.
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  Speaker 1: But there was something different this time, wasn't there? After
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  Speaker 1: the act?
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  Speaker 2: Yes, very different. After he finished cutting up Fatima's body,
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  Speaker 2: he didn't immediately dispose of it. He just sat there
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  Speaker 2: beside the bags containing her remains for four hours, dear
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  Speaker 2: what crying. He later told police that in that moment,
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  Speaker 2: sitting there, the sheer scale of it hit him. He
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  Speaker 2: realized he'd killed five people, counting Sahar in the later victims,
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  Speaker 2: five lives.
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  Speaker 1: Four hours and then and.
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  Speaker 2: Then he composed himself, finished the job, took the bags
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  Speaker 2: and scattered the parts, following his established pattern.
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  Speaker 1: But he made one crucial mistake, not psychological this time,
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  Speaker 1: but practical.
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  Speaker 2: Exactly, the environment betrayed him. Unlike the previous times he'd
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  Speaker 2: scattered remains, that particular morning, the water level in the
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  Speaker 2: canal was very very low.
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  Speaker 1: Meaning the leg didn't get washed away or hidden by
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  Speaker 1: deep water.
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  Speaker 2: It was discovered almost immediately, and that single discovery triggered
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  Speaker 2: the whole investigation that eventually led straight back to him.
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  Speaker 1: So he's caught, he's confessed. What happens next? Legally, the
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  Speaker 1: psychiatric evaluation must have been critical.
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely essential. A psychiatric committee was formed to assess him thoroughly,
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  Speaker 2: and their findings, well, they had another layer of complexity,
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  Speaker 2: maybe even horror to this whole thing.
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  Speaker 1: What did they find? Was he compelled by some disorder?
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  Speaker 2: No, that's the thing. The committee concluded he had no
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  Speaker 2: mental or psychological disorder that compelled him to kill.
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  Speaker 1: So he chose to do this consciously.
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  Speaker 2: According to the medical report, Yes, he acted in full
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  Speaker 2: consciousness and free will. Each time, they determined he possessed
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  Speaker 2: what they termed a high crime factor, essentially a predisposition
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  Speaker 2: or capacity for criminal acts, but not driven by mental
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  Speaker 2: illness in.
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  Speaker 1: The legal sense, which means legally.
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  Speaker 2: Legally, he was fully responsible. That finding paved the way
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  Speaker 2: for the court to refer his case to the Grand Mufti,
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  Speaker 2: which is the step required before issuing a death sentence
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  Speaker 2: in Egypt.
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  Speaker 1: And his reaction when the death sentence came down almost unnerving.
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  Speaker 2: He was reported Happy said he deserved it, even deserved
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  Speaker 2: more punishment.
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  Speaker 1: It's hard to reconcile the horrific childhood trauma, the violence,
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  Speaker 1: the repression, that betrayal by his mother and uncle. That's
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  Speaker 1: all real. You can see a path being laid, you can.
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  Speaker 2: The circumstances were undeniably tragic and damaging. But then you
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  Speaker 2: have the medical finding full consciousness, free will. It forces
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  Speaker 2: you to ask a really difficult question, doesn't it is
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  Speaker 2: becoming a killer like this always the end result of
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  Speaker 2: in thiscapable psychological damage, or do we have to accept
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  Speaker 2: the possibility as this report suggests that sometimes, despite the past,
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  Speaker 2: a person simply chooses the darkest path, and that terrifying
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  Speaker 2: choice was entirely his own