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The Cold Calculation of Sayeda: How a Forged Divorce and Dismemberment Baffled Giza Police for 15 Months · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's set the seat. Giza nineteen eighty eight. Think
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: early morning bar Lasam Street. It's you know, a major street.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Things are just starting to get noisy, vendors setting up
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: that early.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Traffic room goal, the city waking up. But then that
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: ordinary morning is just shattered. There's a scream. It comes
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: from the garbage collection area.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, sanitation worker. He's doing his usual rounds, going through
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: the big municipal bins. He picks up this box, maybe
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: like an old cardboard packing box, just tucked in there
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: with the rest of.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: The trash, and when he opens it, well, it's immediately
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: clear this isn't just garbage.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: No, he's staring right at a severed human head and
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: it's been like carefully wrapped in a sheet.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: The forensic teams get there fast, and the initial picture
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: is chilling. The head was severed cleanly, almost surgically. The
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: victim a man, probably in his early thirties, and he'd
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: been dead for about three days.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: A terrible discovery. Eventually they connect the head to a
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: missing person's report. The victim is identified as Mustafa. He's
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: thirty four, used to drive a taxi.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he'd actually been working abroad in the Gulf and
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: had only recently come back home to Alhurram to live
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: with his wife and kids. And here's the thing. Initially,
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: no obvious enemies, no big debts, nothing that screamed motive
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: for this level of well brutality.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Which leads the police with this awful question. Mustafa's head
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: is here, but where's the rest of them?
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: Exactly? And that question really kicks off what we're diving
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: into today. This is a crime that absolutely baffled investigators,
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: but it ultimately turned on this really disturbing combination in
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: the perpetrator, sharp intelligence on one hand and just uttered
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: depravity on the other.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: Those two things together, Yeah, intelligence and depravity, that's what
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: made her so incredibly dangerous.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: And finding the rest of mo Stapha's body parts became
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: the immediate desperate focus. But it led absolutely nowhere at.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: First, right into this huge void, a fifteen month's stalemate.
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine fifteen months? And it wasn't for lack
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: of trying. I mean they searched everywhere, not just the
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: street where the head was found, every trash ben, every dumpster,
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: potential dumping grounds across Greater Giza. They were looking for clothes, tools, anything, nothing,
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: complete silence. The physical trail just went ice cold. The
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: case was getting dangerously close to being shelved, you know,
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: filed away as unsolved victim of an unknown attacker.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: But then they changed tack, didn't they They did.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: With no physical leads, they made a crucial strategic shift.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: They decided to pivot to behavioral analysis. The directive became
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: follow the woman.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: And the woman with Sayida most of his wife. They'd
• 2:35
  Speaker 1: been married over ten years. She was the one who
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: actually filed the missing person report in the first place.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: Which is interesting, right, But what's more fascinating is that
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: the initial suspicion towards her was really faint. Some officers
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: noted her grief seemed well, a bit exaggerated, performative maybe.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: But they didn't push it, not really.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: At first, they sort of chalked it up to stress,
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: maybe her trying to keep it together for her four
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: young kids, you know, trying to seem strong.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: But as they started digging in the background, talking to neighbors,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: a very different picture of the marriage emerged.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: Oh, completely different. Neighbors described it as a total war zone,
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: constant loud fights, screaming matches. It was apparently a regular occurrence.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: What was the root of it all?
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: It seems to boil down to two main things, money
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: problems and deep suspicion. Most OFFA believed Sayta had been
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: unfaithful while he was away working in the Gulf. Okay,
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: that's a classic source of conflict, right, And it got
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: so bad that he actually quit his job driving the taxi,
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: just stopped working entirely so he could stay home twenty
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: four to seven basically watching her every move.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Wow, that must have just cranked the tension up to
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: eleven and killed their income too.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Presuming me exactly, it destroyed whatever was left of their
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: personal relationship and plunged them into financial hardship. So for Sayta,
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: you have this constant surveillance, this suffocating presence, plus they're
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: suddenly broke. Life became well intolerable.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: For her, intolerable enough to plan a murder, and she
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: was smart about it, calculating that's why she got away
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: for so long those fifteen months.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Her intelligence and careful planning were definitely key. She navigated
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: all the initial questions, maintained this facade of the grieving wife.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: But like you said, fifteen months is a long time.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: Complacency sets in it seems so she probably started to
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: believe she was actually in the clear, that the police
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: had moved on, and that's when she made her critical mistake.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: Detectives who were still keeping tabs on the cold case
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: noticed a pattern. Saida was making frequent trips to a
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: specific room in saft Alaban, it's a nearby area, and
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: she was often staying overnight.
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's suspicious for a supposedly grieving widow.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Very so they dug into it and discovered something stunning.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: Three months earlier, Syda had married another man, a coffee
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: shop worker named Ahmed.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Married him while Mustafa was still officially just missing.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: How ah, this is where the intelligence part comes back in.
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  Speaker 2: But in a really cold, calculating way, she presented herself
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: to Ahmed as single, and she backed it up with
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: a four divorce certificate from Mustafa.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: She forged divorce certificate. Wow, that's brazen.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: It's incredible, isn't it. The nerve but that forgery, that
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: piece of paper, that was the concrete evidence they needed.
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  Speaker 2: It showed premeditation, calculation, and a willingness to create this
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: whole false reality.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: So they had her big me forgery. They finally had
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: leverage exactly.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: They confronted her with it, the evidence of the secret marriage,
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  Speaker 2: the fake divorce papers, and faced with that her composure,
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: that carefully constructed facade she'd held up for fifteen months, it.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Just crumbled and she confessed.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: She collapsed and confessed everything, and the details she revealed
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: were even more horrifying, more premeditated than anyone had expected.
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: So what was the actual plan? How did she do it?
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: It was chillingly straightforward. First step, get rid of any witnesses.
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: She sent her four children, they were young, aged between
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: three and ten, over to their grandmother's house.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, kids are out of the house, then what.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: Then She made me ast off a cup of tea,
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: but she'd added a significant dose of pesticide to it.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: She served it to him very casually, saying she was
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: just popping out for a bit to go pick up
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: the children, and she left him there. She left, came
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: back about an hour later and found him dead on
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: the floor.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: The lack of panic is what gets me. She finds
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: her husband dead, poisoned by her, and she just moves
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: to the next step.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: Precisely, there was no panic described. It was like she
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: was just executing a pre planned checklist. She'd already prepared
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: for this next stage. She had a large plastic basin
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: ready and multiple knives. She later described her mindset as
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: being like like preparing for a ritual sacrifice. That's the
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: level of detachment we're talking.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: We'll be disturbing it is.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: She then proceeded with the dismemberment. First, she separated his
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: head from his body, wrapped the head in that sheet,
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: the same one found later, and.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Just set it aside.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: Then she cut the rest of the body into eight
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: distinct pieces and put all those pieces into the plastic basin.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: My god, the efficiency is horrifying. She wasn't seen a
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: person her husband anymore. A problem to dispose.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Of, exactly a logistical challenge, and the next part of
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: that challenge was getting rid of the basin and the head.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: She needed transport, so she took the car. Yes, she
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: put the basin with the body parts and the wrapped
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: head in the car, drove out to a highway late
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: at night, and then she just waited looking for someone,
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: anyone to stop and help her.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: She was going to flag someone down with her husband's
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: body in the car.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: That was the plan, and someone did stop a young man,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: a twenty one year old truck driver named Khaled. He
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: had a nickname Khaled a Labiad Khaled.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: The White And how did she convince him?
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: She played a part, asked for a ride, said she
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: needed to get to her mother's village in bash Till.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: But she was also you know, intentionally charming, flirtatious, engaging
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: him in conversation, building a quick sense of trust.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, so she's got him driving, thinking he's just giving
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: a woman a lift.
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: Right, They're driving along, and then somewhere midway through the journey,
• 7:57
  Speaker 2: she just drops the bomb, tells him flat out, my
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: husband's dismembered body is in that plastic basin in the back.
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: What how did he react? I mean, surely a panic
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: called the police.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Something you'd think so, wouldn't you. But his reaction is
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: almost as bizarre as the crime itself. He wasn't shocked,
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: or if he was, he hid it incredibly well. Instead,
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: he sympathized with.
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: Her, sympathized with a woman who just confessed to murder
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: and dismemberment.
• 8:22
  Speaker 2: Bizarrely, Yes, he agreed to help her get rid of
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: the body parts, but his help came with a price.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: He demanded a sexual relationship with her in exchange for
• 8:31
  Speaker 2: his assistance.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: In silence, this just gets darker and darker, so he
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: agreed to help dispose the evidence.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: He did. Over the next maybe twelve kilometers or so
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: of highway, Khaled would pull the truck over repeatedly, and
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: each time say Ata would get out, take one of
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: the eight body pieces from the basin and just throw
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: it out into the darkness by the side of the road.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: One piece at a time, over twelve kilometers. The sheer
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: audacity and the coldness required to do that, it's hard
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: to comprehend, it really is.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: But even after they'd scattered the eight pieces, there was
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: still one part.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: Left, the head. She still had the head right, Yes.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: For some reason, she held onto the head. She didn't
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: dispose of it with the rest. She took it with
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: her to her mother's house in Bashtel.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: To her mother's house. What did she do with it there?
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: She hid it, apparently for a short time under a bed.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: Hit her husband's severed head under a bed in her
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: mother's place. Okay, but she didn't leave it there.
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: No. Sometime before dawn broke she made a final decision
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: about it. She retrieved the head, wrapped it back in
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: the sheet, put it inside that cardboard.
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: Box, the same box the sanitation worker found.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: The very same one. She drove back into Giza, back
• 9:41
  Speaker 2: towards where she lived, and dumped the box containing the
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: head in that municipal garbage dump on bar Ala Zam Street,
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: bringing the whole thing full circle in a way. That
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: head was the first piece found and the last piece
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: disposed of.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: And what did she do immediately after getting rid of
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: the head.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: This is perhaps the most audacious part of the cover up.
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: Immediately after dumping the head and presumably cleaning up the
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: crime scene at her home, she went straight to Mustafa's family.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: Do his family to do?
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: What to act? Worried, she told them Mustafa had been
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: gone for a day, that she was terribly concerned about him.
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Played the part of the distraught.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: Wife perfectly, and they believed her.
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: It seems so together. She and Mustafa's family then went
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: to the police station to file the official missing person report, the.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Same report that eventually helped identify the head she had
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: just thrown the trash. The calculation is just staggering, it
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: really is.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: And think about the juggling act during those fifteen months
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: before she was caught. She was maintaining contact with Mustafa's family,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: playing the grieving wife. She was living a secret life
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: with Ahmed, her new husband, built on forged.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Documents, and she was also managing Khalid, the truck driver, right.
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: Keeping him silent, likely through continuing that illicit relationship. He'd
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: demanded three completely separate, high stakes lives, all managed simultaneously until.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: The forged certificate brought out at all crashing down and
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the verdict guilty.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: Given the extreme nature of the crime, the calculation, the brutality,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: the dismemberment, she received the maximum penalty. She was sentenced
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: to execution.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: So as we wrap up this deep dive, let's think
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: about what this case tells us, what you listening can
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: take away from it. It's not just about the gruesome details,
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: is it, No.
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: Not at all. I think the core lesson here is
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: about that terrifying combination we mentioned at the start, the
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: sheer effectiveness of a killer who possesses both high intelligence
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: and a complete lack of any moral compass, total depravity.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: She had the brains to plan the poisoning, forge legal documents,
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: maintained multiple facades, and evade suspicion for over a year.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: That's intelligence, however, twisted.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Exactly, but that intelligence was fused with this absolute moral vacancy,
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: this depravity that allowed her to see her husband not
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: as a person but as an obstacle, something to be eliminated,
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: process and discarded like look like garbage.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: And it's important to remember this was nineteen eighty eight.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: This is before widespread CCTV, before digital footprints, before the
• 12:08
  Speaker 1: kind of forensic tech we rely on today.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: Right yet, the fundamental psychology, the methods, the sheer brutality.
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: It feels chillingly familiar, doesn't it. You see echoes of
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: this kind of calculated cruelty in cases happening right now.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: It destroyed Mustava's life, obviously, but it also left four
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: children without parents. The ripple effects are devastating, which leads.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: To maybe a final thought for you to consider. We
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: live in an age obsessed with technology, with digital evidence,
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: with tracking external actions. When we analyze crime now, we
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: often look for the technological slip up, the social media clue.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: But does that sometimes make us overlook the internal factor?
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: This case from decades ago highlights that the most dangerous
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: element isn't the tool used, but the mind wielding it.
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: That internal calculation of sheer human cruelty. Is that something
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: our modern focus sometimes misses the fact that some individuals
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: are just capable of this level planned evil, regardless of
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: the era or the technology available.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: That cold, ruthless intelligence combined with that emptiness, Maybe that's
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: the variable that truly never changes, And maybe that's the
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: real horror story here.