Latest / Crime Night / The Crime of Kilometer 35

Transcript

The Crime of Kilometer 35 · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Nine thirty pm. Picture the Moonib's station in Giza. If
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: you've been there, you know the feeling. It's just this
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: intense mix of sounds, smells, diesel, dust, shouting. But by
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: this time nine to thirty things are quieting down, just
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: that last bit of frantic energy for the final buses. Tonight,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: we're opening a really complex file. It's known simply as
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Kilometer thirty five. And this isn't just about retelling the
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: events of a frankly terrifying microist attack back in twenty thirteen.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: It's about digging into how sharp investigative work managed to
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: crack a case that started with almost nothing, no evidence,
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: no cameras, just darkness.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Our mission here for us and for you listening
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: is really to unpack the investigative thinking. How did these
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: detectives take these terrified witness statements, look at this barren
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: stretch of road and actually build a case because they
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: started with virtually zero leaves. It's about patience, keen observation,
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: and honestly pure human intelligence.
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's put you on the microbus. It's the last
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: one heading de Fayum. Inside there are already fourteen people,
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: ten men, three women, and a child. The driver's just
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: waiting for that one last passenger to make the trip worthwhile,
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: and then this young man shows up.
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: He gets in, takes the last seat, door slam shut.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: And the bus heads out onto the desert highway.
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: And once you leave the city lights behind, that atmosphere
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: shifts completely. It gets faster, the darkest outside is just
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: total And back in twenty fourteen, that specific route, late
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: at night, it had a reputation. People knew it wasn't
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: entirely safe.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: You felt exposed, and just past kilometer thirty five, that
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: feeling of exposure became terrifyingly real. So they're well out
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: into the desert now kilometer thirty five. It's this completely unserviced,
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: empty stretch, notoriously dangerous back then, And all of a sudden,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: the last guy who got on, sitting in the second row,
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: he tells the driver to stop. Let him out here, right.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: Which makes no sense, does it? I mean get out here? Yeah,
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: in the absolute middle of nowhere. But before anyone can
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: even process that, the whole dynamic flips. The bus slows
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: down and.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: He pulls out a gun.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the atmosphere must have just electric instantly, terrifying.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: His focus at first is one of the women right
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: in front of him. The message is clear, even if unspoken.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Do what I say or else. He demands valuables, money, phones, gold,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: anything they have.
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: And here's a detail from the case files that really
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: jumps out the reaction, or lack of it. There were
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: ten men on that bus, ten but apparently none of
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: them tried to intervene. Not a single one challenge them.
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: They just complied, quietly handed everything over.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: It really shows you the level of fear, doesn't it.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: How quickly he took control just by showing that weapon.
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: But the horror wasn't over, not even close. This is
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: where it moves beyond robbery into something much much darker.
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: He's got the loot, the phones, the cash. But then
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: he points to the three women in the front row
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: tells them to get off the bus with him. He
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: tells the driver drive now, don't look back, don't stop,
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: just go.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Leaving these three women on the side of a pitch
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: black desert highway with an armed man. It's unimaginable.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: He forces them off the road about two kilometers deep
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: into the desert, takes any goal they might have hidden,
• 3:01
  Speaker 2: and then the worst part one of the women, the
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: one traveling with her child. She was sexually assaulted. The
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: reports mentioned he seemed to be under the influence of
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: drugs at the time.
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: How long did this ordeal last?
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: About half an hour base of the reports. Then, just
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: like that, he melts back into the darkness. Gone.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Meanwhile, the driver and the other passengers they race to
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: the nearest police checkpoint to report everything armed, robbery, coercion, kidnapping,
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: sexual assault.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: The list was long. If caught, this unknown man was
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: potentially facing twenty two combined charges. A massive case.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the police show up. They find the women
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: obviously distraught, traumatized. But from an investigative standpoint, this is
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: a nightmare scenario.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Right, Oh, absolutely a huge crime, multiple felonies committed in
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: a location seemingly chosen because it offers no clues.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: That's the central mystery, isn't it. Why kilometer thirty five?
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: Why risk so much? Twenty two charges in a place
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: that's completely barren?
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: It defies typical criminal logic. There's no cover, no obvious
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: escape route, no witnesses around, no lights, nothing, So.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: Unless he had a getaway car waiting, which seems unlikely
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: given the isolation, how did he leave, just walk off
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: into the desert.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: That's exactly what the investigators are grappling with. First step, obviously,
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: is interviewing everyone, the driver, all the passengers, getting descriptions,
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: ruling them out as accomplices, standard procedure.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: And they check the actual assault site spot two kilometers
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: into the desert.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: They do. They go out there, yeah, and it confirms
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: the initial impression. Absolutely nothing, no structures, no signs of life,
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: no clear paths out. It's just sand and rock.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Which suggests what Either he knew the area like the
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: back of his hand, or maybe someone was following waiting
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: for him.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Those are the possibilities, deep local knowledge or an accomplice.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: But then there's another huge.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Hurdle, the lack of tech. It's twenty fourteen.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: Exactly, no CCTV at the Moonham station to show him
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: getting on, no cameras along that stretch of highway, license plates,
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: no clear facial images. They basically have witness descriptions and
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: a location that offers zero forensic evidence.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: So fingerprints, DNA probably nothing useful out there.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Very unlikely in that environment. They realize pretty quickly that
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: technology wasn't going to solve this. They couldn't rely on
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: the usual tools.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: So what do they do? How do they shift gears?
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: They have to rely on experience, on instinct, and they
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: develop a key hypothesis. The drop off point wasn't just random,
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: It was strategic in a different way. Maybe it wasn't
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: about escaping from there, but about being near somewhere. He
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: must live or work close by, close enough to vanish
• 5:38
  Speaker 2: on foot into familiar territory.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: Ah, So the location itself becomes the clue, not what
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: happened there, but it's proximity to something else.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Precisely, they shift from focusing on the crime scene to
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: focusing on the geography. The only logical way he could
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: pull this off and disappear so cleanly was if he
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: belonged in that desolate landscape somehow.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, so they've got this hypothesis he works or lives nearby.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: How do they test that? What's the next practical step?
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: They define a search area, a tight radius just three
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: kilometers around kilometer thirty five along that empty highway. They
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: need to physically map out any sign of human activity.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: And in that emptiness, what do they actually find within
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: three kilometers?
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: It's painstaking work, real boots on the ground stuff. And
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: they find two places, just two, a gas station and
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: a pretty large cemetery complex.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: A gas station and a cemetery. That's it for miles around.
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: That's it. The only hubs of activity in that entire stretch. Isolated, yes,
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: but both require people to.
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: Run them, right, staff, shift workers at the gas station,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: maybe guards or groundskeepers at the cemetery exactly.
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: And this is where the sheer scale of the task
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: becomes clear. The estimate there are over two hundred workers
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: associated with just those two locations, shift workers, permanent residents
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: like the cemetery guards.
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: Two hundred people. And they decided to question every single one.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: Every single one. Think about the logistics interviewing over two
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: hundred people, many working odd hours in these remote spots
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: about a crime that happened nearby, without tipping off the
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: actual suspect if he was one of them.
• 7:11
  Speaker 1: That's incredible. It must have taken days, weeks even How
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: did they finally get a break? Was it a direct sighting?
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Now that's what's so interesting. It wasn't a direct lead.
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: After interviewing almost everyone, the breakthrough came from something small,
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: something almost incidental, casual conversation.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: What kind of conversation, one of the gas.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: Station employees mentioned something he remembers chatting with a security guard,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: not from the gas station or the sanity, but from
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: a nearby cell phone transmission tower.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: A cell tower out there.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, apparently about two kilometers from the gas station, near
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: the cemetery complex, a very isolated post.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Okay, and what about this guard?
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: The employee recalled the guard, mentioning sort of offhand that
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: he had a criminal record in the past, but you know,
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: he claimed he was reformed, living quietly. Now.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: Wow, okay, So now they have a specific person with
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: a history, working in extreme isolation, geographically right where their
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: suspect would need to be to vanish.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: If it's the profile perfectly, the investigators head straight for
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: that transmission tower. It's remote, the guard lives and works
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: there alone. He should be there.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: That he wasn't. Was he He was.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: Gone, vanished, hadn't been seen for two days right after
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: the micros attack.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: That immediate disappearance, that's almost a confession in itself.
• 8:25
  Speaker 2: It solidified everything they knew. They were onto the right person.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: So they identified this missing guard Ahmed Gamal, thirty one
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: years old. I bet when they pulled his official record
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: things really clicked into place.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Oh absolutely, it wasn't just a click. It was like
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: a spotlight hitting him. The records showed Gamal had I
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: mean a staggering criminal history, twenty two prior charges by
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: the age of thirty one.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Twenty two what kind of charges?
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: Things like theft by coercion, kidnapping, and chillingly one specific
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: prior case where he'd actually detained a woman against her
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: will for eight days.
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: Okay, So a clear pattern violence, coercion, holding people, combined
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: with his isolated job location.
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, for the police, there was no doubt left this
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Ahmed Gamal, with this specific history, working at that specific spot,
• 9:14
  Speaker 2: he was their man.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Twenty two felonies by thirty one. That's not just a
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: few mistakes. That's a life built around crime. So Gamal's
• 9:22
  Speaker 1: on the run. How did the police build the concrete
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: evidence they need for court beyond just suspicion and his history.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: They knew they had to move fast track the stolen
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: items before they disappeared completely huh, And they got lucky,
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: or rather were very thorough. They found out Gamal had
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: sold one of the stolen mobile phones.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Who would he sell it to.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: Another local watchman or guard? Someone working nearby. He sold
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: it shortly before he vanished. Police track down that phone
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: confirmed it belonged to one of the micropost passengers. That's
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: the first piece of physical evidence linking Gamal directly to
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: the robbery.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's crucial. What about the stolen gold? That's usually
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: harder to trace it is.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: But they didn't give up. He used their networks, investigated
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: his family connections. They tracked down Gamal's brother, living back
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: in their home village quite far away, and the brother
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: the brother had recently sold a batch of gold to
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: a local jeweler. The police managed to recover it and
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: confirm yes, this was the goals stolen from the women
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: on the microbus.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Wow, so the phone and the gold, they've now got
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: a solid chain Gamal, his history, his location, and the actual.
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: Stolen goods exactly. The case is now concrete, and.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: Two days later they arrest Ahmed Gamal. What was his
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: reaction when they caught him.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: That's one of the most striking parts of the whole thing.
• 10:36
  Speaker 2: Reports say he was completely composed, not fighting, not denying calm,
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: and his first question to the officers was apparently just
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: pure disbelief. He asked them How did you find me?
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: How did you know it was me?
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: He genuinely thought he was invisible out there completely.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: He believed the desolation of kilometer thirty five, the fact
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: he didn't know the victims it made him untouchable. He
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: couldn't fathom how they connected him through his job and
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: essentially a bit of gas station gossip.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: Which brings us finally to the why why commit such
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: a high risk violent series of crimes armed robbery, kidnapping, assault?
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: What could possibly motivate that?
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: Well, when you look into the why, according to the
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: investigation records, the initial trigger seems almost bizarrely small compared
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: to the crime itself. That morning, Gamal had apparently lost
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: a thousand Egyptian pounds one.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Thousand pounds like maybe sixty seventy dollars back then.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: That's the reason that was reportedly the catalyst. He decided
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: right then that he'd get that money back and more
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: by robbing a microbiss violently.
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: The disconnect between losing a relatively small amount of money
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: and then planning and executing this level of crime, it's
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: hard to comprehend it.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: There's a lot about his mindset, doesn't it. We know
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: he specifically chose the late timing because he knew that route,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: knew the driver would likely have the whole day's earnings.
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: It was calculated, and the sources indicate he went into
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: it fully prepared for extreme violence. He expected resistance, probably
• 12:02
  Speaker 2: from the men on board, and was ready to kill
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: anyone who challenged him, even after taking the women into
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: the desert.
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: In his background, does that shed any light?
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: It paints a grim picture, familiar in some ways. A
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: difficult childhood, parents separated, reportedly mistreated by his stepmother, led
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: to life on the streets, drug use.
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: Starting young, which sadly isn't uncommon, but lots of people
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: have incredibly tough backgrounds and don't end up with twenty
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: two felonies and committing crimes like this. What pushes someone
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: over that edge?
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: And that's the profound question, isn't it criminal psychology? But
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: what this case really highlights for me is that contrast
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: the sheer complexity and terror of the crime committed in
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: what seemed like an evidence vacuum, and the fundamental simplicity
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: in a way of how it was solved, not with
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: fancy tech but with diligent police work, talking to people,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: connecting geographic dots.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: You have to think the victims probably thought they'd never
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: see justice an attack like that out there, But the
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: investmentators didn't give up.
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: No their expertise, that willingness to interview two hundred people
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: based on a hunch about geography, linking it to that
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: one casual comment, that's what cracked it, and.
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: Gamal ultimately faced trial on all four major counts, the
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: armed robbery, the coercion, the kidnapping, and the sexual assault.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: Hashtag tech outro. So the kilometer thirty five file really
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: drives home a key lesson I think, not just about
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: crime investigation, but maybe broader than that. The smallest detail,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: you know, a half remembered conversation at a remote gas station.
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it can be the single thread that unravels a huge,
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: terrifying situation. It wasn't high tech forensics here. It was
• 13:38
  Speaker 2: recognizing that even the most careful criminal leaves some kind
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: of human trace, often just through.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Interaction, a human trail.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: I like that, and it brings us back to that
• 13:47
  Speaker 2: difficult human element. I'm at Gamal's childhood was undeniably traumatic,
• 13:51
  Speaker 2: and that's crucial context. But as you said, many faced
• 13:54
  Speaker 2: terrible hardshift. They don't all develop what the source material
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: called this level of defiance or frankly wickedness, sustained pattern
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: of choosing violence.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: So the question we leave you with, stemming from the
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: almost absurdly small trigger for such horrific acts that one
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: thousand pounds, is where that line really lies. How much
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: is shaped by those crushing circumstances pushing someone down a path,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: and how much is it about the individual choices made
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: along the way. Fate versus free will maybe played out
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: horrifically on a dark desert road. Something to think about.