Latest / Crime Night / Black Magic, Gold, and the Concrete Coffin: The Sorcerer Who Murdered His Client

Transcript

Black Magic, Gold, and the Concrete Coffin: The Sorcerer Who Murdered His Client · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. Today, we're heading into Upper Egypt,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: specifically so Hag. It's a place where tradition is well everything,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: and family reputation can sometimes mean more than the official law.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: And right in the middle of this we have a
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: really disturbing case. It involves black magic, betrayal and a
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: pretty grim discovery inside a barrel of concrete.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: And it starts with tension already high. We're talking about
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the disappearance of Amal Ahmed Ali. She's forty years old
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: from a wealthy, respected family in the livestock trade.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a big deal in the community, and she vanished
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: one evening after ten zero pm. The critical part she'd
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: left home earlier, around six of bero PM, carrying a
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: lot of the family's gold jewelry, a significant amount.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: So she disappears after ten pm. But what's really striking
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: is the family's immediate reaction. They panic naturally, but they
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: don't suspect her. There's no thought that she just ran
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: off with the goal.
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: No, they trusted her completely, and that absolute trust meant
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: the search started fast and focused. Amal's father in law,
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: he's seventy three, in Mohamed Abu Ella's a very well
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: known figure there.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: A real patriarch exactly.
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: He leaves the search and they immediately zero in on
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: the last person Amala was known to have visited. That's
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: Ahmed Marus, the local sorcerer, quite famous or maybe infamous.
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: So the family confronts him. Ahmed, I mean, and he's
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: just calm as simple story.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Almost too simple. He says, oh, yeah, Amal was here,
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: but she left my place around eight zero zero pm.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: That was two hours after she supposedly arrived. He claimed
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: he had no idea where she went after that, total ignorance.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: But because of the family's standing, yeah, and there's certainty
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: that something terrible had happened to Amu, not that she'd fled.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: The police actually moved.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: Very quickly, unusually quickly for cases like this sometimes they
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: got a search warrant for Ahmed Marus's house almost straight away.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: And this house, it wasn't just a home, no, it was.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Basically his office, three stories right, and the first two
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: floors were all set up for his clients for his
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: magical services.
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: Imagine walking in there as an investigator. It must have
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: been quite something. Ambulance arms, strange books, bits of magical materials,
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: scattered everywhere, definitely look the part of a sorcerer's den.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: But then in a locked room, a consultation room, amongst
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: all the usual occult stuff, chairs, couches, they see something
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: completely jarring, something that just doesn't fit right.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: It's this large metal barrel and it's filled with fresh
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: concrete mix, still hardening concrete.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: Nothing magical about that, just heavy, physical and deeply suspicious.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: It basically stops them in their tracks.
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: It immediately became the focus. All the amulets and books
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: suddenly seemed secondary. This barrel was different.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Okay, So how does someone go from being a teacher,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: respected background, all that to this to being the prime
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: suspect because of a concrete filled barrel in his magic room.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Let's trace that path. Who was Ahmed Maurus before things
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: went so dark.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: Well, his start was pretty conventional. Actually graduated from the
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: Faculty of Education back in two thousand and one, started
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: teaching in a village in Sohag. Came from a humble,
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: decent family.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: So a normal path.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: What changed, money or the lack of it? He apparently
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: felt really dissatisfied. He saw neighbors, maybe with less education,
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: doing much better financially through trade his teacher's salary felt inadequate, insulting.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: Maybe so the ambition was there early on, but instead
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: of switching to trade, he went a very different route.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Was it always about the money, the sorcery thing, or
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: did he believe any of it?
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: It seems overwhelmingly cynical. Even back in college, he'd started dabbling,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: reading palms, coffee cups for classmates, that sort of thing,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: building a small.
• 3:33
  Speaker 1: Reputation, getting a feel for it.
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and learning that you don't need to be right
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: all the time. Just a few good predictions, especially public ones,
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: and people start to believe you have real power.
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: And after teaching for just three years, he saw the potential, big.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Potential, huge potential. He realized around two thousand and six
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: that people facing really desperate situations infertility, finding lost relatives,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: financial ruin curses, they'd pay almost anything, way more than
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: teaching ever would.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: So he went all in.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: He did, made it his profession, moved from the simpler
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: stuff like finding husbands or jobs to more serious, darker
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: practices causing illness, harm, finding hidden antiquities, eventually specializing in
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: black magic. Sir oswad and.
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: He tried to make it sound technical. You mentioned He
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: used specific texts like Sham's Al Maharif right.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: He framed it almost academically. He developed this system based
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: on what practitioners call the science of letters and numbers.
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: It's a kind of complex numerology, claiming to decode fate
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: through patterns and texts.
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: So he wasn't just some guy chanting. He was positioning
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: himself as a learned practitioner using his teaching background.
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: Maybe exactly. It gave his fraud a veneer of legitimacy.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: He was applying knowledge, albeit dark knowledge, and it worked
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: financially clearly.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Within a year, the humble home is gone, replaced by
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: a three story mansion. His whole demeanor changes. People described
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: him as terrifying.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and even his family, who apparently weren't keen initially,
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: they came around partly the money partly maybe they were
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: scared of him too, or believed his power themselves.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: And the services had a price scale obviously.
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: Oh yes, simple requests needed simple items. But the big stuff,
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: the powerful magic he claimed, needed servants or gin to
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: work that had a very specific requirement.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: Let me guess gold, large.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Amounts of gold, he claimed. The gin demanded it loved it.
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: It was a perfect excuse to demand high value payment,
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: essentially a justification for theft built into the ritual.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: So if we look at the bigger picture, how did
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: he keep this up? How did he maintain this illusion,
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: especially when presumably not everything worked out? You mentioned a network.
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: That network was absolutely key. It wasn't just magic, it
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: was information. He had thieves, informants, people all over the
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: village feeding him details, family secrets, disputes who was rich,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: who was desperate, who was planning to.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: Visit him, which sets up his masterstroke, the theft ruse.
• 6:00
  Speaker 1: This seems like how he really cemented his reputation.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: It was brilliant in a criminal way. He'd have his
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: associated thieves steal something valuable, often livestock because that's huge
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: and Sohag. They'd hide it somewhere specific.
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: Then the victim comes to Ahmed desperate.
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and Ahmed, after some dramatic performance, would reveal the
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: exact hidden location, sometimes even name a supposed thief, likely
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: someone unconnected or already an outcast.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: So the victim gets their property back, Ahmed looks like
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: a miracle worker, and the thieves get their cut. Everyone's happy,
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: except maybe the person falsely.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Accused pretty much. It made him seem infallible, a true seer.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: His wealth grew and so did the fear and respect
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: he commanded, which.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: Brings us right back to Amal Ahmed Ali, longtime client,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: wealthy family, known to carry gold. She sounds like the
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: perfect target for his biggest con.
• 6:50
  Speaker 2: She really was, and her situation became critical. In twenty thirteen,
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: two of her buffalo were stolen, a huge loss. She
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: goes to Ahmed and he plays it cool, masterfully. He stalls,
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: says he doesn't have the right requirements yet for such
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: a powerful spell, makes her weight, makes her more.
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: Desperate, building the pressure, and.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: Then then the very next day, a third buffalo gets stolen. Yeah,
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: you have to assume this was his network, tightening the screws,
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: deliberate escalation, pushing her over the edge completely. Now she's
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: in total panic, financially crippled, desperate for a solution, She's
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: ready to accept whatever he demands, which was the ultimate price,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: a huge amount of her family's gold plus a large
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: cash sum. Only then, he claimed, could he perform the
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: special session needed to find the thief and end her troubles.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: So she agrees. She gathers the gold the cash, everything
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: he asks for, and goes back to his.
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: House, carrying essentially the price of her own life, though
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: she didn't know it. She arrived around six pm that
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: final evening.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to that locked room. The police
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: are there. They've seen the amulets, the books, and then
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: this barrel of wet concrete happens next.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: They approach it carefully. It's heavy metallic. They notice the
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: concrete is still fresh, hardening fast. They cap it. The
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: top sounds muffled, dense, but when they tap near the bottom,
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: it sounds different, hollow, like there's a space or something
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: else inside near the base.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: That's not right, something's in there exactly.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: So they decide to make an opening near the bottom,
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: carefully break through the metal and what comes out blood,
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: just blood seeping out. Confirmation of the absolute worst fear.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: The order is given immediately and inside inside the hardening concrete,
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: they found a mal's body. She'd been killed by a
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: savage blow to the head looks like a cleaver, maybe
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: a machete, brutal and the gold right layer. In the
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: same room, the police found the entire cache of gold
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: and the cash you'd brought for the ritual. The motive
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: was sitting right there next to the body.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: So they arrest Ahmed. Does he stick to his story?
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: Initially yes, denies everything, says anyone could have come into
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: his offices, maybe left the barrel there, But the investigators
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: were moving fast. They found a crucial witness, one of
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: his workers, someone who helped him with manual tasks. This
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: worker confirmed Ahmed ordered the concrete mix the day before
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: the body was found, and then, weirdly, Ahmed sent him
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: home early, saying he'd finished the job himself. Pouring concrete
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: is heavy work to do alone.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: That's damning the concrete order. Sending the helper away.
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: It pinned it right on him, faced with the body,
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: the gold. The worker's testimony, Ahmed finally confessed.
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: What was the sequence? What did he admit to?
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: It was chillingly straightforward. I'm all arrived at six pm.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: He made sure she had the gold in the money.
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: Then he attacked her with the axe or machete, killed
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: her right there. Oh yeah, put her body in the barrel,
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: poured the concrete over her, And the most disturbing part,
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: he just went upstairs, back to his family on the
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: third floor, acted like.
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: Nothing had happened, just incredible coldness. What was his plan
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: for the barrel?
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: He admitted he needed to wait about three days, let
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: the concrete fully cure become completely solid rock. Then he
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: planned to move the barrel and bury it somewhere on
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: his land, dispose of it permanently.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: But he didn't get the chance.
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: No, the only reason his plan failed was the speed
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: and insistence of Amal's father in law, Mohammed Abu l As.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: His influence his refusal to wait pushed the police investigation
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: forward much faster than Ahmed anticipated.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: They got the warrant and searched the house before the
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: concrete fully set, before he could move the evidence exactly.
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: That quick action, driven by the family's certainty, foiled the
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: whole thing and the motive.
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just greed for the gold, was it? There
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: was something else?
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: Yep, that's right, he revealed. Amal had started complaining recently,
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: saying his magic wasn't working as well anymore, that the
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: results were fading.
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: Ah So she was questioning his power. That's dangerous for someone.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: Like him, extremely dangerous. He feared she'd leave him for
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: another sorcerer, and worse, maybe start telling people he was
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: a fraud, so the murder solved too problems for him,
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: silence the doubter, and get a massive payout, maximum gain,
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: maximum security for his reputation, or so he thought.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: It really leads to this central paradox, doesn't it. His
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: whole life, his wealth is power. It was all built
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: on this complex system of belief in unseen forces, gin, rituals,
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: special texts, academic even in its own twisted way.
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all very elaborate, intellectualized fraud. But the crime itself,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: the actual act, it couldn't have been more basic, more
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: brutally physical and acts and a barrel of concrete.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: The master of supernatural deception resources to the most mundane
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: physical concealment method imaginable.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: It really exposes the core of it. The complex magic,
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: the science of letters, the gin, None of it mattered
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: when it came to committing the actual crime. We're trying
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: to hide it. He used basic physical violence and basic
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: physical materials.
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: All the supposed power over the unseen world just vanished,
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: became a very human crime of greed and rage, And.
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: The moment real world investigation techniques were applied, witness testimony,
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: physical evidence, the whole facade just crumbled, instantly, and so I'm.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: Ed Maress the teacher turned sorcerer turned millionaire murderer. What
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: happened to him?
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: The verdict was swift, given the evidence, the confession. He
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: was sentenced to execution for his crimes. A grim men
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: to a life built on exploiting, belief and desperation.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: It leaves you thinking, doesn't it?
• 12:17
  Speaker 2: It really does, And here's something for you to mull over.
• 12:19
  Speaker 2: All that secret knowledge he supposedly mastered, those dark rituals,
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: the texts he studied, If any of it held real power,
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: the kind of power he claimed gave him control over others,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: why was it utterly useless in protecting him from the
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: simple human consequences of his own actions, his own greed.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: It makes you think about the real difference between the
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: power people believe in and the power that actually shapes
• 12:40
  Speaker 2: our world.