Latest / Crime Night / A mother slaughtered her two children: The crime of Najat Al-Kilani

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A mother slaughtered her two children: The crime of Najat Al-Kilani · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture this a small village near Benny Swift in Egypt.
• 0:04
  Speaker 1: It's twenty fifteen, about seven am. Everything's quiet, you know,
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: that early morning calm. Najat al Kilani is opening her
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: little grocery store, just like any other day. The routine,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: the community feel, it all seems perfectly.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: Normalm hmm, business as usual exactly.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, So half an hour goes by, maybe seven thirty.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Joht's busy, asks the neighbor, Hey, can you run over
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: and wake up my kids, Ayah who's eight, and Muhammed
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: five for breakfast.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: Okay, seems normal enough.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: The neighbor goes, knocks on the door, waits, knocks again.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Nothing, just figures they're sleeping in right.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Exactly, So the neighbor just heads back to the store. Yeah,
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: but that quiet it wasn't sleep, No.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: Something had already happened hours before. So another thirty minutes pass.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: It's around eighty am. Now Najat decides, okay, I'll go myself.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: She closes the shop for a bit, walks home, opened
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: the door, yeah, and the world just stops. The living room,
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: it's a scene of absolute horror.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Both children dead and the violence.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: It was extreme. Mutilated blood everywhere. It wasn't just killing.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: It was designed to obliterate. But here's the truly jarring part.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: Nutschock doesn't collapse, She doesn't scream in grief.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: No, what does she do?
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: She screams all right, loudly, an accusation for the whole
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: village to hear. It was the inheritance. They did it
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: because of the inheritance.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: Wow, right out of the gate, that's something.
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: It is, and that immediate specific accusation it points to
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: everyone in one direction. Doesn't it a family feud money exactly?
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: It's the perfect prepackaged motive. But the scene itself, the
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: physical evidence inside that room, it told a completely different story,
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: a much much darker, more intimate one.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: So that's our mission today, rate to unpack this who
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: stage is a scene like that, who sits with their
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: murdered children for hours planning how to perform the discovery?
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Right, this wasn't just rage. This feels like a problem
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: being dealt with coldly.
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's dig into Najat Alkalani herself. This is painted
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: picture of someone well lacking much in the way of
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: conscience or even basic maternal feelings, driven purely by money,
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: by materialism.
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: It starts early, doesn't it.
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  Speaker 1: Her first marriage, Yeah, married in nineteen. By twenty two,
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  Speaker 1: she's divorced. Why Apparently her greed was just too much
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: for the husband.
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: And the most telling detail from that first marriage.
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: The child, a daughter one and a half years old.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: When Najaq got divorced, she just walked away, left the
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: little girl, completely.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: Abandoned her, left her to be raised by the ex
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: husband's family, no contact.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: It's like the child was just an inconvenient reminder of
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: a failed investment or something chilling.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: And it didn't take her long to find a new target,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: did it.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Nope. Six months later, six months after leaving her daughter,
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: she meets haj Ramadan. He's sixty two, wealthy, has property, shops,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: but in a different village further away, and.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: She made sure he was wealthy before marrying him. This
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: wasn't romance. This was a calculated business move.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, But his family saw right through it.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Didn't think oh immediately. His eldest son Ahmed, and other
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: relatives they distrusted her from day one, saw her as
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: an opportunist exploiting an older man.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: But she pressed on.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: She had a plan, she did, and that plan involved children.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: But maybe not in the way you'd normally think.
• 3:17
  Speaker 1: Right, First, she is Ayah, then Mohammed, the crucial male
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: air in that context.
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: And then she makes her big move.
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: She persuades Hadramadan, her elderly husband, to sign over two
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: major assets directly into the names of these two young.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Children, not into her name, into the kid's name exactly.
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: The grocery store, the one she was running, and half
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: of the family house. Big assets.
• 3:40
  Speaker 2: Okay, stop there for a second. This is absolutely critical.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: On the surface, it looks like she's securing her children's future. Right,
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: makes sense, But think deeper. Yes, it absolutely inflamed the
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: conflict with Ahmed, the older son. He felt cheated, his
• 3:54
  Speaker 2: inheritance diverted, which.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: Is exactly what she wanted people to see.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: Precisely, she wasn't just getting the assets secured. She was
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: deliberately creating and amplifying the family feud. She was building
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: her future alibi years in advance.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: So the inheritance motive she screamed about later, she literally
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: manufactured it years before.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: That's how it looks. She created the perfect scapegoat narrative.
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  Speaker 2: If anything happened to the kids, everyone would immediately blame
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: Ahmed and the inheritance dispute. Well, it's diabolically clever in
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: a horrifying way.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Truly chilling, so fast forward Hadramedon eventually dies of natural causes.
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: He was seventy one. Najatque takes over the shop, lives
• 4:34
  Speaker 1: in the house. Technically it all belongs to the kids now, and.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: With her husband gone and the assets seemingly secure through
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: the children, her behavior changes the calculation, maybe gives way
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: to indulgence.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like it. He starts a secret life.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: There's this guy, Naba Awad Abdam Mutalib, forty years old,
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: married five kids of his own, a regular customer at
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: her shop, and.
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: It starts, how just flirting.
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: Apparently excessive flirting at the store, which then escalates into
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: a full blown affair.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, so how secret could it really be in a.
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: Small village, Well, they had this method. It sounds completely wild.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: For eighteen months, Naba supposedly visited Najad's house almost every.
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  Speaker 2: Day daily for eighteen months.
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  Speaker 1: Not through the front door. He'd climb over the surrounding rooftops,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: like jumping, jumping from roof to roof, then slipping into
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: her house through a back way.
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: You're kidding rooftop rendezvous, that's.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: The story, trying desperately to keep it hidden.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: But come on, in a village environment, surely people knew, well.
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: They did, or at least Ahmed, the stepson, definitely knew.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: He saw what was going on.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: And he wasn't happy about it.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Not at all. He felt in the jot was dishonoring
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the family name, his father's memory and putting his young
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: half siblings Ayah and Mohammed in a compromised position.
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: Dishonorable environment.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Did he do anything?
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: He confronted Naba directly, even spoke to Naba's family, apparently
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: telling them to make him stop.
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: And Naba's reaction.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: Publicly denied everything, of course, but privly be fair continued
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: often right there in the jet's living room. Well, I
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: am Mohammed, We're asleep just in the next room.
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: That proximity. That's just waiting for disaster, isn't it.
• 6:09
  Speaker 2: It was? And one night it happened. Late Najat and
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: Naba are together.
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: In the living room doing what they do right.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: And the noise wakes up Mohammed, the five year old,
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Oh no.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: He walks into the living room, sees his mother, sees Naba.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: He's confused, obviously, but he knows Naba shouldn't be there.
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: And what does he say?
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: He says, He tells him he's gonna tell Ahmed, his
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: older half brother, in the morning.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: That one sentence, the threat of exposure for Naba, that's
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: ruined his marriage, his reputation gone for Najat, maybe even worse.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: The carefully built facade crumbles.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: Panic sets in pure absolute panic. Noba grabs a knife
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: sources say it was just nearby, available, and he kills Mohammed.
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: Sits there, motionless, doesn't intervene, doesn't scream, just watches.
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: The brutality too, separating the head. That feels like more
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  Speaker 2: than just silencing him. It feels like creating a spectacle,
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: something so monstrous. A deflects suspicion from a simple affair
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: gone wrong, points back to that feud narrative.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: But it was no over the noise, the struggle. It
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: woke up Liyah, the eight year old daughter.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: Oh God, she saw.
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: She saw, she saw Naba, She saw what happened to
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: her brother and Najah.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: What does the mother do now her daughter is witnessing
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: this horror?
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  Speaker 1: This, this is the part that's almost impossible to comprehend.
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: Nujat looks at Naba and tells him he has to
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: kill Ayah too.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: She orders him to kill her daughter.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Yes, because Aya saw Ia was a witness, she would
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: reveal everything. Najat demanded her silence, So Naba.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: He kills Ayah as well, the same horrific way in
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: front of her mother, on her mother's command.
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: That's the account. Once it was done, they must have
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: quickly agreed on the cover story the inheritance feud. Naba
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: then leaves the way he came over the rooftops gone.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: Leaving Najat alone in the house.
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: Alone with the bodies of her two children. And this
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: is where the timeline gets truly disturbing. Now believes around
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: two am. Najat doesn't discover the bodies until seven am.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: Wait, she stays in the house with them for five hours.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Or five hours, not calling police, not running out screaming immediately,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: She sits there calculating, planning or finding her story, her performance.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Most people will be hysterical in shock, fleeing. She stays
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: and plans. That level of cold calculation is staggering.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: Then at seven am she leaves goes to the shop
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: just the whole routine with the neighbor and then executes
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: the discovery scene at eight am, running out screaming about
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: the inheritance.
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: But the investigators they weren't buying it, were they not?
• 8:40
  Speaker 2: For long?
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: No, the forensic evidence just dismantled her story almost immediately.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: What did they find, crucially, no signs of force entry,
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: No broken doors, no smash windows consistent with Naba sneaking
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: in via the roofs. Not some external attacker.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: Breaking in right a few driven killer wouldn't likely use
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: the roof route. They'd make a statement, break down the
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: door and what else?
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: No theft, nothing was missing from the house. Robbery wasn't
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: the motive. This pointed away from intruders and towards someone known,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: someone already inside or let in.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, So no forced entry, no robbery, anything out.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: The biggest piece medical examiner. The time of death was
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: estimated to be around two point am.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Which is a full six hours before Najacques claims she
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: found them, and five hours before she even left the
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: house that morning.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It proved she was there when it happened, or
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: the very least knew about it long before her supposed discovery.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: She was caught in a massive lie about the timeline.
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: So the inheritance viewed theory pretty much collapses.
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: Right there completely. Yeah, investigators shifted focus immediately her strange calmness,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: the affair with Naba, which was common knowledge despite the
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: rooftop antics.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: It all started pointing towards her and Naba.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: They bring the Jat back in for more questioning face
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: with the timeline, the lack of forced entry, her story
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: falls apart.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: She confesses, confesses to but exactly.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: She admits Naba was there, admits the affair, but she
• 10:04
  Speaker 1: blames him entirely, says he killed both children.
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: Okay, so they arrest Naba.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: They do. He denies everything at first, standard denial, but
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: under pressure, confronted with Najat's statement, he breaks too.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: He confesses, he confesses to the murders.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: Yes, but here's the final twist. Their confessions don't perfectly align.
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: How So, Naba admits he killed Mohammad, the boy who
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: woke up first and threatened exposure, but he insists, he
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: adamantly insists that it was Najat herself who killed Ayah.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: The mother killed her own daughter.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: He claims Najaq carried out the second murder after ordering
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: him to do.
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: It, that's his claim. He says he only killed Mohammad
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: in panic, and the Jat, realizing Iowa was a witness,
• 10:47
  Speaker 1: took the knife and killed her daughter herself.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: Wow, So we have conflicting confessions on the second murder.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: Who do the investigators believe?
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: Well? The sources suggest that given everything they knew about
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: Najat abandoning her first child, the years of cold fire,
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: financial calculation, her explicit demand that ib silenced, they couldn't
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: just dismiss now is accusation against her. It was plausible, terrifyingly.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: So it's just an abys of betrayal, isn't it. Greed
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: led to the affair, The affair led to the risk
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: of exposure, and that risk led to annihilation, sacrificing her
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: children to protect herself.
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: Whether she physically killed Ayah or just ordered it, the
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: moral culpability is immense. The ready made inheritance Alibi crafted
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: years before it suggests a mind capable of extreme foresight
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: and service of self preservation.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: So the final question lingers, doesn't it?
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: It does? And Jack needed that inheritance feed story. She
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: built it carefully. Was the horrific and a sudden, panicked
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: reaction to Mohammed waking up, a desperate attempt to cover
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: tracks in the moment, or was it always heading here?
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: Was this the inevitable conclusion of a long term calculation?
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Were the children ultimately just assets that became liabilities, needing
• 11:55
  Speaker 2: to be liquidated when they threatened her freedom and reputation?
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: A truly disturb being thought to leave you with as
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: you reflect on this deep dive,