Latest / Crime Night / Revenge Dismembered, The Swindler

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Revenge Dismembered, The Swindler · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: The air in Alexandria, Egypt, summer of nineteen eighty six.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: It's that, you know, thick, humid coastal air, smells of
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: salt and maybe a little bit of diesel from the port,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: and you just have to picture this totally mundane scene.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: People are walking along the coast goals overhead. Nothing is
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: out of place, right, just a normal day, until someone
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: notices something near the shoreline. And it's not driftwood or
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: you know, a lost towel. It's a suitcase, a very large,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: very expensive looking travel bag, and it's just been left
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: there deliberately abandoned.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: It was heavy, way too heavy, and when law enforcement
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: finally gets it open, any sense of normalcy that was
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: left on that coastline just shatters.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Because inside they find human remains.
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: And the detail here is just it's horrific. These aren't
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: intact remains. The body had been methodically, almost clinically, dismembered,
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: cut into these small pieces.
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: The head was missing. The attacker had clearly gone to
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: incredible lengths to destroy any identifying features. The police knew
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: right away this wasn't a crime of pas. This was calculated.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. The reaction in Alexandria was instantaneous. I mean, this
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: level of violence, this cold dismemberment, it just wasn't something
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: people were used.
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: To and it must have been terrifying.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, complete panic. The whispers started immediately that there's a lunatic,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: a serial killer on the loose, and the public pressure
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: on the authorities was just immense. They had this horrifying crime,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: but no victim, no name.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: And that's the ultimate dead end for an investigation, isn't it.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: If you don't know who the victim is, where do
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: you even begin.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: To look for a killer exactly? But this is where
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: they caught their first and really they're only major break.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: As there were painstakingly going to the remains, they found
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: one piece that was sort of miraculously intact enough to
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: be useful.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: What was it?
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: A complete palm print?
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: Wow, not just a fingerprint, the whole palm.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: The whole poem, which from that level of fragmentation was
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: just an incredible piece of forensic luck. They ran against
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: the National Registry and they got a hit in identity,
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: an identity. The victim was a man named Ellemi Farrog.
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: He was known in certain circles, presented himself as this
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: thriving businessman but as the police started digging into his life,
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: it became very clear his real job was something far
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: more sinister.
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: So the victim wasn't just some random person. He was,
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: let's say, notorious to a select few. The police tracing
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: his last known movements, they pretty quickly zeroed in on
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: the woman he was last seen with.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: But to understand the sheer violence that followed, you really
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: have to rewind five years to nineteen eighty one and
• 2:34
  Speaker 2: meet a young woman named nahead Al Kafas.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Nahad was just eighteen at the time. She's described as beautiful,
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: looked older than her age, but she came from a
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: very modest family in Alexandria, only had a middle school education.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: But the one thing that defined her, her key trait
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: was this intense ambition. She was just desperate to climb
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: out of poverty and find a life of wealth. Which
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: men she's constantly turning down local guys who just didn't
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: have the financial prospects she was looking for.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: He's looking for a guarantee, she was, and she.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: Thought she found it a marriage proposal from an Arab national,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: a businessman about twenty years older than her. He promised
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: her total financial security, and she accepted immediately. It was
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: her ticket out.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: So she leaves Alexandria behind and moves to.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Cairo, and not just anywhere in Cairo, she moves into
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: this huge, luxurious apartment in one of the city's most
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: affluent districts. For five years she lived that life. She
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: had a daughter with him, enjoyed all the comfort he provided.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: But there was a catch.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: There was the reality of that life was total isolation.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: Her husband was a good man, respectable, but his business
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: meant he was always traveling. She was alone a lot.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: And she was still young. She felt like she was
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: missing out on.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: Her youth exactly. The isolation just wasn't worth the comfort anymore.
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: So she starts asking for a divorce.
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: And this is such a critical point in the story
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: because what happened next sets the stage for the entire tragedy.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: It really does. Her first husband, he was a man
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: of integrity. He had made a promise to secure her future,
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: and he kept it even in divorce. The settlement she
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: got in nineteen eighty six was just is astonishing.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: It wasn't just a good settlement. It made her an
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: independently wealthy woman. Overnight.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: He transferred the title of that enormous Chiro apartment directly
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: to her. He gave her a car, he set up
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: a huge bank deposit for her and their daughter, and
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: on top of all that, she kept gold and jewelry
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: worth over one hundred thousand Egyptian pounds at the time.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: I mean to put that in perspective for you. The
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: source material notes that her total wealth was equivalent to
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: over fifteen million Egyptian pounds today.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: So she wasn't just comfortable, she was set for life.
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: She had the wealth she'd always dreamed of. She was
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: still young, and she was completely independent.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: It's an unbelievable position to be in. But even with
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: all that financial security, she was still lonely, still isolated.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: She was looking for romance, for a connection.
• 4:53
  Speaker 2: And that made her a perfect target. Divorced, wealthy, and vulnerable,
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: a predator's dream.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: This is when she decides to take a train back
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: to Alexandria to visit her family, and she's, of course
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: wearing her expensive jewelry. She looks exactly like what.
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: She is, a wealthy, independent woman. And who happens to
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: be on that train. Ellemi Frog, the man whose palm
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: print would solve his own murder. He was described as
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: incredibly charming, handsome, you know, the perfect front. He approaches her,
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: introduces himself as a big shot businessman with major investments
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: in Alexandria.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: And he's a professional. He's not just charming her, he's
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: gathering intel.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: Instantly, he gets all the key details. Divorced, Check has
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: her own money, Check her family is modest, so they're
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: probably not going to interfere. Check. He gets her number,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: insists on driving her home. He creates this immediate sense
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: of substance and reliability.
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: The courtship was a whirlwind. Nayhead was so ready for
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: the romance he was selling, and he played the part
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: of the ambitious stable partner just perfectly.
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: They're talking about all his supposed big investment projects, and
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: when he proposes, she says yes. Almost immediately, she thinks
• 6:03
  Speaker 2: she's found it.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: All, but the con was already underway. As soon as
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: they're married, the pressure starts.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: He starts asking about her assets. Why is all this
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: money just sitting in a bank. It's useless. He tells
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: her that to build a real future together, they need
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: to put that money to work.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: He sells it as a partnership. Let's build our empire together.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: But his goal was total control. And this brings us
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: to this single most devastating move he made. He convinced
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: her to grant him a general power of attorney over
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: all of her assets.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: And we need to be really clear for you what
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: that means. This isn't just letting him check her bank balance.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: No, No, this means she legally handed him the ability
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: to manage, sell, and liquidate her entire financial existence. Her
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: signature wasn't needed for anything anymore. He had the keys
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: to her kingdom.
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: And once he had those keys, the speed of the
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: destruction was just breathtaking.
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: He moved immediately, within days, sometimes hours, it was all over.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: First he sells that incredibly valuable Cairo apartment gone. Then
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: he takes the money from that sale and buys a
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: new villa in King Mary Out Alexandria. But that it's
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: the whole game. He registers it exclusively in his name.
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: He's laundered her biggest asset into a property that is
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: now leally his exactly.
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: Then the car she owned, he just gives it away
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: to a relative unbelievable all the golden jewelry sold, and
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: then he just starts systematically draining her bank accounts until
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: there's nothing left. It was a complete financial erasure.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: At first, she must have been confused, maybe trying to
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: believe his explanation.
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: Well yeah, but then the psychological abuse starts. His whole
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: demeanor changes, and then people start showing up at the villa,
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: strangers knocking on the door, demanding money and screaming that
• 7:44
  Speaker 2: Ellamy is a fraud.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: That must have been terrifying. How did he explain that away?
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: He had a script ready. He just dismissed them as
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: enemies of success, people who were jealous of him and
• 7:53
  Speaker 2: trying to ruin his reputation. And for a while she
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: tried to believe him.
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: She had to, but eventually the truth just becomes unavoidable.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: She realizes she's been stripped of everything. Her property, her savings,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: her security, it's all gone, and she's trapped.
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: She has to keep living with him in the villa
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: that he bought with her money, just clinging to this
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: fading hope that she can somehow get some of it back.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: The moment the money ran out, the mask came off completely.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah, the charming businessman was gone. The verbal abuse
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: became constant, and he started making these bizarre and illicit
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: demands in their intimate life, things Nee had found just
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: completely loathsome She was financially ruined, psychologically tortured, and utterly trapped.
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: A prisoner in a house built from the rubble of
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: her own life. She was just trying to endure. But
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: any situation like that has a breaking point, and.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: That absolute breaking point came when she stepped outside the
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: villa for just a moment and heard her daughter's scream.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: She runs back inside and finds the ultimate betrayal. Her
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: young daughter's clothes are torn. Ellenmi was trying to actually
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: assault the child.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: In that single horrifying moment, Nahead makes a tactical decision,
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: a really brilliant, if chilling one. She knows if she
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: attacks him right then he'll overpower them both. So what
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: she do She does the opposite of what you'd expect.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: She hits her own daughter. She falsely blames a child
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: from making a scene, creating a distraction that lets her
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: get the girl away from him without starting a physical fight.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Then she tells her daughter pack your things.
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: Now, her entire focus just shifts. It's not about her
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: own survival anymore. It's about protecting her child.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: She takes her daughter straight to her grandmother's house in Alexandria,
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: make sure she's safe, secure, out of his reach, and
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: once that's done, she goes back to the villa alone.
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: And she's not going back to recover her money.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: No, she's going back for revenge.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: She knew his habits, knew he frequently took sedatives other drugs.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: So she prepares some juice, laces it with a heavy
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: dose of a sleeping agent, and she waits.
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: Once he's passed out in bed, she gets a knife,
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: and the violence that follows isn't random, it's specific. Each
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: stab is for a different betrayal.
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: That's how the sources frame it. One for the financial ruin,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: one for the future he stole from her, and the
• 10:09
  Speaker 2: final deepest one for what he tried to do to
• 10:11
  Speaker 2: her daughter.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: But even then, she wasn't finished. Her calculation went further.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: She needed to make sure he could never be identified.
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: That's when she got the hatchet, the citur. She methodically
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: dismembered his body into those small, unrecognizable pieces, all to
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: guarantee his anonymity.
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: She then executed a perfect cleanup of the crime scene,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: packed the remains into that travel bag and drove to
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the coast. She abandoned the suitcase and then just went
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: back to her mother's house.
• 10:38
  Speaker 2: The police, of course, with Ellamy's ID, traced him back
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: to Nihead pretty quickly. She denied everything at first, but
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: the investigation into Ellmy's life started turning up a pattern,
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: a shocking pattern that changed everything.
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: They realized he wasn't just some shady businessman.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: He was a career criminal, a professional predator who specialized
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: in marital fraud. Investigation found that Nighthead wasn't his first
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: victim or a second. She was the seventeenth woman he
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: had defrauded using the exact.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Same playbooks, seventeen.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: Seventeen other women. The police realized they weren't dealing with
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: a simple murderer. They were dealing with the final desperate
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: act of a woman who had been pushed far beyond
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: her breaking point.
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: And this is when the whole case explodes into the
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: public consciousness.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: It becomes this huge social commentary. The truth about Ellemy's
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: life led to this completely unprecedented public reaction, I mean,
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: thinking about it, one of the most gruesome crimes imaginable, and.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: The public overwhelmingly sided with the killer.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: Overwhelmingly, people felt this deep visceral sympathy for Nihead her story,
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: the fraud, the abuse, the final violation against her child.
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: It became a rallying cry.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: There wasn't a single good word said about Ellemi Farrog.
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: The moral horror of what he did completely overshadowed the
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: horror of how he.
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: Died, and the court was in a tough position facing
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: that public pressure and the undeniable evidence of mitigating circumstances.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: She was initially sentenced to death given the calculated nature
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: of the murder and dismemberment.
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: But that was almost immediately commuted to life in prison,
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: so twenty five years, and then later it was reduced
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: again to just fifteen years, which for a crime this
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: horrific was just extraordinary leniency.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Now had al Kaffis became a kind of symbol, didn't
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: she a symbol of what happens when public justice and
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: the strict letter of the law collide.
• 12:24
  Speaker 2: She was really the first defendant in a crime of
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: this scale to get that kind of massive public support. Fundamentally,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: because the moral character of her victim was just so
• 12:32
  Speaker 2: completely bankrupt.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: The case really forces you to grapple with the line
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: between law and morality. What happens when a betrayal is
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: so absolute, when a criminal systematically steals a person's entire
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: life and leaves them with nothing, and it.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Leaves you with a question to really think about, how
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: much does the nature of the victim change how we
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: judge the crime. At what point does a society agree
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: that the life that was stolen, the security, the future,
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: the peace of mind weighs more than the life that
• 12:59
  Speaker 2: was violently takes can in the end,