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He Slept Beside Her Dead Lover · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: I want you to close your eyes for a second
• 0:01
  Speaker 1: and transport yourself to Cairo, Egypt, specifically the neighborhood of
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Manshiat Nizzer.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: It's July twenty fourteen. It is two point.
• 0:10
  Speaker 3: Zero am and two point am there, especially during Ramadan,
• 0:14
  Speaker 3: is not what you'd think. It isn't silent, not at all.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: The streets aren't dead, they are vibrating. There's this distinct
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: electric energy in the air. You've got lanterns strung up
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: between buildings, cafes are open, the smell of food is
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: everywhere because people are awake for Suhor, the pre dawn meal.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: That atmosphere is so critical here. You have a community
• 0:33
  Speaker 3: that's hyper aware, hyper awake. Everyone is watching, connecting, which
• 0:37
  Speaker 3: just makes the isolation of what happens inside one specific
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: third floor apartment feel, I mean, incredibly claustrophobic.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: We're zooming in pass all the noise and the lights
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: to this one apartment building. The door to a third
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: floor unit opens and a man walks in we'll call him.
• 0:52
  Speaker 3: The husband, and he is just shattered.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Absolutely shattered.
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: He's been working a brutal shift, long hours, manual labor.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: His body is aching his eyes are heavy, and really
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: the only thing on his mind is his bed.
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: It's that kind of exhaustion where you're just on autopilot.
• 1:06
  Speaker 3: You just want the day to be over.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: He walks down the hallway, dragging his feet, heading straight
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: for the bedroom, but as he reaches for the handle,
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: the door swings open from the inside. It's his wife, Nora.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: She's young, only twenty.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: One, and she is practically vibrating with anxiety.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: He blocks his path. She's frantic, talking way too fast,
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: saying no, don't go in there. I'm cleaning. It's a mess.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Why don't you sleep in the other room.
• 1:32
  Speaker 3: Okay, let's just pause right there. It's two in the morning.
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: Your husband just got home from a double shift. Yeah,
• 1:37
  Speaker 3: and you're claiming to be deep cleaning the bedroom right
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: under any normal circumstance. That is a huge, flashing red
• 1:44
  Speaker 3: sign that something is very wrong.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: It makes zero sense, but again, the husband is a zombie.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: At this point, he's too tired to argue, too tired
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: to even question it. He just pushes past her, grumbling.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: Something enters the bedroom, kicks off his shoes and just
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: collapses into bed.
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: Within minutes, he's out cold.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: And this is the scene This is the part that
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: is just so chilling. You have the husband deeply asleep, dreaming.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: You have Nora lying next to him, her eyes wide open,
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: staring at the ceiling, absolutely terrified.
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: And just three feet away in the corner of that
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: same room is a large wooden wardrobe.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: And inside that wardrobe, hidden behind the doors, is a corpse.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: A dead man ah folded into the closet. The husband
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: spends the entire night sleeping peacefully next to a murder
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: victim with no idea.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: It's a scenario straight out of a horror movie, but
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: it's real, and the question we have to answer today
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: isn't just who is the man in the wardrobe? It's
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: how on earth did a twenty one year old mother
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: end up living with a corpse and her husband in
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: the same room for a full twenty four hours.
• 2:45
  Speaker 3: To get there, we have to look at the morning after,
• 2:48
  Speaker 3: because the sun comes.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Up, that husband wakes up, washes his face, gets dressed,
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: and heads right back out to work, still completely oblivious.
• 2:54
  Speaker 3: Which leaves Nora alone in that apartment again. But now
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: she's with her young daughter and a decomposing body.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: The psychological pressure there must have been unimaginable.
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: Oh, I mean every sound from the street, every creak
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: of the floorboards must have sounded like police sirens. She's
• 3:10
  Speaker 3: watching the clock, knowing she can't keep this hidden. It's
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: a ticking time bomb.
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: And eventually that pressure just breaks her. By that evening,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: she can't take it anymore.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: She calls her brother.
• 3:21
  Speaker 3: Hysterical, sobbing into the phone.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: She tells him I killed a man, but she frames
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: it as a tragedy. She says, I didn't mean to
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: I was defending myself. I didn't know what else to do.
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: Her brother, to his credit, is the voice of reason.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: He knows immediately you can't just keep a body in
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: a closet. He rushes over, and they go straight to
• 3:41
  Speaker 3: the police station.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: And this is where we get the official story, the
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: narrative Nora constructs to save her own life.
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: Right, so you can picture the interrogation room, harsh lights,
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: tired detectives.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: And Norah's sitting there looking small and terrified. She tells
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: the police that a man knocked on her door earlier
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: that day. He said he was a salesman.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Presentative, specifically selling cleaning products, detergents, that kind of thing, wholesale, right,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: she says.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: She opened the door, and when this man realized she
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: was alone, he just forced his way in, pushed her
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: into the bedroom, and tried to assault her.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: It's a story that immediately makes you feel for her,
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: a young mother home alone, defending her honor.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: She claims that during the struggle, she just happened to
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: grab a knife, pure luck it was nearby, and she
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: stabbed him to save herself. She said she was so
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: panicked and terrified of the authorities that she hid the
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: body instead of calling for out and her husband.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: When he's brought in, he believes her instantly. He's devastated,
• 4:39
  Speaker 3: of course, but he sees her as a hero, as
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: a victim who did what she had to do.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: But the detectives, they're a different story. They're not emotionally involved.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: They're just looking at the facts, and almost immediately they
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: start seeing cracks in this perfect self defense story.
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: The first crack is just human behavior. If a stranger
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: breaks into your house and tries to to kill you
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: and you survive, your instinct is to scream, to run.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: You call the police, you run to neighbors.
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: Right you can't help, You don't quietly stuff the attacker
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: into a wardrobe, clean up, let your husband come home
• 5:13
  Speaker 3: and sleep in the room with the body, and then
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: wait another full day to say anything.
• 5:17
  Speaker 1: The silence is the loudest piece of evidence against her,
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: It really is.
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: It suggests calculation, not panic. Panic is loud.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: That's a great way to put it. And then there's
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: a whole salesman's story itself.
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that falls apart pretty quick. Yeah, this manchat neezer.
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: It's a very tight knit, high density neighborhood. The detectives
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: just start walking the block asking neighbors, Hey, did a
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: guy come by selling cheap soap yesterday? And what they hear,
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: nothing crickets. This supposed salesman didn't knock on the first floor,
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: didn't knock on the second, He didn't talk to anyone
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: in the street. He apparently just floated up to the
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: third floor, knocked only on Nora's door, and ignored every
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: other potential.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: Customer, which is not how sales works. You knock on
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: every door exactly.
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: And let's go back to the Ramadon factor. The building
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: was awake, people were home, windows were probably open. If
• 6:05
  Speaker 3: there was a violent struggle, a fight to the death
• 6:07
  Speaker 3: with a knife, someone would have heard something.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: A scream, but the neighbors reported nothing.
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: Zero, It was quiet.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: And what about his sales stuff? If he was a salesman,
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: where were his samples?
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: The police searched that apartment from top to bottom. Yeah,
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: no sample case, no brochures, no bottles of detergent, nothing,
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: Just a dead man in a wardrobe who had absolutely
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: no professional reason to be there.
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: So the police are skeptical the story isn't adding up.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: They send the body to the Morgue for an autopsy,
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: and this is where the case pivots from just suspicious
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: to incriminating.
• 6:41
  Speaker 3: They undressed the corpse, they identify him as a twenty
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: nine year old man named Walid, and inside his pants
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: pocket they find the one thing every criminal should destroy.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: But never does, his mobile phone.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: It's always the phone. They pull the call logs. Now,
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: remember Nora's claim was he is a stranger. I have
• 6:57
  Speaker 3: never seen this man before in my life.
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: But the phone tells a very different story, doesn't it.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: The phone completely destroys that story. The very last outgoing
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: call on Walid's phone was to Nora on.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: The day of the murder, minutes before.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: He walked into that building. And this wasn't a one
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: off call. The police subpoenaed the records from the telecom
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: company and they find a history. We're talking hundreds of
• 7:21
  Speaker 3: calls over the last year.
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: So this wasn't a random attack, This was an ongoing relationship.
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: Intimately, they knew each other very well. This completely dismantles
• 7:30
  Speaker 3: her stranger danger defense.
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: So who was Walid really? If he wasn't selling soap,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: what was he doing there?
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: Walid was in the quash, a painter and decorator. He
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: had a stable job, lived in a totally different part
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: of Cairo. He had no reason to be in manshiat
• 7:44
  Speaker 3: Aser that day except to see Nora.
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: And once his photo started circulating, people started talking.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: Yes, a neighbor confirmed it. I've seen that guy. Yeah,
• 7:53
  Speaker 3: and not just that day. He'd been seen entering that
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: building multiple times over the past few months. He was
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: a regular.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: The net is just tightening and tightening.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: But I want to get to the forensics, because the
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: autopsy report didn't just identify him, it told the story
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: of how he died.
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: This is where forensic pathology becomes the ultimate truth teller.
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: The body keeps the score. Nora described a standing struggle.
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: She said he was attacking her. She was fighting back.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: It was chaos, a frantic stabbing, and self defense.
• 8:20
  Speaker 3: But the medical examiner looked at the wound, a single
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: stab wound to the heart. The crucial detail, though, was
• 8:26
  Speaker 3: the angle. The trajectory of the blade was superior to inferior,
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: meaning downward, steeply downward. Now just think about the physics
• 8:35
  Speaker 3: of that. For a woman of Nora's height to inflict
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: a steep downward stab on a man of Walid's height
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: while they were both standing and fighting, it's almost mechanically impossible.
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: It would imply she was somehow hovering over him.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: So what does that angle really tell the investigators?
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: It tells them the victim was likely lower than the attacker. Specifically,
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: the evidence strongly suggested Walid was lying on his back
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: and Nora would positioned over him.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: That is a chilling detail. It implies he wasn't attacking
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: her at all.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: He was vulnerable, He was exposed and likely relaxed. He
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: contradicts every single word of her self defense story.
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: So, faced with the callogus, the witnesses, and the undeniable
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: physics of the stab wound, the police confront Nora again and.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: Her story just collapses. She breaks down and finally we
• 9:21
  Speaker 3: get the truth, the real story, and to understand the murder,
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: we have to go back a full year.
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: It all starts at a bus station. Nura is sitting
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: there alone, and you have to understand her headspace. Her
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: husband is much older, he works those brutal shifts we
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: talked about, often sleeps away from home. She's twenty years old,
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: raising a child, and she feels completely alone, invisible.
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: She's lonely, and that vulnerability is often way These things.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: Begin at the bus station. She makes eye contact with
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: a stranger, Walid. He approaches her, He's charming, he listens,
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: he gives her the attention she's been starving for. They
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: exchange numbers.
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: It starts out innocently enough, just phone calls, emotionals. But
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: then with her husband away so often while Leid starts
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: visiting the apartment.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: And it becomes a full blown affair.
• 10:06
  Speaker 3: Yes, and we have to remember, in her community, an
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: affair like this isn't just a mistake. It's a massive
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: social taboo. If she's caught, she loses everything, her daughter,
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: her home, her entire reputation. But they continued until the
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: dynamics shifted.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: This is the dark turn because it stopped being a romance.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: While Lead wasn't just a lover anymore. He became a
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: predator over the.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: Course of their affair. While Leid convinced Nora to let
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: him take photos and videos of her, compromising photos, semi
• 10:36
  Speaker 3: nude images. He used that classic line, it's just for us,
• 10:39
  Speaker 3: it's our secret.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: But when the guilt, or maybe the fear of getting
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: caught started eating at her, she tried to end it.
• 10:46
  Speaker 3: She tried to break up with him, and that's when
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: while Leid played his card, he weaponized those photos. He
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: told her, you don't get to leave if you stop
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: seeing me, I will post these photos online. I'll send
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: them to your husband.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, for a woman in her position, that is
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: a social day sentence.
• 11:00
  Speaker 3: It's blackmail, plain and simple. He had her trapped. The
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: police actually confirmed this. They cracked the password on his
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: phone and found the gallery of photos. The threat was
• 11:10
  Speaker 3: absolutely real.
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: So she's cornered. She can't leave him because he'll destroy
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: her life. She can't stay because the risk is eating
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: her alive, and that brings us to the twenty fifth
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: of Ramadan. She decides there's only one way out.
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: She has to silence him.
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: This was premeditated murder, not a crime of passion. It
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: was a trap. She invited Walid over. She told him
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: her husband was gone, the coast was clear, and the.
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: Details of how she did it, knowing the autopsy results
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: now it's horrifyingly calculated.
• 11:40
  Speaker 3: Is cold. As soon as Walid arrived, she led him
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: to the bedroom. She used their intimacy as the weapon.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: Before he even got there, she had taken a sharp
• 11:50
  Speaker 3: kitchen knife and hidden it under the pillow on the bed.
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: Under the pillar, she let him get comfortable, She let
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: him think this is just another rendezvous. He lay down
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: in the bed, and while they were intimate, which explained,
• 12:00
  Speaker 3: while he was on his back and she was positioned
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: above him, she reached under the pillow, pulled out the
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: knife and drove it straight into his heart. One strike,
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: one fatal strike. He died instantly. He never saw it coming.
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: It's just such a dark perversion of trust. I mean, yes,
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: he was blackmailing her, he was a villain, but in
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: that specific moment, he thought he was safe.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: With her, and then the reality of what she'd done
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: crashed in. She's standing there with the dead body. She
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: dresses him, and she realizes she can't move him. She's
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: a small woman, he's a dead weight. She can't get
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: a full grown man out of the apartment without.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Being seen, so she panics, shoves him in the wardrobe,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: cleans up, and waits for her husband to come home.
• 12:41
  Speaker 3: It's the layers of betrayal that are just staggery. The
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: betrayal of her husband with the affair, the betrayal of
• 12:47
  Speaker 3: her lover with the murder, and then betraying her husband
• 12:49
  Speaker 3: again by letting him sleep just feet away from the corpse.
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: It creates this tragic irony.
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: The whole thing started because she felt lonely and wanted
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: a connection, and that search for connection ended up just
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: drawing her life, ending another's, and shattering her entire family.
• 13:03
  Speaker 3: And think about the husband. He's the ultimate collateral damage.
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: He went from believing his wife was a hero who
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: defended her honor to finding out she was having an affair,
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: to realizing she is a cold blooded murderer.
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: His entire reality was dismantled in twenty four hours. I
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: can't imagine the trauma of realizing you were sleeping next
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: to the man your wife murdered.
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: That breaks a person.
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: It's devastation on a level most of us just can't comprehend,
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: you know.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: In the material we analyze for this deep dive, there
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: was a line that really stuck with me, so that
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: sometimes humans are capable of acts that make the devil
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: look like an amateur.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: It's a harsh truth when you look at the cold
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: calculation hiding the knife using intimacy as a lure, It
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: shows how far fear and desperation can push a person.
• 13:47
  Speaker 3: Nora was so terrified of her secret coming out that
• 13:50
  Speaker 3: she became a monster to keep it.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: It raises a provocative question for all of us listening.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: We all have secrets, maybe not body in the wardrobe secrets,
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: but things we have, and the question this case poses
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: is how far would you go to keep that secret buried?
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: At what point does the cover up become infinitely worse
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: than the crime.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: That is the terrifying question. Because Nora decided murder was
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: a better option than exposure. She thought she could trade
• 14:16
  Speaker 3: a life for her reputation.
• 14:17
  Speaker 2: And in the end she lost both.
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: She did. The truth always has a way of surfacing,
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: whether it's on a phone, in a pocket, or in
• 14:24
  Speaker 3: the angle of a wound. You can't hide it forever.
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: That's it for this deep dive into the secret in
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: the wardrobe. It's a grim reminder that sometimes the most
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: terrifying stories aren't fiction. They are happening behind closed doors,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: while the rest of the world celebrates just outside.
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: Thanks for listening, Stay safe out there.