Latest / Crime Night / The Teacher, the Talisman, and the Treachery: How a Marriage of 17 Years Ended in Murder and Magic

Transcript

The Teacher, the Talisman, and the Treachery: How a Marriage of 17 Years Ended in Murder and Magic · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's dive in picture this. It's twenty twenty three,
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: late evening, maybe ten point zero zero pm in a suit.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: There's this three story house, relatively new.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: Right and inside on the third floor, in this kind
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: of secluded room they used well for intimacy.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: You have Yostri and Amal. They're school teachers, married seventeen years,
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: five kids, a normal evening, seemingly totally normal.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: The act itself concludes, you know, as usual, They're comfortable, familiar, and.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Then Amal asks usree to close his eyes. She says
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: she has a surprise for him, and.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: He doesn't instantly. Why wouldn't he? Seventeen years of marriage
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: builds that kind of trust, doesn't it exactly?
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Absolute trust, And in that moment of vulnerability, when his
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: eyes are.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Closed, it attacks him with a knife.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: A nice she'd bought a month earlier. It was incredibly swift.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: The reports say he didn't even struggle. He died right there.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: It's just chilling. The contrast is so struck. How does
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: this happen? How does Amal, this respected teacher, a mother,
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: go from you know, a loving wife to a calculated killer.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: That's what we're exploring today. This wasn't sudden madness. We're
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: going to trace the path those seventeen years that led
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: to this moment of well extreme paranoia and violence.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: We have to go back to the beginning, right, two
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: thousand and six, A suit governorate.
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: What were they like them?
• 1:15
  Speaker 2: By all accounts, the perfect couple, everyone said so, both
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: successful teachers, deeply respected in the community. Their marriage seemed solid,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: built on mutual admiration, family respect, the whole package.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: They started small. I gather a small.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Apartment, yeah, but they had this shared dream, this big
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: three story house for their future family. And they were ambitious,
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: really driven.
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: And the private tutoring that really boosted their income, didn't it.
• 1:40
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: Absolutely. They were good teachers and parents specifically sought them out.
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: So their financial situation just took off much faster than
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: typical teacher salaries would.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Allow, and the family grew alongside the finances, right.
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: First child after a year, yeah, second by year three,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: third by year five, more kids, more responsibility, but also
• 2:00
  Speaker 2: more wealth.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: But this is where the shadow appears. Am All starts developing.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: This fear, a very specific fear hassad the evil eye,
• 2:11
  Speaker 2: or maybe just intense professional.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Jealousy, which in that cultural context, is seen as a
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: real destructive force. Yeah, not just passive envy exactly.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: It can actively bring harm, people believe, and am All
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: felt it. She saw colleagues looking at them, questioning how
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: they were managing all the success on teacher's salaries. It
• 2:30
  Speaker 2: wasn't just in her head. She perceived it externally, and that.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: External pressure started eating away.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: At her internally precisely. Then comes this turning point about
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: five years in, and acquaintance plants a seed.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: What kind of seed?
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: Basically warns her, Look, your husband's successful, You've got three kids.
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: You need to protect him, stop him from taking a
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: second wife.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Wow. Even though Yasri was devoted.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Completely devoted by all accounts, Amal apparently brushed it off
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: at first, but the thought lodged itself in her mind,
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: that fear of replacement, of betrayal. He was there, even
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: if dormant.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: And then they achieved the dream. Ten years in, around
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: twenty sixteen.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: They buy the house, the three story house. They move
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: in and almost imediately they have their fourth and fifth children.
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: So the success becomes even more visible. The big house,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: five kids, the wealth, and.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: According to her perception, the envy from others ramps up. Significantly.
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: It became visible. She started associating the new house, the
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: realized dream, with his feeling of being watched, judged, almost
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: like an unlucky omen.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: So the external fear the hasade creates this internal vulnerability.
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: Ridical weakness. Yeah, and after the fifth child is born,
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: her paranoia really spikes.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Even though Yozri himself showed no signs of wanting another
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: wife or being unfaithful.
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: No signs at all, but the fear just took over.
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: It shifted focus. It wasn't about protecting him from others anymore.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: It became about protecting her claim on him, protecting herself
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: from him potentially leaving.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: And this is where she starts looking for unconventional solutions desperately.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: She starts talking to people involved in well sorcery protective rituals.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: She's looking for a guarantee, something external to control the
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: situation because she feels powerless against the perceived envy and
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: the planted.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Fear, abandoning reason really completely.
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: Which leads her to Minya Province and this so called
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: spiritual healer.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: Ah the charlatan exactly.
• 4:19
  Speaker 2: And he gives her something tangible, a book, not just
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: any book though, no a talismanic book filled with strange codes, letters, numbers,
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: tell as seems. The healer tells her this book is
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: her ultimate protector. Need a charm, need a spell for safety,
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: for livelihood? The answer, the instructions are supposedly hidden in
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: these codes.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Wait. Hold on, an educated woman, a teacher, stakes everything
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: on a coded magic book from a stranger over seventeen
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: years of marriage and trust.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: That's the absolute core of the tragedy, isn't it.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: The moment that book entered her home, her reality warped,
• 4:55
  Speaker 2: Her belief in its power was total, and her behavior
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: just yeah, it became increasing erratic.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: And Yozur finds out about this book.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: He does, and he reacts like you'd expect a rational person,
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: maybe a religious person to react. He identifies it as sorcery,
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: as forbidden, and demands she get rid of it, which,
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: in her mind, sealed his fate. Because he challenged the book,
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: her protector, he instantly became the enemy the things she
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: needed protection from.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: So the fear of him leaving morphs into seeing him
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: as actively hostile.
• 5:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, and then the delusion crystallizes into something very specific
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: and very disturbing.
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: What was that?
• 5:30
  Speaker 2: She starts imagining with absolute conviction that Yasri is demanding forbidden,
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: religiously unacceptable acts during their intimate relations.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Oh wow, so she creates the specific sin he's supposedly
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: committing exactly.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: This becomes her justification, the reason he's now bad, the
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: reason these violent thoughts she's starting to have are somehow righteous.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: And we know forensically this was completely untrue, of really false.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: The investigation confirmed it. Later was known for his morals,
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: but in her reality this delusion was concrete fact.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: Yostri must have noticed the change in her, the anxiety,
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: the tension.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: He did. He saw she was struggling, constantly agitated, having
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: dark thoughts, and he did what a caring husband might do.
• 6:16
  Speaker 2: He gently suggested she see the psychiatrist.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: And she agreed, being educated herself.
• 6:20
  Speaker 2: Surprisingly, yes, she went for several visits. But here's where
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: it gets even more terrified. Also, the psychiatrist finds no
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: major diagnosable mental illness, no psychosis, no schizophrenia. The doctor
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: suggests maybe the anxiety has an organic cause, a physical root.
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: So no psychiatric diagnosis.
• 6:37
  Speaker 2: Means it implies she wasn't clinically insane her mind, her
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: ability to reason wasn't fundamentally broken by illness. It suggests
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: she chose to surrender to this delusion, this dark influence.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: That's horrifying, because if she's not ill, then Yosury's suggesting treatment.
• 6:53
  Speaker 2: Becomes, in her warped view, proof of his betrayal. He's
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: trying to cure her of the belief system that's now
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: protected her, the system centered around the talismanic book.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So killing him becomes the answer.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: It becomes the necessary act in her mind to punish
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: him for trying to undermine her protection, for supposedly committing
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: those imagined sins, and for trying to treat her. The
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: homicidal urgees grew stronger every day, fueled by this fixed,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: false idea.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: He was no longer her husband.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: He was just a threat, a threat that needed to
• 7:24
  Speaker 2: be neutralized.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: Permanently, which brings us back to that night in twenty
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: twenty three. This wasn't impulsive.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: It was planned absolutely, The knife bought a month prior,
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: the plan in place after the murder itself. Investigators believe
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: she had this brief moment, a flicker of reality, shock,
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: realization of what she'd done, but it didn't last. No,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: the panic, the controlling delusion slammed back down, and that
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: panic led her to the next horrifying step, the cover up.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: She decides to make it look like Yasri did it.
• 7:55
  Speaker 3: A murder suicide, yes, claiming he couldn't live with the
• 7:58
  Speaker 3: guilt of well, uh of the things she imagined he'd done.
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: But to make that believable, she needed another victim to
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: show his supposed despair and rage.
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Oh no.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Around twelve thirty am, she goes downstairs to the second.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: Floor, where the children were sleeping.
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: She enters her youngest son's room and she stabs him
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: in the abdomen.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: Just I can't even fathom that level of calculated desperation.
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: The boy screams, naturally wakes the other children. A mall
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: shifts instantly into distrap mother mode rushes down, says the
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: father Yosri hurt the boy, they have to get over
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: to the hospital immediately.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: While the other kids are terrified and confused.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: She uses the chaos, runs back up to the third floor,
• 8:35
  Speaker 2: quickly places the knife in Yosrey's hand. He was found
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: in a kneeling or prostrate position, completing the stage suicide scene.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Then she grabs the injured sun and flees right.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: She runs out finds a relative. They rush the boy
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: to the hospital and thankfully his life is saved.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: But the cover up itself unravels almost immediately.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: Instantly hospital staff see a child with a stab wound.
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: They call police, standard procedure for something so suspicious, and
• 8:59
  Speaker 2: the police notice Amal's extreme agitation, her tension. It doesn't
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: add up, and.
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: The forensics team arrives at the house.
• 9:06
  Speaker 2: And their findings are conclusive. The staging fails. Yoseri was murdered, slaughtered. Actually,
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: the wounds couldn't possibly be self inflicted given their nature
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: an angle. The physical evidence screamed homicide.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: So faced with the science, Amal.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: She confesses immediately tells him everything. This educated woman, no
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: criminal past, just lays it all out.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: But the investigation uncovered two really crucial, almost unbelievable points,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: didn't it.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Yes, two massive surprises. First, the forensic medical exam on Yosre.
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: It proved beyond any doubt, zero evidence he'd ever requested
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: those forbidden acts she claimed her entire justification pure delusion.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: He was innocent, completely innocent of the very things she
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: used to rationalize killing him exactly.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: And the second surprise, the psychiatric evaluation A specialized panel.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Their conclusion, no, Oh, mental illness none.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: They found her fully competent, legally responsible for every single action.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: This wasn't madness in a clinical sense. It was, according
• 10:08
  Speaker 2: to the experts, a conscious choice fueled by delusion.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: So she's charged murder of her husband, attempted murder of her.
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: Son, and the case is referred to the Grand Mufty,
• 10:17
  Speaker 2: which in that system is often a step towards validating
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: a death sense. The whole cascade prosperity, fear, superstition, delusion, murder,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: all that an irrational basis.
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's try to process this. It's such a disturbing
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: story amalan yo'sry. It feels like a cautionary tale about
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: how fear, especially that deep seated social fear of Hassad,
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: can spiral when it meets superstition.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: It really does her anxiety about external judgment somehow became
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: more real to her than her actual life or actual husband.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: She chose to believe the fear over the reality.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: And the investigation really emphasized that point right that while
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: envy might be real turning to Charlatan's to sorcery, that
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: path only leads downwards.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, the sources basically say, look, envy can damage things,
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: but the response is critical seeking protection in the occult
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: in that talismanic book that wasn't protection, That was the
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: catalyst for destruction. The very thing meant to save her
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: home obliterated it.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: It's that terrifying mental journey, from fearing something outside the
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: envy to letting something false inside the book, the delusion
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: take complete control of her rational mind.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: She actively surrendered her critical thinking or education, her intellect.
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: None of it mattered once she committed to believing the
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: superstition over the evidence of her own life.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: And the final verdict reflects that she was considered sane, responsible,
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: yet her actions were driven entirely by an imagined reality
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: she treated as more real than anything else. It really
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: makes you think what stands out to you about that
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: specific moment, that choice where an educated mind asides a
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: magical book holds more truth than seventeen years of lived experience.