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The Phantom Lover: A 2004 Egyptian True Crime of Deception and Obsession · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Picture this El Sharook City, Egypt, back in two thousand
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: and four. The desert wind is blowing through all these
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: half finished bowldings. It's kind of desolate, you know, quiet,
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: dusty under this huge.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Sky, a place full of potential, but still very much
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: under construction exactly.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: And there's this lone construction worker, long shift. He's tired,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: just trudging home through the gravel.
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: Just wants to get home, probably right.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: Then he sees something odd, just this dark shape against
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: the sand. A travel suitcase.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Okay, abandoned luggage. Maybe not that unusual out there.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Well, that's what you might think, but this one it
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: looked wrong. It was charred, melted in places like it
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: had been set on fire.
• 0:41
  Speaker 2: Oh okay, that's different, definitely suspicious.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: And then there's the smell. It wasn't just burnt plastic.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: It was something else, something organic, acrid, sickening.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: Really, Oh, that's chilling. You'd get that cold dread feeling,
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: wouldn't you.
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Totally He hesitates, like should he leave it? But he's
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: also curious, morbidly curious. I guess what could possibly be inside?
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: I can imagine the not knowing.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: So his hands are shaking, but he fiddles with the latches.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: They click open and the lid creaks up. It wasn't close,
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: it wasn't trash, it was a body. Parsley burned, twisted
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: up inside.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: Oh my god.
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the site just froze him. The smell hits him
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: full force. He gasps, cries out for help, but it's
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: just this vast empty night, pure panic. He stumbles back,
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: grabs for his phone, just reeling from the horror.
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: Unimaginable, just stumbling upon.
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: Something like that, it really is, And this discovery, this
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: horrific find, it's the start of our deep dive today.
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: We're going into a true crime story from Giza two
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: thousand and four. It's this incredible tangle of deception, obsession,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and ultimately just brutal violence.
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: And what's really striking looking at the materials is how
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: meticulously this whole facade was built, how easily trust was exploited,
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: you know, especially back then. It turns into this awful
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: story where a phantom love affair becomes this yes, horrific reality.
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: Really makes you think about dangers, hiding and plain sight.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: And that context. Two thousand and four, Egypt. It's so
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: important we need to keep that in mind. Mobile phones
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: weren't everywhere like today.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: They were a luxury exactly. No constant internet, no easy
• 2:13
  Speaker 2: social media checks, no video calls to verify anything.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: So making remote connections was harder and verifying them even harder,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: which makes the deception we're about to unpack just audacious,
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: almost unbelievable when on so.
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: Long, it really does.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: So let's talk about Yasmin. She is at the heart
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: of this. Nineteen years old a student at the Faculty
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: of Arts, Cairo University, sounds vibrant, confident.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: The life yeah yeah, comes from pretty well off family,
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: had her own car, which was something back then.
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: And crucially she had that mobile phone, a symbol of
• 2:44
  Speaker 1: her independence her modern life.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: Her routine was just normal classes, friends, life seemed full
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: of promise, no hint of.
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: Trouble until that one day she leaves for university like
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: always and just vanishes and come home.
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: The hours must have dragged for her family, initial worry
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: turning into real panic.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: They kept calling her mobile, but it went straight to
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: voicemail every single time.
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: That's sinking feeling.
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: Then they call her friends, yeah, and the news is bad.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: Yasmin never even made it to class that day, didn't
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: show up at all.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: So immediately they know something's wrong. This isn't like her,
• 3:18
  Speaker 2: not at all.
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: They file a missing person's report straight away. Police get
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: all the details Yasmin's description, her car, that mobile number.
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: Standard procedure, but vital information. The police start digging.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: They talk to everyone, family, friends, classmates, asking the usual questions,
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: any enemies, any problems, any reason she might disappear, And
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: the answer nothing. Everyone liked her, no known conflicts, no
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: obvious reason for her to just vanish. It's a complete blank,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: just this chilling mystery, avoid.
• 3:49
  Speaker 2: No leads at all for the investigators. That's tough.
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: But then the investigation takes a sharp turn. Yasmin's mother,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: in the middle of all this anguish, shares something really important.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: Okay, what was it?
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: Yasmin had apparently been seeing someone for about two months,
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: a young man named Amer Okay, a boyfriend sort of.
• 4:07
  Speaker 1: But here's the weird part. According to her mom, this
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Emmer had supposedly broken his leg badly, ah, so he
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: couldn't visit exactly. He couldn't come see her, couldn't meet
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: the family. All their communication, the entire relationship was apparently
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: just over the.
• 4:23
  Speaker 2: Phone, just phone calls for two months. That seems a
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: little unusual, maybe.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Very But get this, this Amor guy had actually called
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: Yasmin's mother, proposed marriage, promised he'd bring his family over
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: to meet them as soon as his leg healed.
• 4:38
  Speaker 2: Wow. Okay, so he's talking marriage, calling the mother, but
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: has never physically met Yasmin or the family.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: Never a complete phantom.
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Like you said, that's more than unusual. That's a major
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: red flag shirley for the police.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I mean absolutely. They check with Yasmin's university friends and yeah,
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: they'd heard about Amer knew she was dating him. He
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: was supposedly a film student from Nazar.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: City, supposedly, but had any of them.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: Met him, Not a single one. Nobody had ever laid
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: eyes on this Amor.
• 5:05
  Speaker 2: Right, so the investigators must be thinking, Okay, if this
• 5:08
  Speaker 2: guy is her fiance or even just serious boyfriend, where
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: is he now?
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: Exactly? Why isn't he frantically calling her family helping with
• 5:16
  Speaker 1: the search. Why the silence during this huge crisis, It
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: just didn't add up.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: His absence was deafening.
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: So the police focus on this. They find out where
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: this film institute in Nostri City is and they track
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: down a student named Ahmor there.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: The real Amor Well and Emma and error.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: They bring him in, but then comes this massive twist.
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: Don't tell me this Ammor.
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: He's completely baffled, says he's never heard of Yasmin, never
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: met her, never spoken to her, definitely never been to
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: Kyrie University. He has no idea what they're talking about.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Wow. So the guy Yasmin's friends thought she was dating
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: wasn't him at all.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: Nope, the real Amor was innocent, confused, had a solid alibi.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Okay, so connect that back. The police now have a
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: huge problem. If the real Amor is innocent, who on
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: earth was Yasmin talking to on the phone all that time?
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Decisely? Who was this phantom lover? No physical presence, no
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: real identity they could pin down just a voice and.
• 6:12
  Speaker 2: Back in two thousand and four tracking phone calls, Especially
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: if it wasn't her mobile calling his, it was much harder.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: They were chasing a ghost.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: They had to detain the real Amor for a bit,
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: just while they figured this mess out, even though he'd
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: seemed totally uninvolved. For Yasmin's family, that name Ammer must
• 6:28
  Speaker 1: have just felt like a.
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: Cruel mirage, a dead end Seewhile.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: Remember that burnt suitcase found out in El Scharup.
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, the construction worker horrifying.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: The pieces started to connect in the worst possible way.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: Forensics gets to work. The body is female, roughly eighteen
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: to twenty two years.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Old, matching Yasmin's age group.
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: Cause of death, strangulation, and there were signs of assault,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: plus the flammable liquid poured over her, clearly trying to
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: destroy evidence hide her identity.
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: A calculated brutal act. Any idea in.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: The suitcase not at all, just anonymity that the police
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: start cross referencing missing persons reports near and far.
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: And Yasmin's report.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: The description her family gave it matched. Tragically, Oh no,
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: they had to bring the family in and they confirmed it.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: The clothes, what was left of them.
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: It was Yasmin devastating, just absolutely devastating for them. So
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: the missing person case is now officially a homicide, very
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: brutal one. And you have to ask the method strangulation, assault,
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: burning the body. It suggest something deeply personal, doesn't it?
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: Intense hatred, maybe just desperation to conceal everything.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: It definitely didn't look like a simple robbery, even though
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: her car and belongings were still gone.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: Right, the level of violence points to something more intimate,
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: more targeted. Even seasoned investigators were shocked by the brutality.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: So the police are stuck. The real Amar is cleared,
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: the phantom Amar is well, a phantom who killed Yasmin.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: They needed a newly urgently.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: They got one from Yasmin's closest friend, Sarah. She was
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: really troubled by the real Amar denying everything because she
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: knew Yasmin had been talking to someone called Ahmar.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: Okay, so Sarah believed Yasmin, yes.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: But Sarah also revealed something else. She had her own
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: long standing friend, a guy named Mohammed el Masri.
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: Mohammed el Masri a new name. Where was he from.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Sixth of October City? He was twenty two and Sarah
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: knew him well, yeah, she described him, and this becomes
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: really important as someone kind of struggling still in high
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: school at twenty two, kept failing. His family had hit
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: hard times financially, moved out to sixth of October, which
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: was less developed than Okay.
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: So maybe some background issues there, resentmentah insecurity.
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: It seems so because Mohammed used to visit Sarah at
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Kyri University, and that's where he first saw Yasmin Ah.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: He saw her on campus.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: And apparently became totally infatuated, obsessed even but he felt inadequate, inferior.
• 8:58
  Speaker 2: Because of his situation, the money, the school failures.
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: Exactly. He looked at Yasmin, comfortable family, her own car,
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: mobile phone, university student, and thought she'd never give him
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: the time of day. So that insecurity, Fester festered into
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: this incredibly elaborate, deceitful plan. What did he decide to do?
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: He decided to impersonate someone else entirely. Let me guess
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: his own cousin, the wealthy, successful one, the film institute
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: student from Naser City, the real emmer Bingo. He didn't
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: just tell a lie. He literally stole his cousin's identity
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: to create this whole new persona for himself that.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: Is incredibly audacious and manipulative.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: He played on everything, social expectations, the communication limits of
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: two thousand and four. He got Sarah, his friend, to
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: give him Yasmin's number, lied to Sarah saying Amorosa Yasmin
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: was smitten, wanted to propose.
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: Using the promise of marriage to get Yasmin interested calculated totally.
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: So Yasmin expects a call from our Mamad calls but
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: as a Morgan and immediately launches the broken leg story.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Says he's stuck in his apartment in six of October city.
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Wait, he used his own location.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, and here's the clever, deceitful part. He gave Yasmin
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: his own home phone number in six of October. Said
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: it was Amber's place and poor Ahmer didn't have a
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: mobile phone unlike.
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: Yasmin, so she's calling his house thinking it's Ambers, and
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Amber conveniently doesn't have a mobile to receive calls elsewhere
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: or be tracked easily.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: Exactly. It explains why all contact was through this one
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: landline controlled entirely by Mohammed.
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: For two whole months. He kept this up, posing his
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: amor on.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: The phone two months, charming her, building this whole fake relationship,
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: even talking to her mother about marriage plans, all while
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: pretending his leg was slowly healing.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: The dedication to the lie is staggering. He's essentially living
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: a double life purely through phone calls, exploiting that tech
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: gap perfectly.
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: But eventually Yasmin started getting impatient. Right this broken leg
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: was taking forever to heal. She wanted to meet amer Us.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Understandably, so the pressure's building on Mohammed right, so.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: He shifts gears. He switches back to being Mohammed Sarah's friend,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: and he acts like a helpful go between.
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: Oh clever, playing both sides.
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: He tells Yasmin, Hey, good news. Armer's finally ready to meet,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: but his leg's still bad. He can't travel easily. You'll
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: have to come out to six of.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: October, and Yasmin, trusting Sarah's friend Mohammed and eager to
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: finally meet Ahmer, she agrees.
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: She agrees, kind hearted, trusting, she drives out to six
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: the October. The meeting point is October University. Mohammed meets
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: her there, still playing the helpful friend.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: The trap is closing.
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: He then spends another yarn Amer's just up in my
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: apartment nearby. He says he can't really manage the stairs alone.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Could you maybe come up and help me bring him
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: down to.
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: Your car, Using her kindness against her leading her right
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: to the apartment.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: She follows him into the building, maybe feels a little
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: hesitant at the apartment door itself a flicker.
• 11:51
  Speaker 2: Of doubt, but he smooths it over.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he coaxes her. Armer's just in the bedroom. He
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: really needs help. She steps inside, The door clicks shut
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: behind her, mohammed locked. Oh god, and then he tells
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: her drops the elect there is no Amra.
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: It was me.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: I'm the one you've been talking to. I'm the one
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: who loves you.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: I want you to be mine, just shattering her reality
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: in an instant. The betrayal, the fear must have been overwhelming.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: She was terrified, tried desperately to leave, to get away
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: from him in the suffocating lie he'd built.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: But he'd planned for this, hadn't he. Yeah, he knew
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: she might reject.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Him, it seems, so he attacked her, dragged her into
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: the bedroom, tied her up, assaulted her horrific. She fought back,
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: cried out, but he overpowered her, and then he strangled her,
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: silenced her forever.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: All because she wouldn't accept his twisted fantasy.
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: What he did next was just cold, methodical. He put
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: her body in that travel suitcase, poured gasoline.
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: Over it, the same suitcase, the worker.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: The same one. He loaded it into the trunk of
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: her car, drove out to that desolate spot in el
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: cheruk dumped it and set it on.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: Fire, trying to erase every trace of her at his crime.
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: When he took her car back to sixth of October,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: took the plates off, repainted it, used money he stole
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: from her bag, smashed her phone, got rid of her things.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: He thought he'd gotten away.
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: Clean, believed he'd committed the perfect crime, but he made mistakes.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: The car, the car was key. The investigations starting from
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: that burnt suitcase moved fast. They identified Mohammed el Maastri
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: and they caught him driving Yasmin's car, just crudely repainted.
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: Red handed.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: Essentially confronted with it all, he confessed the whole, elaborate impersonation,
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: the manipulation, the assault, the murder, the disposal, everything, and.
• 13:34
  Speaker 2: The real emissary.
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: His cousin reportedly just stunned, couldn't believe his own relative
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: was capable of such profound deception and violence. Mohammed al
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: Mazari was sentenced to death. So wrapping this up, this
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: deep dive, it's more than just a crime story. It's
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: really a chilling look at manipulation, especially for that time
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: two thousand and four. No deep fakes, no sophisticated tech
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: needed just cunning and lies.
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, he built a believable phantom identity from scratch, which
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: using the era's limitations to his advantage. It really highlights
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: the psychological depth, the insecurity, driving the obsession, the calculated
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: risk of that false persona.
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: It makes you ask, doesn't it, How well do we
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: ever know someone, especially when the connection is purely remote.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: That's the crucial question that leaves us with how do
• 14:18
  Speaker 2: you spot authenticity when interaction can be so easily faked.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: It forces you to think about trust, about vulnerability, especially
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: when charm is involved but physical presence is missing.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: So as you think about Yasmin's story, maybe reflect on that.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: In our world today, even with more ways to connect,
• 14:36
  Speaker 1: how much do we really see what could be hidden
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: behind a friendly message, a charming voice on the phone,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: when you can't look someone in the eye. It's definitely
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: something to consider.