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The Chilling Cairo Confession: How a Chief Used a False Rumor to Crack the Sewer Dismemberment Case · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's dive in picture this Cairo, two thousand and four.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: We're in the Old Egypt area and it's dark, like
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: four point zero am dark. The streets are completely still.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Then out of nowhere a figure appears, a man. He's
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: dressed strangely, face totally covered, and he's dragging this this
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: heavy sack. You can just tell he's incredibly nervous, jumping.
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and that jumpiness that's key, Yeah, because someone does
• 0:27
  Speaker 2: see him. A resident happens to be awake out on
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: his balcony. He sees this shadowy figure acting suspicious down below.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: And he calls out right, just shouts into the silence.
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and the reaction is immediate, pure panic. The masked
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: man doesn't even hesitate, just throws the sack, throws the
• 0:42
  Speaker 2: sack straight into a sewer grat, which by sheer coincidence,
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: happens to be open right there, and then he's gone,
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: vanishes into the alleys like a ghost.
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: Wow. So fast forward a few hours, right.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: About seven am. A sanitation worker is doing his rounds
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: finds the sewer grade block by this really heavy sack.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: He probably thinks, you know, maybe it's something valuable. Someone
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: ditched wasn't no. He pulls it out, opens it up,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: and that's when the screaming starts. It's the lower half
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: of a human body.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Just brutal. And this case it almost got shelved in't
• 1:10
  Speaker 1: it filed away as against an unknown ooligibie? Our jaw
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: today is to really unpack how the investigation turned, how
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: they connected dots nobody thought were related. So the initial
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: scene forensics police, what did they actually have to work with?
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: It sounds like almost nothing pretty much.
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: They had half a victim. They could tell she was
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: an elderly woman, and interestingly, her appearance gave some clues
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: about her life. How so well, fragments of her clothing
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: suggested poverty, but it was her feet actually they were
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: heavily cracked, calloused, worn down, signs of someone who spent
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: a lot of time on their feet working hard. Maybe
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: a street vendor or someone like that.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: Okay, so a profile starts to emerge, but no identity.
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: What did the actual forensic reports say?
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: It confirmed some basics. Victim in her sixties, time of
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: death two days before the body part was found. Cause
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: of death with strangulation, probably with a rope or maybe
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: a piece of cloth. But Here's the bit that really
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: stood out, the detail that hinted at the killer's psychology.
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: The dismemberment didn't happen right after the murder.
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: Ooh, when did it happen?
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: The report estimated it happened a full day, maybe even
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: two days after she was killed.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Wait, seriously, one or two days later.
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: Yes, think about what that implies. It suggests the killer
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: wasn't panicked, wasn't rushing to dispose of the body immediately.
• 2:29
  Speaker 2: They were calm, chillingly calm, living with the body potentially, yes,
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: or at least having access to it without fear of discovery.
• 2:39
  Speaker 2: They waited, maybe, went about their daily routine, and then,
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: with complete leisure, came back to to do the dismemberment.
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: That takes a certain kind of coldness.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: So forensics gives them that, But still no.
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Leads on the chiller, absolutely zero. No fingerprints on the sack,
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: none on the body part itself. The witness on the
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: balcony saw the dumping, but couldn't describe the man at all.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: No face too dark, and.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: This being two thousand and four, no CCTV.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: Exactly, no cameras to track where he came from or
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: where he went. A complete plank. The police were desperate
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: to find the upper affat Torso, hoping for an ID.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: They searched everywhere, checked missing persons.
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: For four straight days. They searched the area, checked every
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: missing person report. Nothing matched. No elderly woman reported missing
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: for that long, roughly a week or more. It was
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: like she didn't exist.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: The killer really understood how crucial anonymity was.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: Precisely without identification proving the full crime, connecting it all,
• 3:35
  Speaker 2: it's incredibly difficult. The killer seemed to be banking on that,
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: betting that the police would hit this exact wall and
• 3:41
  Speaker 2: have to give up, declare it unsolvable.
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: So the physical evidence trail is cold. What happens next?
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: How do they pivot?
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: Well, this is where the chief of police starts thinking differently.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: He can't work this scene anymore, so he starts watching
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: the reaction to the crime. People were coming into the station,
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: locals asking about this gruesome discovery.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: That seems normal. People are curious it is.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: But one man's interest seemed off a bit too intense.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: He kept asking very frequently, almost pressing, about whether they
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: had found the other half, if there are any leads.
• 4:12
  Speaker 2: His questions felt at the report said, exaggerated.
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: Interesting. Who was this guy?
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: His name was abd el Nasser Ahmed Ismael, thirty eight
• 4:21
  Speaker 2: years old. In his background, well, it immediately raised red flags.
• 4:27
  Speaker 2: He was listed as a world fuel or a registered
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: danger meaning meaning he had a serious record. Eleven prior convictions,
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: things like aggravated robbery and one particularly brutal attempted murder.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: What happened there?
• 4:41
  Speaker 2: He'd attacked an elderly woman, tried to steal her gold jewelry,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: and then the process actually cut off her arm.
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: My god, So a history of extreme violence, specifically against
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: elderly women.
• 4:51
  Speaker 2: Exactly. But here's the really strange part, the institutional twist.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Why was he hanging around the police station asking questions?
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Why?
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: He had just finished a fifteen year prison sentence. He
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: was out, but under mandatory post release supervision, and that
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: supervision required him to check in at the police station
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: every single day and stay there overnight.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Wait, he had to sleep at the police station every night,
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the same station investigating the murder.
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: That's right. He was literally under their roof while they
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: were hunting for the killer.
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: That's unbelievable. So the chief connects this guy's weirdly intense interest.
• 5:24
  Speaker 1: With his violent past.
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: And his constant presence, the chief gets this gut feeling
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: it's thin, maybe, but it's something. He decides to check
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: abdel Nasser's attendance log for the supervision.
• 5:36
  Speaker 1: Just to see if he was actually there every night
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: like he was supposed to be.
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: Precisely, and the log shows perfect compliance, day after day,
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: night after night. He checked in, stayed over consistent except
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: for one single day one absence. He'd called in, claimed
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: he had a health issue, a stomach problem, he said,
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: couldn't make it.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: Let me guess the date.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: You got it. The exact day the same annotation worker
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: found the lower half of the body in that sewer.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Wow, that's not just thin anymore. That's a direct link
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: to the time the body was disposed of.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: It's the first real crack in the case, a behavioral
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: slip up, a suspicious absence on the crucial day covered
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: by a flimsy excuse from a man with a relevant
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: violent history who's showing too much interest.
• 6:20
  Speaker 1: Okay, so the chief suspects him, but he knows this
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: guy is dangerous. He can't just confront him without more proof, right,
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: especially with that record.
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: Absolutely not confronting him prematurely, could spook him, make him
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: clam up or worse. The chief needed something concrete or confession,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: so he opts for a psychological play, a calculated risk.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: What does he do?
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: He decides to use the killer's own presumed strategy against him.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: He instructs his officers to start a rumor within the station.
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: Let us spread make sure abdel Nasser hears it.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: What was the rumor?
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: That the investigation was basically dead, that they had no leads,
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: no hope of finding the other half of the body,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: and the case was about to be officially closed filed
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: e ushe against an unknown. Essentially, you got away with it.
• 7:05
  Speaker 1: A trap designed to make the suspect feel safe.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly, And they watched his reaction. Abiel Nassar, still showing
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: up for his nightly supervision, heard the rumor. And how
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: did he react?
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Oh?
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: He was seen celebrating, laughing, loudly, joking around with the officers,
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: acting incredibly relieved and triumphant, like a huge weight was lifted.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: He thought he'd won.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: He fell right into it. While he's celebrating, what's the
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: chief doing?
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: While the suspect lets his guard down, The chief starts
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: digging quietly into his personal life. He confirms abdel Nasser
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: is an only son and he lives with his mother.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: How old was the mother She was sixty one years.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: Old, sixty one, the same age range as.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: The victim precisely. And then they find out what the
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: mother did for a living. She was a street vendor,
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: sold radishes and watercress under a local bridge. Lived in
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: a simple place in the Estallantar area.
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: That matches the victim profile perfectly. The cracked feet, the
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: signs of hard labor, it all.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Starts clicking into place. The police then discreetly talked to
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: neighbors near where abdel Nasser and his mother lived.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: And what do the neighbors say.
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: They say, the mother hasn't been seen for over a week.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: She disappeared right after having some kind of argument with
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: her son, abdel Nasser, a minor spat apparently.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: And nobody reported her missing.
• 8:17
  Speaker 2: That was the crucial piece. The neighbors confirmed they lived alone,
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: just the two of them, and they had no other
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: known relatives, no family to even notice she was gone
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: or raise the alarm. That's why no missing person report
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: was ever filed.
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: So the victim is a sixty one year old street
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: vendor missing for over a week after arguing with her son,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: who has a history of violence against elderly women, who
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: missed his police check in on the day her body
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: part was found, and who celebrated when he heard the
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: case was being dropped.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: It all lined up. They had their victim, their suspect,
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: the motive was likely emerging, but they still needed the
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: final proof, the confession, and the location of the rest
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: of the body.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: So how does the chief get that he can't rely
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: on another rumor?
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: No, this time it's direct confrontation, but wrapped in that
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: same psychological manipulation. Two days after the rumor started circulating,
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: the chief comes back to the station late round three
• 9:12
  Speaker 2: zero am. Abdel Nasser is there doing his overnight's day.
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, the stage is set.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: The chief acts like he's in a great mood, maybe
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: celebrating solving some other case. He pulls abdel Nasser aside,
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: shows him some trust, gives him money, tells him to
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: go out and buy a big meal for them to share.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: Kabab Kofta even asks for.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: Cigarettes, making him feel like an ally a confidant totally.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: Abdel Nasser is thrilled. He feels like he's really fooled
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: the police, gain the chiefs trust. He goes, gets the food,
• 9:39
  Speaker 2: comes back, and they sit down together in the chief's
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: office to eat.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Just the two of them, just the two of them.
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: Abdel Nasser is relaxed, happy, probably joking about how the
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: chief must have cracked a huge case to be celebrating
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: like this at three am. And then the chief lets
• 9:56
  Speaker 2: him get comfortable and he pauses, looks right at him
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: and drops the bombshell. He says something like, you know,
• 10:05
  Speaker 2: the biggest reward, the thing that would really make the
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: celebration complete, Yeah, is if you told me where you
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: hit the other half of your mother's body.
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's just like that, just like that direct.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Calm, utterly devastating.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: What did abd el Nesser do?
• 10:18
  Speaker 2: He physically choked on his food, couldn't speak, just froze.
• 10:22
  Speaker 2: The realization hits him like a train. They knew the
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: whole act, the whole manipulation, was over. He knew he
• 10:27
  Speaker 2: was caught, and he confessed immediately. Once that psychological shield
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: was shattered, it all came pouring out. The motive. It
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: was money.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: Money his mother had, Yeah.
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: Money she had apparently saved up over the fifteen years
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: he was in prison. He demanded it because he wanted
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: to marry some woman, someone his mother disapproved of. Apparently
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: she had a bad reputation. It wasn't marriage in general,
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: she objected to just this specific woman.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: She refused to give him the money for that.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: Marriage right, they argued. It escalated, and in his rage
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: and entitlement, he strangled.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Her and the timeline the body under the bed.
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: He confirmed it killed her, then left her body hidden,
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: probably under the bed, like you said, went to the
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: police station for his mandatory overnight supervision like nothing happened,
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: came back the next.
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: Day, and that's when he dismembered her.
• 11:16
  Speaker 2: Yes, used a knife, he said. He took the first half,
• 11:19
  Speaker 2: the upper torso with the head and arms, the identifiable part,
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: and drove it far away, dumping it near some factory's
• 11:25
  Speaker 2: waste disposal area to make it harder to find. And
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: the second half, that was a sack, the lower torso.
• 11:30
  Speaker 2: He carried it to the Old Egypt neighborhood the following day,
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: the day he claimed to have the stomach issue, figuring
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: he could lose it in the anonymity of that dense area,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: dumping it in the sewer.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Believing each half would be found separately or maybe not
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: at all, and never connected back to him or his
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: missing mother.
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: That was clearly the plan. His confession was recorded, handed
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: over to the prosecution, he led them to the upper torso,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: confirming his story and the outcome, he was prosecuted for
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: premeditated murder and sentenced to death.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: It really comes back to that clever investigative turn, doesn't it,
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: moving away from the non existent physical evidence and focusing
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: entirely on the suspect's behavior.
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, they couldn't find a fingerprint, but they found the
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: flaw in his alibi, the exaggerated interest, and crucially, that
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: reaction to the rumor. The hookuon rumor wasn't just a trick.
• 12:20
  Speaker 2: It was the key that unlocked his psychology.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: Making him feel secure enough to celebrate his perceived victory.
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: And that celebration, that visible sign of relief and triumph,
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: was his undoing. It confirmed the chief's suspicion and set
• 12:34
  Speaker 2: up the final confrontation.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: You know. The final detail that's truly chilling is his
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: rationale when they asked him later, how could you do
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: this dismember your own mother who waited fifteen years for you.
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: His answer, it tells you everything about his mindset. He said, basically,
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: when she was dead, she wasn't his mother anymore. She was,
• 12:52
  Speaker 2: in his words, just a corpse, an obstacle, something you
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: need to get rid.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: Of, just an object. The speed of that switch from
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: son to utterly remorseless killer discarding an inconvenience, it's almost
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: impossible to comprehend.
• 13:05
  Speaker 2: He really is. It shows how quickly someone can dehumanize,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: even the person closest to them once they cross that line,
• 13:10
  Speaker 2: A truly stark reminder of the darkness that investigation uncovered,
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: not through forensics, but through understanding behavior.