Latest / Crime Night / The Mansoura "Sleeping Vendetta": How a Seven-Year-Old Secret Led to a Neighbor's Brutal Murder

Transcript

The Mansoura "Sleeping Vendetta": How a Seven-Year-Old Secret Led to a Neighbor's Brutal Murder · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the deep dive. We peel back the layers
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: of the story, getting right to the heart of the matter.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Today we're digging into a case out of Mansura, Egypt.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: It went cold for seven years, a really long time,
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: and it was all driven by something investigators eventually termed
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: a sleeping vendetta. It's quite a chilling concept.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: It really is a vendetta that lies dormant waiting.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: We're going to trace how this hitting violence, something that
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: happened years before, could just explode into such a brutal,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: calculated murder.
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: It's a tragic story and it tells you a lot
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: about how Trauma confessed her.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's set the scene. It's summer twenty fifteen Mansura.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Imagine that intense Egyptian heat, heavy air pressing down on
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: this ordinary residential building. But then something breaks the quiet.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: A smell, an absolutely unbearable stench that neighbors start reporting
• 0:50
  Speaker 1: it's coming from a third floor apartment. A woman named
• 0:53
  Speaker 1: Asthma lived there.
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: Right, So when the police arrive and gain entry, the
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: first thing they note is, well, it's strange. The door
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: is completely intact.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: No fourth entry, none.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: At all, no broken lock, no splintered wood. So immediately
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: you're thinking, this probably wasn't a random break in, okay,
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: But then they step inside and the smell hits them
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: full force, and the hallway it's disturbed, clear signs of
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: a struggle, maybe even some initial subtle signs of theft.
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: It just doesn't match the undisturbed door.
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: And then they find her Asthma. She was forty one, unmarried,
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: living alone. Apparently she relied on her late father's pension.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: They found her body on the main bedroom bed, and
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: the scene was just horrific.
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: Deeply disturbing. Make it surrounded by blood, multiple stab wounds,
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: and a really severe head injury.
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: So the very first thought, looking at that surface level,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: must have been robbery, right, a robbery that went terribly wrong.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: That's the initial impression, yes, yeah, But almost immediately things
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: start to conflict with that theory. People who knew Asthma
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: described her as well, very quiet, kept to herself, exactly, respectful, isolated.
• 1:58
  Speaker 2: Her life just didn't present any obviously, no known enemies,
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: no disputes anyone could point to. It made the sheer
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: brutality seem misplaced, somehow deep in the mystery.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Right away, Okay, let's unpack this initial phase then, because
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: the crime scene itself was baffling, wasn't it, especially the cleanup.
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: Oh?
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, that's where the robbery theory really starts to unravel.
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Despite the obvious violence of the attack, the perpetrator took
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: the time to clean up a significant amount of blood,
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: particularly in the living room area.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: It was methodical, highly organized. Yeah, which is completely counterintuitive
• 2:32
  Speaker 2: if this was a panic.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Thief forra exactly, why stick around and meticulously clean if
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: you're just trying to grab valuables and run. It suggests
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: someone who felt comfortable there.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Comfortable and crucially had time, uninterrupted time. Maybe someone familiar
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: with the place who knew they wouldn't be disturbed.
• 2:48
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that feels planned personal in.
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: The physical evidence or lack thereof backs that up. The
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: crime lab's initial report confirmed the struggle likely started near
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the entrance in the hallway or living area, but Asthma's
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: body was found in the bedroom, so she was moved
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: after the initial attack. Again, that takes time.
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: And effort and suggests control over the.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: Scene, complete control. And then there's the lack of fingerprints,
• 3:13
  Speaker 2: no foreign prints found anywhere, and the murder weapons, both
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: the knife and whatever caused the head trauma were gone,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: so a.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Thorough cleanup, moving the body, removing weapons. This feels less
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: like panic and more like covering.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: Tracks, precisely, like a calculated effort to mask something intensely personal.
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: And then the medical examiners report lands and it just
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: blows the simple robbery idea completely out of the water.
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: It really does. The details are stark Asthma had four
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: stab wounds, yes, chest and abdomen. The actual cause of
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: death wasn't the stabbing, It was blunt forced trauma to
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: the skull. A heavy hard object was used, a brutal
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: final blow. And then came the details that shifted everything.
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: Evidence of binding contusions on her wrists and legs, she's
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: tied up appear so and the most disturbing finding she
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: was sexually assaulted. But crucially, the assault happened post mortem,
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: after she was already dead.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Post mortem. Okay, that changes the entire narrative binding post
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: mortem assault. This isn't about money anymore, is it not?
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Primarily No, It points towards something much darker, ritualistic, perhaps
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: definitely personal degradation.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: So why stage it like a robbery? Her mobile phone
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: was missing some gold jewelry about six thousand Egyptian pounds.
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: Why take those if the real motive was this violation.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: That's the question that stumped investigators. It's this bizarre mix.
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: You have the calculated clean up, the removal of evidence
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: like a professional, but then you have this extreme intimate
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: violence and post mortemac that speaks to intense rage or
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: very specific twisted motive, the planning versus the passion. It's
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: a total contradiction, completely, and with no weapon, no prints,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: no witnesses, and this confusing mix of motives, the investigation
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: just hit a wall after five days of intense work,
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: they hit nothing concrete. So the case stalls Saul's heart.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: It's formally filed against person or person's unknown, and just
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: like that, the murder of Asthma goes.
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: Cold for seven years, the file gathers dust, the memory
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: perhaps fades for the public, but the secret, the secret
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: doesn't die.
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: Seven years is an incredibly long time to carry something
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: like that. Imagine the psychological weight the silence, especially living
• 5:24
  Speaker 2: in that same area.
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: That pressure must build inevitably.
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and in twenty twenty two, that silence finally cracks,
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: not through forensics or a new lead, but a phone call.
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: An anonymous call, yes, from someone identifying themselves only as
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: a good Samaritan.
• 5:39
  Speaker 1: Okay, what did they say?
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: This caller claimed they'd overheard something deeply disturbing, a young
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: man distraught, confiding in a relative, confiding about what, Admitting
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: he'd been involved in a murder seven years earlier. He
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: mentioned an assault as part of it, and he said
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: he was haunted constantly seeing the victim's face.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: Wow. And the details he mentioned they.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: Matched the specifics of Asthma's case perfectly, the time frame,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: the nature of the crime, including the assault. It was
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: too close to be a.
• 6:08
  Speaker 1: Coincidence, so the police followed this lead immediately.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: The tip points them towards a young man named Kareem.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: He's twenty seven by now, working in a local cafe.
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: And Kareem leads them where to his.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: Close relative and confidant, Ahmed, also twenty seven, also working
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: at the same cafe. But here's the piece that clicks
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: everything into place. What's that Ahmed's address? He lived with
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: his family on the fifth floor of Asthma's building.
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Wait, the fifth floor, same building, the.
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: Very same building. Yeah, two floors directly above where Asthma.
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Was murdered Okay, that changes everything. That's the access, that's
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: the familiarity, that's how they could operate without suspicion.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: It provides the perfect logistical explanation, easy entry, familiarity with
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: the layout, a place to retreat, to clean up immediately afterwards,
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: and the ability to just melt back into the building's
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: daily life.
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: The killer wasn't a stranger. He was a neighbor living
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: right there for seven years exactly. So Kareem and Ahmed
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: are arrested and they confess.
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: Immediately, both of them. Yeah, and the motive they reveal
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: isn't robbery despite the few items taken. It is as
• 7:11
  Speaker 2: the investigator suspected, it might be rooted in the past.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: They call it a sleeping vendetta.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: A sleeping vendetta. To understand that, we have to go
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: back much further, don't we, way before twenty fifteen.
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: We do. We need to rewind eighteen years from that confession,
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: back to two thousand and four.
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: What happened in two thousand and four, Well, back.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: Then, Ahmed was just a boy nine years old and
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: his family was close with Asthma's family, particularly her father.
• 7:38
  Speaker 2: Asthma's father, Yes, Professor Ahmed Radwan He was apparently a
• 7:41
  Speaker 2: highly respected Arabic teacher in the community. He even gave
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: lessons to young Ahmed and his sister, sometimes for free.
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: There were neighbors living in the same building. There was
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: trust there.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: Okay, so a respected teacher close families. Where does the
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: vendetta come in.
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: It stems from a single traumatic incident that young Ahmed
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: witnessed during In one of these lessons, Professor Rodwan went
• 8:02
  Speaker 2: into the kitchen with Ahmed's mother. Ahmed, just nine years old,
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: heard a sound, a muffled scream from the kitchen. He
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: went to the door. Oh no, and he saw Professor
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: Rodwan attempting to sexually assault his mother. She was fighting
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: him off.
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: Terrified he saw that at nine years old.
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: He saw it. His mother managed to fight Radwan off
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: and the professor fled the apartment immediately, but the damage
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: was done. The potential for scandal was huge.
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: So what happened then? Did they report it?
• 8:28
  Speaker 2: No? That's the critical part. Ahmed's mother, desperate to avoid
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: shame and protect the family's reputation, especially from her husband,
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: made her nine year old son promise. Promise what absolute silence?
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: He was forbidden from telling anyone, especially his father. He
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: had to bury what he saw.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: That's an impossible burden for a child to witness that
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: violence and then be forced into silence.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: An unbearable weight. And Ahmed carried it, that image, that secret,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: It festered inside him for years, eleven years in fact.
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: So by twenty fourteen, he's twenty years old. What happens
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: to that buried trauma?
• 9:04
  Speaker 2: It hadn't disappeared, It had warped into this intense fixation.
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: He became obsessed with getting revenge against Professor redwant for
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: what he did to his mother.
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: It planned to confront him, it.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: Seems that was the intention. But before Ahmed could act,
• 9:16
  Speaker 2: Professor redwand fell ill and died.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: So the target of his revenge was gone.
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: Gone, and for a brief moment, Ahmed apparently felt maybe
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: a sense of closure, like fate had intervened. He considered
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: the matter settled.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't settled, was it. The trauma was still
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: there exactly.
• 9:33
  Speaker 2: That's the insidious nature of this kind of trauma. Doesn't
• 9:36
  Speaker 2: just vanish because the original source is gone. Their perceived debt,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: the stain on his mother's honor, the violation he witnessed, it.
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: Was too deep, so if he couldn't get revenge on
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: the father, the.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: Vengeance that burning need for retribution, it redirected itself. It
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: latched on the closest available person connected to the professor,
• 9:55
  Speaker 2: his daughter, Asthma.
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: But she was completely innocent in.
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: All this, completely but in Ahmed's distorted view, shaped by
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: years of silent trauma, she had to pay the price
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: for her father's crime, a crime she likely knew nothing about.
• 10:08
  Speaker 1: It's horrific logic. So he decides to target Asthma. But
• 10:12
  Speaker 1: he needs help.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: Yes, Ahmed felt he wasn't physically strong enough to overpower
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: Asthma on his own. Remember he was twenty, she was
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: forty one, So he recruited help.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: Kareem, his relative from the cafe.
• 10:23
  Speaker 2: Right. He explained the whole backstory to Kareem, the assault
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: in two thousand and four, the years of silence, the
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: need for revenge.
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And Kareem agreed. What was his motivation?
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: This is a key difference. Karam wasn't driven by the
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: same vengeful fire as Ahmed. His motivation seems truly transactional profit.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: So what was the deal?
• 10:41
  Speaker 2: Ahmed needed help subduing and silencing Ozma. The plan involved
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: murder and assault in return for his help, Kareem would
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: get this spoils any cash, the gold, whatever they could find.
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: So one driven by a twisted sense of justice.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: The other by greed a lethal combination and they began
• 10:59
  Speaker 2: to plan. This wasn't spontaneous then, not at all, remember
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: the organized clean up. That planning started much earlier. They
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: staked out Osma's movements for ten days, learning her.
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: Routine, and then they made their move.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Yes, they waited for her to return home, ambushed her
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: right at her apartment door and forced her inside.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: What happened then, did he just attack her?
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: No? According to the confession, Ahmed first confronted her. He
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: actually told her why this was happening, that this was
• 11:27
  Speaker 2: payback for what her father did years ago.
• 11:28
  Speaker 1: He told her that confronted her with this past she
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: probably didn't even know.
• 11:32
  Speaker 2: Apparently so, but Ozma fought back. She struggled, tried to
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: scream for help, and that's when Ahmed panic.
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: The plan changed.
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: The sequence changed. The initial intent might have been assault first,
• 11:44
  Speaker 2: then murder to insure silence, but her resistance triggered something
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: Ahmed's panic, maybe the rage boiling over, He shifted immediately
• 11:54
  Speaker 2: to murder. Ah He stabbed her multiple times. Then in
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: the struggle, a wooden table apparently broke.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: He grabbed a piece of it, the blunt object, the.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Blunt object, and used it to deliver that fatal blow
• 12:07
  Speaker 2: to her head, the cause of death.
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: And after she was dead.
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: After the violence, after the silencing, Ahmed moved her body
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: to the bedroom, and it was then after she was
• 12:18
  Speaker 2: dead that he committed the post mortem sexual.
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: Assault, fulfilling that that debt in his mind.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: That seems to be how he rationalized it, a final
• 12:26
  Speaker 2: act of retribution against the father inflicted upon the daughter,
• 12:29
  Speaker 2: settling the score for the shame he carried since he
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: was nine.
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: While all this horror is unfolding with Ahmed, what's Kareem doing.
• 12:35
  Speaker 2: Kareem is sticking to his part of the bargain. He's pragmatic.
• 12:38
  Speaker 2: He searches the apartment, finds the six thousand pounds, the gold,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: Osma's mobile phone, just taking.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: The payment, and then the cleanup.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Then the meticulous cleanup we discussed earlier. They dealt with
• 12:47
  Speaker 2: the blood in the hallway and living area, bagged the weapons,
• 12:50
  Speaker 2: the knife, the broken table piece, and escaped easily up
• 12:54
  Speaker 2: two flights of stairs to Ahmed's family apartment on the
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: fifth floor. They cleaned themselves up there, disposed of the evidence,
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: bagged far away from the building later on, and then silence.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: A chillingly effective plan executed and covered up for seven years.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Physically, yes, but psychologically that silence was deafening. Amed might
• 13:14
  Speaker 2: have felt some initial twisted relief, thinking he'd achieved.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: Justice, but it didn't last, not at all.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: Both men confessed to living in a constant state of
• 13:22
  Speaker 2: torment for those seven years. Haunted Asthma's face, the sounds,
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: the memory, he became unbearable.
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: Which ultimately led to Koreean breaking down exactly.
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: Kareem's confession to his relative, overheard by the Good Samaritan,
• 13:37
  Speaker 2: was the direct result of that seven year psychological nightmare.
• 13:40
  Speaker 2: He couldn't carry it anymore.
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: And importantly, the later police investigation actually corroborated Ahmed's story
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: about the two thousand and four incident, didn't it. They
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: found evidence supporting his account of witnessing the attempted assault
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: on his mother, Yes.
• 13:53
  Speaker 2: Which anchors the Modi firmly in that childhood trauma and
• 13:56
  Speaker 2: the subsequent forced silence. It wasn't a fabrication to justify
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: the murder. It was the real poisonous root of it all.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: So Ahmed and Kareem were arrested, they confessed, they were
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: brought to trial. The case is technically closed, although the
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: final judicial outcome wasn't clear at the time of reporting.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: But the story itself leaves us with so much the
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: devastating ripple effect of trauma, especially on a child.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: Asthma paid the ultimate price, completely innocent yet sacrificed for
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: a crime committed by her father nearly two decades earlier,
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: a crime likely forgotten by almost everyone except the boy
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: who witnessed it.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: It really makes you think about the power of secrets,
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: doesn't it, and the damage caused when a child sees
• 14:35
  Speaker 2: something terrible and is told you must never speak of this.
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: That silence didn't protect anyone. It just incubated violence.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: Never underestimate what a nine year old sees and what
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: happens when they're forced to carry it alone. Absolutely so
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: a final thought for you to consider. We talk about
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: the Sleeping Vendetta, but looking at the cost Osma's life,
• 14:55
  Speaker 1: the seven years of torment for Ahmed and Kareem that
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: led to their own downfall, did the vendetta truly find
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: its conclusion? Or did it just end up consuming the
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: very people who set it in motion, long before the
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: law ever caught up