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The Golden Boy’s Silicone Tomb · Crime Night

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, I want you to close your eyes for a second.
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Let's go to Hergatta Egypt Ah, the Red Sea exactly.
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: And if you've ever been, you know the heat it
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: just hits you differently there. It's so heavy.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: It's the humidity. It's thick, almost something you can touch, right.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: Thick with salt, and you know, exhaust fumes. But I
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: want you to step out of the sun for a
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: moment and into a hallway.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: A specific residential building.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: A specific building. Yeah, yeah, not on the main tourist strip,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: but far enough away that the glamour starts to fade
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: a bit.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: It's the kind of place that's normally just quiet, you know,
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: tile floors, the echo of neighbors cooking. But in this
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: hallway the air changes.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: He gets heavy. Yeah, and there's a smell here that
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: just doesn't belong. The building guard, the door man, he's
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: been noticing it for days.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: And you know the difference, right, he knows garbage, he
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: knows suic.
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, this isn't that. This is it's that primal
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: biological alarm bell that goes off in your brain when
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: you detect something that used to be alive.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: It's a scent that triggers h a very specific fear response.
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: You know it before you can even.
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: Name it exactly. And in this case, that smell was
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: fighting a war against physics to even get out.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: So the police finally show up.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: They show up, They follow the doorman's nose to this
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: one apartment door. It's supposed to be a storage unit,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: just a warehouse for some gym equipment.
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: But when they get there, they see something's.
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: Wrong, bizarrely wrong. The door isn't just locked, it's it's fortified.
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: But not with like steel bars or extra lack.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: No, it was sealed with silicone bathroom cock industrial quantities
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: of it. I mean massive thick layers of white silicone
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: plastering the top, the bottom, every single crack in the doorframe. Wow,
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: it was this desperate, almost amateur attempt to make that
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: apartment hermetically sealed, keep something in.
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: So the police they have to start peeling the stuff away.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: Right, it's rubbery, it's thick. They finally force the door open,
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: and that smell, ah, it just hits them like a
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: physical blow.
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: It's overwhelming, and there's not done yet.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Not even close. They move inside, deeper into the apartment,
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: covering their faces and they get to the bathroom door, ah,
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: and guess what, Oh, no, more silicone, more silicone, another
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: aggressive airtight seal. So they reached the second barrier. They
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: kick open the door and there it is.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: What are they find?
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: Center stage in this tiled bathroom, a metal barrel is
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: sitting there, a barrel next to it which is so strange,
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: a single old shoe.
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: And inside that barrel, encased in a solid block of concrete,
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: was the answer to a mystery that had been haunting
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: a family for two agonizing years.
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: Today we are unpacking the case of for us Nobila.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: This isn't really a who do innit? We know who
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: did it. This is a story about how a golden
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: boy businessman a million pound financial trap and a crime
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: so calculated, so chemically sealed that it almost worked.
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, we're talking about a man who stood over
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: a barrel of cement in a bathroom and then you
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: went out to dinner.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: The duality is what's so fascinating. You have this brutal, messy,
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: physical crime, but then you have this extreme, almost clinical
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: attempt to sanitize it.
• 3:06
  Speaker 2: The silicone is the perfect symbol for that, isn't it.
• 3:09
  Speaker 2: It's a cheap household solution to this horrific, monstrous problem.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: It suggests a mind that believes, if you just patch
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: over the cracks, reality itself will just disappear.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: So let's go back before the smell, before the barrel.
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: Who was this guy, right, Because by all accounts, Ferris
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: Nobil wasn't some lurker in the shadows. He was a
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: success story.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: He was the guy you wanted to be. Firis Nobil
• 3:32
  Speaker 2: Zaki he was a Jordanian national moved to Egypt in
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: two thousand and nine looking for a fresh.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: Start, and he chose Hergata, which you know, it makes sense.
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: It's a boomtown, a tourist hub.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: It's a place where if you have ambition and a
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: bit of capital, you can make things happen fast.
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: And he did. He opens a business called the Chinese
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Massage Club.
• 3:52
  Speaker 2: Which, despite the name, was apparently a legitimate, high end
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: health spot.
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: And it was a hit. It was making good money.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: He even marries a Chinese woman who's living in Hergada
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: to help him run it.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: So he's hiring staff, he's renting multiple properties to the
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: outside world. This guy has the Midas touch. He's built
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: this very specific persona the.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: Hardworking xpat, the provider, the reliable.
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: Boss, and that reputation is crucial. It becomes his shield.
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: Later on, people well, people trust success. They don't look
• 4:22
  Speaker 2: for cracks in the armor of a man who seems
• 4:24
  Speaker 2: to have it all figured out.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: But then in twenty eleven, the cracks start to form,
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: or rather, he walks right into a trap he sets
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: for himself.
• 4:32
  Speaker 2: He's at a cafe after work and a friend introduces
• 4:35
  Speaker 2: him to a young woman, Yasmin Fazzi man Seuer.
• 4:37
  Speaker 1: And the dynamic here is so important. Yasmin is nineteen,
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: she's beautiful, young.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: And local, and Virus is the established, wealthy foreign investor.
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: There's a power imbalance right from.
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: The start, but not necessarily the one you'd expect, because
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: Firus falls hard. He decides pretty quickly he wants to
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: marry her.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Now he is already married right to.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: His Chinese wife his business park. But he decides to
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: take Yasmin as a second wife, which is legally permitted,
• 5:04
  Speaker 1: but it's complicated.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: He keeps the first wife completely.
• 5:07
  Speaker 1: In the dark, of course. But Yasmin's family they look
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: at fires and they see well, they see dollars on.
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: It, they see security, and this brings us to the
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: financial mechanism that really drives this entire tragedy. The list. Yeah.
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: In Egyptian culture, especially during marriage negotiations, the quiama is
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: basically a promisary note.
• 5:27
  Speaker 1: Okay, so break that down for us.
• 5:28
  Speaker 2: It details the value of goods the bride brings to
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: the marriage, but it really acts as a guarantee for
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: her if the husband divorces her without cause or if
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: things go south, he owes her the value on that list.
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: And Yasmin's family they looked at this wealthy.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Businessman and demanded he sign a list valued at one
• 5:48
  Speaker 2: million Egyptian.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: Pounds a million pounds on three to eleven. That's a fortune.
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: It's a massive amount of money and fire us.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: He signs it without blinking.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: It seems like it was pure arrogance. Probably thought I
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: have money, this will work out. I'll never actually have
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: to pay this.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: He treated a million pound liability like an.
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: Autograph, and the moment that ink hit the paper, he
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: put a price tag on his own freedom. That signature
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: is the seed of the entire crime.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: So they get married in early twenty twelve, and almost
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: immediately the golden boy life starts to fall apart.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: The honeymoon phase was well, it was non existent.
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: According to Fyrus's later accounts, and we have to remember
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: this is his version of events, his justification. He claims
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: he discovered almost immediately that Yasmin had a severe drug problem. Right.
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: He claims she was using constantly. He says he begged
• 6:38
  Speaker 2: her to stop. She promised she would, but she didn't.
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: The fighting starts, and suddenly this successful businessman is living
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: in total chaos. He moves them to a different apartment,
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: far away from the SPA, to try and get a.
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: Fresh start, but the toxicity just follows them. Whether her
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: addiction was real or exaggerated by him, the dynamic was
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: clearly volatile.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: You have a man who is obsessed with control and
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: his image living with the situation he absolutely cannot control.
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: And then comes the ultimatum, the divorce conversation.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: Virus wants out, he's done, but Yasmin plays the card
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: he handed her.
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: She tells him, fine, divorce me, but I want my
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: million pounds.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: And that's the moment the trap just snaps shut on him.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: He can't pay that, or maybe more accurately, he won't
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: pay it if he divorces her. He's financially ruined. If
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: he stays, he's miserable. He is completely cornered.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: And when a narcissist feels cornered, they don't look for compromise.
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: I look for elimination.
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: The Records mentioned this chilling description of his mindset. It says,
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: this is the moment the devil began to think for him, and.
• 7:43
  Speaker 2: You can see the shift. He stops reacting and starts planning.
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: It becomes logistical.
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: Like a project, a horrible, horrible project exactly.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: He starts dismantling his life to create a stage. He
• 7:56
  Speaker 2: tells everyone spa is losing money, which is a lie,
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: and he closes it down.
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: But he keeps paying rent.
• 8:03
  Speaker 2: He keeps paying the rent. That's the huge red flag.
• 8:05
  Speaker 2: Why pay rent on a closed business?
• 8:07
  Speaker 1: Because he needs the location, the privacy, the control right.
• 8:10
  Speaker 2: He convinces Yasmin that they're having money trouble, that they
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: have to leave their home and move into the spa itself,
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: which has living quarters.
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: So he's moving his victim into a commercial space he controls,
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: away from neighbors who might hear a scream.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: And then he makes one more acquisition. He rents a
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: tiny secondary apartment right next door to the spot the warehouse.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: The warehouse, he tells the landlord it's for storing equipment,
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: but in reality he's acquiring empty space space he holds
• 8:37
  Speaker 2: the keys to.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: He wasn't renting an apartment. He was renting a tomb precisely.
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: So let's go to the night of the crime. It's
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: twenty twelve. Fyrus starts the evening playing the perfect family man.
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: He visits his Chinese wife and their son. Everything seems normal,
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: but then at two am he leaves.
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: He goes to the spa where Yasmin is and according
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: to him, he walks in to find her consuming a
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: large amount of drugs.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: This triggers a massive fight. She demands the money again,
• 9:03
  Speaker 2: pay me or I stay.
• 9:05
  Speaker 1: He goes to sleep in the same place, just stewing
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: in this rage. And then eight am he wakes up
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: and he sees her pack in her bags.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: And that's the trigger. It wasn't the fighting, it was
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: the leaving. If she walks out that door, she goes
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: to her family. The family goes to the courts with
• 9:20
  Speaker 2: that million pound note.
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: His life, as he knows it, is over, his reputation destroyed,
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: his bank account.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: Drained, so he snaps. He strangled her.
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: And this detail, this is what gets me. After she's gone,
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: after the struggle, he doesn't run, he doesn't panic. He
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: sits next to her lifeless body for two hours, just
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: thinking that silence is just terrifying. It's the processing time.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: He is converting a human being, his wife, into a
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: problem that needs to be solved.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: He isn't mourning. He's strategizing, calculating the physics of disposal,
• 9:58
  Speaker 2: and he.
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: Comes up with a solution that is, I mean this
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: construction work.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: He goes to the roof of the building where there
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: just happens to be left over construction debris, cement, bricks,
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: plastic bags, and empty metal barrels.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: He brings it all down. He drags a metal barrel
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: into the bathroom. He starts mixing cement by hand in
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: a bathroom.
• 10:15
  Speaker 2: Think about the physical effort that takes. It's messy, it's heavy.
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: He places Yasmin inside the barrel. He packs it with
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: red bricks and plastic bag to fill the empty space,
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: and then he just he pours the cement.
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: Over her, sealing her inside a stone column inside a
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: metal drum.
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: And then he has to move it. A barrel full
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: of cement, and a body must weigh hundreds of pounds.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: The adrenaline must have been just insane. He drags this
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: thing out of the spa and into that warehouse apartment
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: next door, the.
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: One he rented for storage.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: He puts the barrel in the bathroom of that empty apartment,
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: goes back and cleans the murger scene with detergents and perfumes.
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: But then paranoia sets in.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: He knows biology. He knows that eventually death smells.
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: So the next morning he goes shopping for silicone, massive
• 11:00
  Speaker 2: quantity of it. He seals the barrel itself. Then he
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: steps outside the bathroom and seals the bathroom door from
• 11:07
  Speaker 2: the outside.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: Then he leaves the apartment entirely and seals the front
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: door from the outside. He is literally building a tomb
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: layer by layer.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: He believed that if he could just seal the air gaps,
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: he could pause time. He could keep the truth locked
• 11:20
  Speaker 2: in that bathroom forever.
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: And for two years he did. This is where the
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: story turns into a psychological thriller.
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: The crime is done, now the performance begins.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: He goes straight to the police station and files a
• 11:31
  Speaker 1: missing person report. We fought she packed a bag she
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: just vanished.
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: For two full years, Fiarius and Abil walked around her
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Gada a freeman. He went to work, he traveled, he
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: played with his son.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: He didn't just wait though, he actively participated in the search.
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: This is the part that just blows my mind.
• 11:49
  Speaker 2: It's the ultimate camouflage. Whenever Yasmin's family would get a
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: lead someone thinking they saw her in another city, Fearis
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: would go with them.
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: He traveled with her father and brothers to Charmel Shake,
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: to Alexandria, to Mansura.
• 12:03
  Speaker 2: Can you imagine being in that car. He's driving with
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: the family of the woman he murdered, looking concerned, scanning
• 12:10
  Speaker 2: the streets for someone he knows is in a barrel
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: a few meters from his old office.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: At one point, Yasmin's mother, maybe it was maternal instinct,
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: she started to suspect him. She actually confronted him.
• 12:21
  Speaker 2: And he didn't crack. He turned it around on her.
• 12:23
  Speaker 2: He played the victim.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: She acted so hurt, so offended. How could you think
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: this of me after everything I've done to help find her.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: He was so convincing that the mother actually apologized to him.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: She apologized to her daughter's killer for doubting his innocence.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: That is masterclass gaslighting. It's chilling. He controlled the narrative completely,
• 12:42
  Speaker 2: the grieving husband, the helpful son in law.
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: But he couldn't control nature. That's the thing about trying
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: to fight physics. You can seal a door with silicone,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: you can seal a barrel, but decomposition creates pressure, it
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: creates gas.
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: Eventually, the physics of death will overcome the chemistry of silicon.
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: Two years later, the guard of the buildings starts smelling
• 13:01
  Speaker 1: that smell we talked about. It's coming from the warehouse.
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: The police are called. They trace the odor, and just
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: like we describe, they find the seals, they peel them back.
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: They breach the apartment, then the bathroom.
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: And there it is the barrel. The forensics team cracks
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: it open. They find the shoe first, then the remains.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: It's yasmin, and just like that, the Golden Boy's mask
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: falls off. They arrest him and when they confront him
• 13:26
  Speaker 2: with the body found in property he rented, he breaks.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: He confesses everything.
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: He killed her to save a million pounds and.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: In the end, look at the math, he didn't want
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: to pay the debt. Instead he lost the money, He
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: lost his businesses. He lost his freedom, and he took
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: a life.
• 13:42
  Speaker 2: The motive is a kind of grim absurdity. He destroyed
• 13:46
  Speaker 2: everything to avoid a debt that, in the grand scheme
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: of a life sentence, means absolutely nothing.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: It just brings us back to that final image, Virus
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: driving across Egypt, looking out the window, pretending to search
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: for his wife, all while knowing exactly where she was.
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: It forces you to wonder about the people we think
• 14:04
  Speaker 2: we know. Virus maintained a perfect facade for two years.
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: He laughed, he ate, he slept, He just existed in
• 14:11
  Speaker 2: society while maintaining this horrific secret.
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: It makes you realize how thin the layer of civilization
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: really is. Sometimes it's just a layer of silicone holding
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: back the unthinkable.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: And eventually the seal always breaks.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: That's it for this deep dive. A tragic story, but
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: one that reminds us that the truth it has a
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: way of surfacing, no matter how deep you bury it
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: or how much sealent you use.
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: Take care of yourselves and we'll catch you out.
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: The next one