Transcript

Giza Chef Killed · Crime Night

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Speaker 1: We're heading to Giza, Egypt. The year is nineteen eighty nine. Now,
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Speaker 1: when you think about a true crime story, you often
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Speaker 1: expect this sudden, chaotic explosion of violence. But this story
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Speaker 1: is different. This crime was built over seventeen years. It
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Speaker 1: was slow cooked in psychological abuse and a really, really
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Speaker 1: pathological jealousy.
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Speaker 2: It's a study in how sustained emotional torment can completely
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Speaker 2: erode a person's identity until they feel like they have
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Speaker 2: no options left except for these impossible extremes.
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Speaker 1: So our mission today is to unpack the facts of
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Speaker 1: this case, the case of Rabia and Abdel.
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Speaker 2: Towab Risk, and we'll use their frankly terrifying story to
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Speaker 2: understand the devastating impact of that kind of long term
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Speaker 2: control and what's called extreme attachment disorder.
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Speaker 1: Okay, let's set the scene. I want you to picture
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Speaker 1: the contrast.
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Speaker 2: Here.
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Speaker 1: You have this massive, luxurious hotel right near the Pyramids.
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Speaker 1: It's bustling with tourists from all over the world.
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Speaker 2: And then working silently behind the scenes is a thirty
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Speaker 2: five year old chef named Abdel to wab Risk. Skilled professional,
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Speaker 2: extremely by all accounts from his work, he was disciplined, reliable,
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Speaker 2: a quiet fixture in that kitchen. He really kept to himself,
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Speaker 2: known for his dedication, he just seemed to embody respectability.
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Speaker 1: But then he finishes his shift, leaves the hotel, and
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Speaker 1: just never shows up for his next one.
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Speaker 2: The alarm bells start ringing pretty much immediately at the hotel.
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Speaker 1: Oh and then his wife, Rabia, she arrives at the
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Speaker 1: hotel looking for him, and that confirms everyone's worst fear,
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Speaker 1: abdel Toawab had vanished.
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Speaker 2: So now you have both the hotel and Rabia filing
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Speaker 2: missing person reports. Investigators, you know, they start with the obvious.
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Speaker 2: They look at the location, a huge tourist, have lots
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Speaker 2: of people coming and going.
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Speaker 1: The first thought has to be an affair, right exactly.
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Speaker 2: They suspected he'd just run off, maybe he was having
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Speaker 2: an affair or had even secretly remarried. That sort of
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Speaker 2: thing wasn't unheard of in that line of work.
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Speaker 1: The theory just it evaporated pretty quickly, it did.
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Speaker 2: As they interviewed his colleagues, his peers, everyone insisted on
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Speaker 2: the same thing. He was private, it a homebody, completely
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Speaker 2: dedicated to his family.
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Speaker 1: So there are no leads. Days are passing and the
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Speaker 1: case is just going.
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Speaker 2: Cold, and for the police that silence must have been well,
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Speaker 2: just deafening. They're hitting dead ends, just interviewing the same
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Speaker 2: people again and again, hoping someone slips up.
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Speaker 1: Okay, so let's unpack this moment, because here is where
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Speaker 1: the entire narrative takes this sharp, deeply disturbing turn. Two
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Speaker 1: days into the search, Robbia, the wife who seemed so concerned,
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Speaker 1: she walks into the police.
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Speaker 2: Station and she isn't frantic, She's not crying.
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Speaker 1: No, she is perfectly composed.
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Speaker 2: The officers, they're expecting to see a mother of five
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Speaker 2: who's on the verge of a total collapse from anxiety. Instead,
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Speaker 2: she sits.
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Speaker 1: Down and just tells them to stop looking.
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Speaker 2: Right. She confesses immediately states, with this absolute chilling calm,
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Speaker 2: I killed him and cut him up, and I know
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Speaker 2: exactly why I did it.
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Speaker 1: That's serenity, you know, that complete lack of emotion. It
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Speaker 1: immediately made the officer's question if she was saying, of.
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Speaker 2: Course, you expect remorse or at least a flicker of panic,
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Speaker 2: there was just nothing.
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Speaker 1: So they have to recover from that shock and ask
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Speaker 1: the two immediate crucial questions, where is.
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Speaker 2: The body and why did you do this.
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Speaker 1: Her response was just practical. Yeah, she agrees to take them,
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Speaker 1: the police and the forensics teams back to the house
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Speaker 1: to prove everything she just said.
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Speaker 2: And that immediate, unprompted confession, delivered with such tranquility, it
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Speaker 2: just suggested a psychological state that was so far beyond
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Speaker 2: simple impulse or rage.
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Speaker 1: It felt deliberate, almost planned. So they make the drive
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Speaker 1: back to her house in Giza. Can you just imagine
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Speaker 1: the atmosphere as the police cars pull up.
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Speaker 2: The first thing they find are the five children. The
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Speaker 2: oldest is only ten years old, the youngest just a year.
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Speaker 1: And a half. In the kids' faces, that was the.
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Speaker 2: First tragic confirmation that something horrific had happened. Their faces
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Speaker 2: were just full of this palpable fear, this deep worry.
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Speaker 2: It was obvious to the investigators that these kids hadn't
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Speaker 2: just missed their thought. They had witnessed something, something unspeakable,
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Speaker 2: but they were just too terrified to say a word.
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Speaker 1: And the evidence inside was immediate. Police found visible, unmistakable
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Speaker 1: bloodstains in different parts of the house. So her story,
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Speaker 1: as horrifying as it was, it's being backed up by
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Speaker 1: physical evidence right away.
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Speaker 2: Then she leads the team outside to a soft, muddy
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Speaker 2: area right next the house.
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Speaker 1: Which is a detail we need to come back to.
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Speaker 2: It is, and without any hesitation, she kneels down and
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Speaker 2: just starts digging in the soft earth with her bare.
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Speaker 1: Hands, And that's the moment the unbelievable becomes reality. She
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Speaker 1: quickly uncovers human remains an arm than more parts of
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Speaker 1: her husband's.
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Speaker 2: Body, and because the ground was so muddy, the remains
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Speaker 2: hadn't really decomposed much, which made the identification instant and
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Speaker 2: just gruesome.
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Speaker 1: As the forensic team is recovering the body parts, they
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Speaker 1: noticed one final horrible detail. The head is missing. When
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Speaker 1: they ask her, she tells them she severed it and
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Speaker 1: threw it into a canal nearby.
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Speaker 2: Keep coming back to that, the meticulous dismemberment, but then
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Speaker 2: burying him right next to the family home.
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Speaker 1: It's a total contradiction. If you want someone gone, you
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Speaker 1: get rid of them far away. Yeah, what was her
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Speaker 1: reasoning for that specific choice?
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Speaker 2: Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture, it
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Speaker 2: really shines a light on this idea of pathological attachment.
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Speaker 2: Robbia later said she wanted him to remain with her
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Speaker 2: even in death, so.
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Speaker 1: It wasn't about erasing him, no, not at all.
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Speaker 2: It was about permanent ownership. In her mind, she owned
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Speaker 2: him and if she couldn't have him alive, she would
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Speaker 2: keep him dead right there beside her. It speaks to
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Speaker 2: a total loss of the boundary between herself, her partner,
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Speaker 2: and property.
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Speaker 1: That is just the ultimate conclusion of ownership. But to
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Speaker 1: really get why she went to these extremes, we have
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Speaker 1: to understand this wasn't spontaneous. This was the final eruption
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Speaker 1: of a seventeen year slow burn exactly.
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Speaker 2: We have to rewind almost two decades to understand how
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Speaker 2: this whole psychological trap was built.
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Speaker 1: Their relationship started under a pretty challenging circumstances to begin with.
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Speaker 2: It did when they married. Abdelta Wab was eighteen and
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Speaker 2: Robbia was only thirteen years old, and that initial imbalance
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Speaker 2: was just made so much worse by Robbia's own deep,
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Speaker 2: deep insecurities.
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Speaker 1: From the very beginning, she saw herself as very ugly.
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Speaker 1: She had a complete lack of self confidence, and.
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Speaker 2: On the other hand, she saw Abdeltah Wabb as extremely handsome.
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Speaker 2: So for her, him choosing to marry her felt like
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Speaker 2: a genuine miracle.
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Speaker 1: A miracle she could never ever risk losing.
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Speaker 2: And tragically, Abdelta Wab systematically used that insecurity against her
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Speaker 2: for seventeen years. This wasn't just accidental cruelty. This was
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Speaker 2: sustained psychological warfare.
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Speaker 1: Let's break down that abuse cycle because the details are devastating.
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Speaker 1: It wasn't just you know, disrespect. He was explicit about it.
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Speaker 2: He was. He would constantly tell her she was unattractive,
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Speaker 2: basically suggesting he was doing her a favor just by
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Speaker 2: staying married to her, and.
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Speaker 1: He weaponized infidelity to do it.
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Speaker 2: Yes, he didn't just cheat, he confessed to it, but
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Speaker 2: it was the framing of the confession that was the
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Speaker 2: real poison. He explicitly told her he cheated because the
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Speaker 2: other women were much more beautiful than she was.
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Speaker 1: That phrasing is so specific. I mean, how does they
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Speaker 1: differ from just having an affair? What does that do
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Speaker 1: to a person long term?
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Speaker 2: Well, it ships the guilt.
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Speaker 1: Right.
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Speaker 2: An affair is a betrayal of the relationship. This was
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Speaker 2: a personal assault on her core worth. By saying he
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Speaker 2: sought out more beautiful women, he was making her ugliness
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Speaker 2: the reason for his action.
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Speaker 1: He was telling her, I'm doing this because you are not.
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Speaker 2: Enough exactly, and that ensures she internalizes all the blame
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Speaker 2: for his cheating.
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Speaker 1: And then he brought his work into this torture. He's
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Speaker 1: at this grand hotel meeting foreign travelers.
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Speaker 2: All the time, right, so he would come home describe
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Speaker 2: these beautiful foreign women in detail, and then looked directly
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Speaker 2: at Rabbia and claimed that upon seeing her he felt frustrated,
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Speaker 2: or that he experienced a state of depression.
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Speaker 1: It's an incredible level of emotional sadism.
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Speaker 2: And this strain was made even worse early on by
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Speaker 2: their struggle with fertility. They spent six years trying to conceive.
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Speaker 2: Rabbia feeling so inadequate already was visit doctors, even sorcerers,
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Speaker 2: just desperate to get pregnant, and that.
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Speaker 1: Period just amplified her deepest fear. She felt she had
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Speaker 1: to tolerate the abuse, the insults, the cheating, all because
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Speaker 1: she needed to stay with him, hoping that having his
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Speaker 1: child would finally secure her place.
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Speaker 2: But the abuse cycle had another critical piece, this kind
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Speaker 2: of hot and cold technique, what do you mean? Abdelta
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Speaker 2: Wob would follow these profoundly cruel statements with sudden intense
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Speaker 2: expressions of love. He'd tell her she was the most
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Speaker 2: important thing to him, that he never truly loved anyone else.
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Speaker 1: Ah. So that's a classic manipulation tool, isn't It creates
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Speaker 1: this massive confusion. How does that back and forth deepen
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Speaker 1: the dependency.
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Speaker 2: It's incredibly effective because those little flashes of affection they
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Speaker 2: act as intermittent reinforcement. The victim stops seeing the abuse
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Speaker 2: as this continuous thing and starts chasing the memory of
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Speaker 2: the good times, no.
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Speaker 1: Believing if they just try harder, the loving partner will
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Speaker 1: come back.
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Speaker 2: Precisely, it binds them to him completely, while he just
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Speaker 2: keeps chipping away at their identity. The source of material
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Speaker 2: correctly identified this as his form of slow burn revenge.
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Speaker 1: Eventually they did have five children, but that psychological foundation
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Speaker 1: was just It was permanently broken. Her jealousy never went away.
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Speaker 2: She was convinced he was only staying for the kids
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Speaker 2: and that one day he would finally replace her. And
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Speaker 2: then the ultimate threat materialized in.
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Speaker 1: The form of Samia, Rabia's neighbor.
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Speaker 2: And crucially, Samia was also abdelto Wab's cousin and years
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Speaker 2: earlier his former fiancee.
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Speaker 1: So for Reba. Samia was the living, breathing embodiment of
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Speaker 1: all her insecurities, the real ruin she'd been afraid of
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Speaker 1: for seventeen.
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Speaker 2: Years, especially because Samia was described as genuinely beautiful. She
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Speaker 2: ticked all the boxes of the women. Abdel to Wab
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Speaker 2: claimed he preferred. The escalation was wow, it was inevitable.
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Speaker 1: And Samia seemed to just stir the pod.
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Speaker 2: Oh absolutely. She would deliberately interact and joke with Abdel
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Speaker 2: to Wab when he came home, often right in front
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Speaker 2: of Rabia. But the truly malicious part is u delta
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Speaker 2: Wab's reaction.
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Speaker 1: He didn't shut it down.
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Speaker 2: He encouraged it, or at least he accepted it. He
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Speaker 2: would even watch Samia from behind the kitchen curtain, clearly
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Speaker 2: provoking Rabia's jealousy even further.
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Speaker 1: Using it to inflict one last heavy dose of torment.
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Speaker 2: He was fueling her jealousy right up to the very end,
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Speaker 2: which brings us to the night of the crime. Abdeltawab
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Speaker 2: gets home late from work.
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Speaker 1: He's exhausted, and Rabia immediately confronts him. Her suspicion and
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Speaker 1: jealousy over Samia had finally reached its breaking point.
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Speaker 2: But this time his exhaustion won out over his cruelty.
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Speaker 2: He was too drained to fight.
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Speaker 1: He delivered the final ultimatum.
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Speaker 2: He told her, with the startling finality, this is your
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Speaker 2: last day. He said he would divorce her the next morning,
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Speaker 2: and he told her to call her uncle right then
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Speaker 2: to arrange it while he went to pray.
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Speaker 1: And that was it. Her entire reality just shattered. Divorce
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Speaker 1: meant losing the miracle she had tolerated seventeen years of
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Speaker 1: torture to keep.
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Speaker 2: She just stood there in the kitchen, paralyzed. She's faced
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Speaker 2: with this absolute, final rejection that confirmed every single insult
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Speaker 2: he had ever thrown.
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Speaker 1: At her, and her pathological jealousy, her total lack of
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Speaker 1: self worth. It all boiled down to one single desperate thought.
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Speaker 2: He is hers, and if she cannot have him alive,
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Speaker 2: then he will belong to no one.
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Speaker 1: The decision was made right there, in that instant. She
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Speaker 1: went and got a large kitchen cleaver, a fatter, and
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Speaker 1: she waited. She waited until he started his prayer. She
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Speaker 1: entered the room while he was vulnerable, focused.
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Speaker 2: And she slit his throat.
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Speaker 1: The violence that came next is almost impossible to process,
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Speaker 1: especially with the children there.
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Speaker 2: She dragged his body past her five young children. They
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Speaker 2: just watched in silent horror. She moved him to the bathroom,
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Speaker 2: and then she completed the dismemberment right there in front
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Speaker 2: of them.
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Speaker 1: After burying the parts next to the house, making sure
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Speaker 1: he would stay with her, She cleaned.
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Speaker 2: Everything, and then she faced her children, the five witnesses,
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Speaker 2: and she threatened them. She told them she would do
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Speaker 2: the same thing to them if they spoke a single word.
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Speaker 1: She had a plan initially to just stick with the
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Speaker 1: story that he disappeared, but her emotional dissent was just
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Speaker 1: so swift.
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Speaker 2: So profound. The very next day, she tried to take
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Speaker 2: her own life. She couldn't cope with the reality of
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Speaker 2: his absence, even though she was the one who created it.
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Speaker 1: Her attempt failed, and that self destructive impulse immediately turned
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Speaker 1: into intense paranoia.
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Speaker 2: Right she became convinced, logically, I guess that one of
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Speaker 2: her kids or his family would eventually expose her and
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Speaker 2: that would lead to her own death.
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Speaker 1: So is that fear, the fear of discovery that drove
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Speaker 1: her straight to the police station.
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Speaker 2: The ultimate paradox, She kills him to keep him tries
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Speaker 2: to kill herself because she can't live without him, and
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Speaker 2: then confesses because she's afraid of the consequences.
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Speaker 1: And there's one last shocking detail from her full confession.
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Speaker 1: She declared that she wanted to be.
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Speaker 2: Executed so she could be reunited with him in death.
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Speaker 1: This case just offers such a clear, horrifying look at
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Speaker 1: the consequences when long term emotional abuse turns into a
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Speaker 1: pathology of ownership.
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Speaker 2: When we look at the whole seventeen year picture, we
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Speaker 2: really see two central failures that led to this tragedy.
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Speaker 1: The first one lies squarely with abdel Tahwab, his cruelty,
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Speaker 1: his slow burned psychological revenge. It was all calculated. He
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Speaker 1: was free to leave if he was unhappy.
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Speaker 2: But he didn't. Instead, the sustained emotional abuse, the infidelity
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Speaker 2: confessions framed as her fault, the constant undermining of her
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Speaker 2: worth that was the pressure cooker for this violence.
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Speaker 1: And the second failure was Robbia's inability to find a
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Speaker 1: simple legal.
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Speaker 2: Way out, which was driven by that pathological attachment and
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Speaker 2: a complete lack of self trust, fueled by seventeen years
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Speaker 2: of being told she was worthless without him, Her identity
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Speaker 2: was so merged with his approval that when faced with
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Speaker 2: divorce her attachment, it mutated into murderous ownership.
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Speaker 1: So what does this all mean for you? This case
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Speaker 1: is a profound illustration of how sustained emotional abuse can
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Speaker 1: completely erode a person's identity. It can limit their perceived
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Speaker 1: choices to impossible extremes.
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Speaker 2: It shows us the mechanism really the abuse basically destroyed
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Speaker 2: her internal firewall, making violence against him seem like the
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Speaker 2: only alternative to the violence against herself that had been
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Speaker 2: going on for nearly two decades.
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Speaker 1: Imagine living for seventeen years where the person closest to
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Speaker 1: you constantly reinforces that you are unworthy, that you're ugly,
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Speaker 1: that you're replaceable, while also offering just enough affection to
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Speaker 1: keep you tethered to them.
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Speaker 2: The sources note Rabia lost confidence over time, But what
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Speaker 2: is the true point of no return for a person
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Speaker 2: trapped in that kind of cycle, And how does that
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Speaker 2: complete loss of self worth turn into violent action against
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Speaker 2: the tormentor rather than just self preservation. That's something for
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Speaker 2: you to model or explore on your own.