The Hair Salon Widow: Greed, The 30-Year Age Gap, and the Chilling Betrayal of a Perfect Murder Plot
October 24, 2025 • 13 mins
In Shubra Al-Khaimah, Ramadan, a successful merchant, lived what seemed like a stable life after marrying Rahma, a much younger woman. But to Rahma, the marriage felt more like a burden; she viewed her husband as a father figure rather than a partner. Over time, she began a secret four-year affair with Diyaa, a friend of her brother. The relationship soon turned into a deadly conspiracy. Wanting both to marry freely and to gain Ramadan’s wealth, Rahma and Diyaa plotted his murder. One night, while Ramadan slept, Diyaa entered the apartment and carried out the crime with Rahma’s help. The investigation that followed exposed their betrayal. Phone messages between the lovers revealed their plan, leaving no doubt about their guilt. Both Rahma and Diyaa were arrested, confessed, and were ultimately sentenced to execution for premeditated murder.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Okay, picture this. It's just after five zero zero pm,
Shobra el Khaima. You know the sounds of a busy
neighborhood winding down sort of.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yeah, that low hum of traffic, maybe some shops still
open exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
And downstairs there's this hair salon, Rama salon. It's buzzing quietly.
She finishes up with a client, looks over at her kids,
and she tells everyone, quite calmly, I just need to
pop upstairs and wake up Ramadan, her husband.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Right, But pop upstairs doesn't really capture it, does it.
There's nothing casual about this.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
No, every single step she takes up those stairs is calculated.
She knows exactly what she's walking into because she planned it.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
And when she gets to the apartment door, she doesn't
like rush to the bedroom in a panic, not at all.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
First things, first stage the scene. Before she makes a sound.
She goes through that apartment methodically tearing open cupboards, pulling out.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Drawers, scattering things everywhere, clothes, papers, making it look like
a franted, violent robbery, creating chaos.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
It has to look perfect. The perfect picture of a
brain can gone wrong, and only then.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
When everything is perfectly imperfect, perfectly staged. Only then does
she let out the sound.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah, this sudden piercing scream. It's pure theater, designed to
shatter the evening quiet.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
And it works. Neighbors come running, they rush up stores.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
And they find Ramadan, this respected local businessman, a pillar
of the community, dead lying in his own blood.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
And right beside him, Rama collapsing, giving the performance of
her life as the grieving widow.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It's chilling. So in this deep dive, we're going behind
that performance. We're peeling back the layers of this horrific act.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Absolutely, this isn't just a tragedy. It's a story about well,
a really toxic mix. You've got wealth, a huge age
gap in a marriage, deep seated resentment.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And it all leads to this incredibly calculated betrayal. We
need to unpack how Rama and her lover Daya, who
the reports literally called the violess people. You could ever
hear about how they put this whole thing together.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, our mission here is to really look at those motives. Greed, resentment,
just a desperate grab for freedom, probably all of it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And to get the full picture, the sheer scale of
the betrayal, we have to go back back to where
Ramanan started. Let's rewind to what nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Nine, that's right, nineteen seventy nine, Ramadan leaves his hometown
sohag he's young, ambitious, heads to Cairo with his big
dream become a major.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Merchant and he lands in Shobra el Khaima start small right,
odd jobs.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yep, scrimping, saving every penny. Eventually gets enough to start
trading in household appliances, and he was relentless, a hard worker.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Success finds him, he opens his own shop, becomes that
classic self made man story.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, But what's really interesting and kind of tragic in
hindsight is his character. He wasn't just about making money.
He was incredibly generous how so well. He fully supported
his sister, for instance, she had an intellectual disability, and
he took care of everything for He was always helping
people in the neighborhood, finding them jobs. Just a genuinely
respected figure.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
He really built something, and the peak was buying land
and putting up that five story building, wasn't it shop downstairs?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Apartments upstairs exactly a real symbol of his success. And
that building, well, that's where the fatal connection happened.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, because One of his tenants.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Was airfare addresser, a widow struggling to make ends meet,
often laid on rent, and Ramadan, being the guy he was,
was always lenient with her, understood her.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Situation, and this tenant she had a daughter.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
She had a daughter named Rama, beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Girl, which brings us right to two thousand and seven.
Ramadan's forty five. He's successful, establish decides it's time to marry, and.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
He sets his sights on Rama, the tenant's daughter, who's
only seventeen.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Seventeen, Wow, that's nearly a thirty year age gap.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Huge. He was completely smitten, apparently obsessed even but Rama,
she wasn't exactly jumping at the chance, was.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
She No, You can imagine marrying someone old enough to
be her father, But she was also living in poverty.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
That pressure exactly alconomic reality versus personal design. Her family
pushed hard, and Ramann was wealthy, respected it was a
way out.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So she agreed a deeply transactional marriage. From the start,
it sounds like.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
It really seems that way, and for the next twelve years,
that transaction sort of defined everything. He gave her whatever
she wanted instantly.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Like the hair salon you mentioned that, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
A brand new one just for her upscale, right there
in the building he owned, separate from her mom's place.
Whatever she asked for, boom it was hers.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
They had kids too, right, three.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Children, two boys, one girl, lived in luxury. But underneath
it all rama was just simmering with resentment.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Over the age gap.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Intensely. She felt like she was married to a father figure,
a guardian, not a partner. People in the neighborhood apparently
even mistook him for her dad sometimes. Oh, that's rough,
and think about it psychologically, she's young, wants experiences, adventure,
maybe just rapport. He's done all that, he settled. There's
a total mismatch in life.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Stages, focus shifted.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
It seems like it. Reports suggest her daily thought became
just waiting for him to die so she could inherit
everything and finally be free.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Okay, but twelve years is a long time to wait
feeling like that. Why didn't she ever just leave ask
for a divorce.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
That's the million dollar question, isn't it. Yeah? And the
answer seems to be, well, mostly financial plus maybe social standing.
How so divorcing Ramadan this community pillar that would have
been messy socially damaging maybe, but critically it would likely
mean walking away from the inheritance, his considerable wealth.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Right, She'd spent years building her own business within that
setup too.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Exactly, she was securing her own position. Divorce meant giving
up the big prize. Murder if she could get away
with it meant getting the husband out of the picture
and keeping the fortune.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
A truly cold calculation.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Utterly cold. Yeah, And this desire for freedom, for the money,
without the man, it finds an outlet in someone else.
Enter Daia Terdaya around twenty five fifteen. He's a friend
of Rama's brother, works paycheck to paycheck. I think his
last job was at a bakery right across from her Salon. Married,
had a.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Kid, so completely different from Ramadan.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Totally, but he was closer to her age, and he
gave her attention, made her feel seen as a desirable woman,
not just a wife or a mother.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And things moved fast, very fast.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Secret meetings started often at Diya's mother's house, which was
conveniently just down the street, so visits wouldn't look too
suspicious initially.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
But it didn't stop there.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Oh No, it got incredibly risky. Dya started visiting Rama
in their apartment when Ramadan and the kids were out.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
How did they possibly manage that in a neighborhood where
everyone knows everyone.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
This is the truly audacious part. He'd disguise himself. He
would enter the building wearing a nee cob, the full
face fail pretending to be a woman visiting Rama. You're kidding,
not kidding?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
For four years, four years of that, sneaking into the
marital home in disguise. The level of deception is staggering.
The contempt for Rama must have been immense.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Absolutely, But by twenty nineteen things were getting tense. People
in the neighborhood started noticing this mysterious veiled woman coming
and going all the time.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
They tried to figure out who it was.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, apparently there were attempts at surveillance, people trying to
catch a glimpse, but Dyah always managed to slip away undetected. Still,
the pressure was mounting.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
So Diya gets nervous.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
He does. He starts pushing Rama, you need to get
a divorce.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Now, and she finally asks Ramadan.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
She does confronts him, and he immediately says, no, flat refusal.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Why just controlling her?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
That's the tragic irony. He refused. According to the reports
for the children, he said he didn't want to break
up the family. He had no idea, absolutely zero clue
about the affair or that her real motive was to
get the inheritance and marry Dya.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
He was completely oblivious to the plot simmering right under
his nose, completely.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
And that refusal sealed his fate. Rama called Diya right
after the conversation was blunt, divorce is off the table.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
So the only way out.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Was murder, and it had to look like a robbery.
That was crucial for them to inherit the wealth without
suspicion falling on them.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
And they use his routine against him perfectly.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
They knew he worked late, often staying up managing his
affairs until the early morning, and then slept late, usually
waking up around the time of the afternoon prayer. Rama
knew is scheduled down to the minute.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
After twelve years, So the day of the crime, how
did it unfold?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
It's chillingly methodical. Around two point pm, Rama does her
usual thing, takes the kids downstairs to the salon. She
runs seems perfectly normal. About ten minutes later, she heads
back upstairs, tells people she forgot something plausible.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Enough, but the real reason wasn't forgetting something.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
No, the real reason was to unlock the apartment door,
leave it just slightly, Ajar, setting the stage for Dya's entry.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Then she goes back downstairs, so back.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
To the salon, sits down and makes the call, signals
to Dya it's clear, come.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Now, and Dya just walks in, walks.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Right into the building, up the stairs through the unlocked door,
finds Ramadan asleep in bed. This is around three thirty pm.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
And the attack itself, it sounds like it was.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Brutal, extremely this wasn't just about killing him quickly. Dya
used a knife they bought specifically for this. He slit
Ramadan's throat first, god then stabbed him repeatedly with what
sounds like intense personal hatred. Ramadan apparently struggled briefly fell
from the bed, but Diya just kept scabbing until he
was absolutely sure Ramadan was dead.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Well. Rama is downstairs.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Downstairs in the salon, working calmly, interacting with customers with
their children, maintaining this perfect alibi for another hour and
a half until five pm. The coldness is profound, and
at five pm she goes back up, makes her discovery,
but first she does the final staging, ransacks the place,
(09:50):
pulling out drawers, scattering things. Then she screams that theatrical
neighborhood alerting scream.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And the police initially bought the robbery's story.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
To some extent, I mean, the scene chaotic. Ramadan was
known to be wealthy. It fit the surface narrative, but
good detectives noticed things that don't quite add up, like what.
Two key things stood out pretty quickly. First, no forced entry.
The door was open, normally suggesting the killer was let
in or knew how to get in without force. That
didn't quite fit a random robbery okay.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And the second thing, the level of violence.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
The sheer brutality slitting someone's throat is usually fatal fairly
quickly to multiple stab wounds after that suggested something much
more personal, rage of Ndebta, not just a thief trying
to grab cash and run.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
And then there was Rama herself exactly the police.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Seasoned observers of grief noted her reaction. It felt off,
over the top, exaggerated. Was the word used too much performance,
not enough genuine shock or sorrow.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And neighbors confirmed that feeling they were uneasy about her.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Apparently, so there was already this background noise of unease
about her among some neighbors, perhaps related to the veiled visitor,
perhaps just a general feeling. Her reaction just amplified existing
suspicions for the police, so.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
That suspicion was enough to dig deeper.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Absolutely, they put her under surveillance, specifically her phone, and
that's where the affair with Dya burst into the open.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
They found messages, loads.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Of them, romantic messages, intimate messages, clear evidence of the relationship.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
And the crucial piece, the smoking gun.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Was one specific message sent from Diya to Rama, the
timestamp three point three pm, exactly when the coroner estimated
the murder was completed, and the content chillingly simple, just
three words, everything was finished. Wow, game over pretty much.
They arrested both of them. Rama confessed to the plant
almost immediately, but then she instantly tried to save herself
(11:42):
wow by throwing Diya completely under the bus, said he
acted alone, that he'd threatened Ramadan, which was a blatant lie,
especially since Ramadan had actually helped Dya financially in the past.
Classic betrayal upon betrayal.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
But Diya didn't play along.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
No, faced with the evidence, especially that message, dia confess
everything confirmed the whole plan. Why he did it so
he and Rama could get married inherit the money, just
like they had agreed.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So the case was solid, ironclad.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, the evidence, the confessions, it all pointed one way.
Both Rama and Dah were tried, convicted, and ultimately sentenced
to death.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
A truly devastating outcome. They destroyed so many lives, Ramadan's obviously,
their own, their families, and those poor children.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
The three children caught right in the middle of this
whole horrifying mess. It's just catastrophic.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So when you step back and look at this whole thing, Yeah,
what does it tell us for you listening right now?
What's the takeaway here?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Well, it's a stark look at how a marriage built
on let's face it, transactional needs rather than genuine connection,
can just curdle into something truly monstrous. The resentment built
over that age gap, combined with pure greed, it overrated
everything else.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
And the sheer coldness of Rama's planning is terrifying. The
way she compartmentalized running a business, raising kids, plotting a murder, staging,
a crime scene, all behind this mask of normalcy.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
That's perhaps the most unnerving part, isn't it That ability
to maintain the facade, to operate with such calculation while
appearing completely ordinary.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, and think about the double betrayal at the end.
She was willing to betray Ramadan, the man who, despite everything,
seemed to genuinely love her in his own obsessive way,
and also Daya, the man who literally killed for her,
threw his own life away for their plan.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
She turned on everyone to save herself. And it makes
you wonder, doesn't it, how much darkness can hide just
beneath the surface of everyday life, waiting for the right pressures,
the right moment to just explode.
Okay, picture this. It's just after five zero zero pm,
Shobra el Khaima. You know the sounds of a busy
neighborhood winding down sort of.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Yeah, that low hum of traffic, maybe some shops still
open exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
And downstairs there's this hair salon, Rama salon. It's buzzing quietly.
She finishes up with a client, looks over at her kids,
and she tells everyone, quite calmly, I just need to
pop upstairs and wake up Ramadan, her husband.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
Right, But pop upstairs doesn't really capture it, does it.
There's nothing casual about this.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
No, every single step she takes up those stairs is calculated.
She knows exactly what she's walking into because she planned it.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
And when she gets to the apartment door, she doesn't
like rush to the bedroom in a panic, not at all.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
First things, first stage the scene. Before she makes a sound.
She goes through that apartment methodically tearing open cupboards, pulling out.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Drawers, scattering things everywhere, clothes, papers, making it look like
a franted, violent robbery, creating chaos.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
It has to look perfect. The perfect picture of a
brain can gone wrong, and only then.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
When everything is perfectly imperfect, perfectly staged. Only then does
she let out the sound.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah, this sudden piercing scream. It's pure theater, designed to
shatter the evening quiet.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
And it works. Neighbors come running, they rush up stores.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
And they find Ramadan, this respected local businessman, a pillar
of the community, dead lying in his own blood.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
And right beside him, Rama collapsing, giving the performance of
her life as the grieving widow.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
It's chilling. So in this deep dive, we're going behind
that performance. We're peeling back the layers of this horrific act.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Absolutely, this isn't just a tragedy. It's a story about well,
a really toxic mix. You've got wealth, a huge age
gap in a marriage, deep seated resentment.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
And it all leads to this incredibly calculated betrayal. We
need to unpack how Rama and her lover Daya, who
the reports literally called the violess people. You could ever
hear about how they put this whole thing together.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
Yeah, our mission here is to really look at those motives. Greed, resentment,
just a desperate grab for freedom, probably all of it.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
And to get the full picture, the sheer scale of
the betrayal, we have to go back back to where
Ramanan started. Let's rewind to what nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Nine, that's right, nineteen seventy nine, Ramadan leaves his hometown
sohag he's young, ambitious, heads to Cairo with his big
dream become a major.
Speaker 1 (02:24):
Merchant and he lands in Shobra el Khaima start small right,
odd jobs.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yep, scrimping, saving every penny. Eventually gets enough to start
trading in household appliances, and he was relentless, a hard worker.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Success finds him, he opens his own shop, becomes that
classic self made man story.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
Yeah, But what's really interesting and kind of tragic in
hindsight is his character. He wasn't just about making money.
He was incredibly generous how so well. He fully supported
his sister, for instance, she had an intellectual disability, and
he took care of everything for He was always helping
people in the neighborhood, finding them jobs. Just a genuinely
respected figure.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
He really built something, and the peak was buying land
and putting up that five story building, wasn't it shop downstairs?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
Apartments upstairs exactly a real symbol of his success. And
that building, well, that's where the fatal connection happened.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Yeah, because One of his tenants.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Was airfare addresser, a widow struggling to make ends meet,
often laid on rent, and Ramadan, being the guy he was,
was always lenient with her, understood her.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Situation, and this tenant she had a daughter.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
She had a daughter named Rama, beautiful.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Girl, which brings us right to two thousand and seven.
Ramadan's forty five. He's successful, establish decides it's time to marry, and.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
He sets his sights on Rama, the tenant's daughter, who's
only seventeen.
Speaker 1 (03:41):
Seventeen, Wow, that's nearly a thirty year age gap.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Huge. He was completely smitten, apparently obsessed even but Rama,
she wasn't exactly jumping at the chance, was.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
She No, You can imagine marrying someone old enough to
be her father, But she was also living in poverty.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
That pressure exactly alconomic reality versus personal design. Her family
pushed hard, and Ramann was wealthy, respected it was a
way out.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
So she agreed a deeply transactional marriage. From the start,
it sounds like.
Speaker 2 (04:09):
It really seems that way, and for the next twelve years,
that transaction sort of defined everything. He gave her whatever
she wanted instantly.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
Like the hair salon you mentioned that, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
A brand new one just for her upscale, right there
in the building he owned, separate from her mom's place.
Whatever she asked for, boom it was hers.
Speaker 1 (04:29):
They had kids too, right, three.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Children, two boys, one girl, lived in luxury. But underneath
it all rama was just simmering with resentment.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Over the age gap.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Intensely. She felt like she was married to a father figure,
a guardian, not a partner. People in the neighborhood apparently
even mistook him for her dad sometimes. Oh, that's rough,
and think about it psychologically, she's young, wants experiences, adventure,
maybe just rapport. He's done all that, he settled. There's
a total mismatch in life.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Stages, focus shifted.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
It seems like it. Reports suggest her daily thought became
just waiting for him to die so she could inherit
everything and finally be free.
Speaker 1 (05:08):
Okay, but twelve years is a long time to wait
feeling like that. Why didn't she ever just leave ask
for a divorce.
Speaker 2 (05:13):
That's the million dollar question, isn't it. Yeah? And the
answer seems to be, well, mostly financial plus maybe social standing.
How so divorcing Ramadan this community pillar that would have
been messy socially damaging maybe, but critically it would likely
mean walking away from the inheritance, his considerable wealth.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Right, She'd spent years building her own business within that
setup too.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
Exactly, she was securing her own position. Divorce meant giving
up the big prize. Murder if she could get away
with it meant getting the husband out of the picture
and keeping the fortune.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
A truly cold calculation.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Utterly cold. Yeah, And this desire for freedom, for the money,
without the man, it finds an outlet in someone else.
Enter Daia Terdaya around twenty five fifteen. He's a friend
of Rama's brother, works paycheck to paycheck. I think his
last job was at a bakery right across from her Salon. Married,
had a.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
Kid, so completely different from Ramadan.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Totally, but he was closer to her age, and he
gave her attention, made her feel seen as a desirable woman,
not just a wife or a mother.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
And things moved fast, very fast.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Secret meetings started often at Diya's mother's house, which was
conveniently just down the street, so visits wouldn't look too
suspicious initially.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
But it didn't stop there.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Oh No, it got incredibly risky. Dya started visiting Rama
in their apartment when Ramadan and the kids were out.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
How did they possibly manage that in a neighborhood where
everyone knows everyone.
Speaker 2 (06:40):
This is the truly audacious part. He'd disguise himself. He
would enter the building wearing a nee cob, the full
face fail pretending to be a woman visiting Rama. You're kidding,
not kidding?
Speaker 1 (06:51):
For four years, four years of that, sneaking into the
marital home in disguise. The level of deception is staggering.
The contempt for Rama must have been immense.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
Absolutely, But by twenty nineteen things were getting tense. People
in the neighborhood started noticing this mysterious veiled woman coming
and going all the time.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
They tried to figure out who it was.
Speaker 2 (07:11):
Yeah, apparently there were attempts at surveillance, people trying to
catch a glimpse, but Dyah always managed to slip away undetected. Still,
the pressure was mounting.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
So Diya gets nervous.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
He does. He starts pushing Rama, you need to get
a divorce.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
Now, and she finally asks Ramadan.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
She does confronts him, and he immediately says, no, flat refusal.
Speaker 1 (07:32):
Why just controlling her?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
That's the tragic irony. He refused. According to the reports
for the children, he said he didn't want to break
up the family. He had no idea, absolutely zero clue
about the affair or that her real motive was to
get the inheritance and marry Dya.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
He was completely oblivious to the plot simmering right under
his nose, completely.
Speaker 2 (07:52):
And that refusal sealed his fate. Rama called Diya right
after the conversation was blunt, divorce is off the table.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
So the only way out.
Speaker 2 (08:00):
Was murder, and it had to look like a robbery.
That was crucial for them to inherit the wealth without
suspicion falling on them.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
And they use his routine against him perfectly.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
They knew he worked late, often staying up managing his
affairs until the early morning, and then slept late, usually
waking up around the time of the afternoon prayer. Rama
knew is scheduled down to the minute.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
After twelve years, So the day of the crime, how
did it unfold?
Speaker 2 (08:24):
It's chillingly methodical. Around two point pm, Rama does her
usual thing, takes the kids downstairs to the salon. She
runs seems perfectly normal. About ten minutes later, she heads
back upstairs, tells people she forgot something plausible.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Enough, but the real reason wasn't forgetting something.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
No, the real reason was to unlock the apartment door,
leave it just slightly, Ajar, setting the stage for Dya's entry.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Then she goes back downstairs, so back.
Speaker 2 (08:49):
To the salon, sits down and makes the call, signals
to Dya it's clear, come.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Now, and Dya just walks in, walks.
Speaker 2 (08:57):
Right into the building, up the stairs through the unlocked door,
finds Ramadan asleep in bed. This is around three thirty pm.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
And the attack itself, it sounds like it was.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Brutal, extremely this wasn't just about killing him quickly. Dya
used a knife they bought specifically for this. He slit
Ramadan's throat first, god then stabbed him repeatedly with what
sounds like intense personal hatred. Ramadan apparently struggled briefly fell
from the bed, but Diya just kept scabbing until he
was absolutely sure Ramadan was dead.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Well. Rama is downstairs.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Downstairs in the salon, working calmly, interacting with customers with
their children, maintaining this perfect alibi for another hour and
a half until five pm. The coldness is profound, and
at five pm she goes back up, makes her discovery,
but first she does the final staging, ransacks the place,
(09:50):
pulling out drawers, scattering things. Then she screams that theatrical
neighborhood alerting scream.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
And the police initially bought the robbery's story.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
To some extent, I mean, the scene chaotic. Ramadan was
known to be wealthy. It fit the surface narrative, but
good detectives noticed things that don't quite add up, like what.
Two key things stood out pretty quickly. First, no forced entry.
The door was open, normally suggesting the killer was let
in or knew how to get in without force. That
didn't quite fit a random robbery okay.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
And the second thing, the level of violence.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
The sheer brutality slitting someone's throat is usually fatal fairly
quickly to multiple stab wounds after that suggested something much
more personal, rage of Ndebta, not just a thief trying
to grab cash and run.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
And then there was Rama herself exactly the police.
Speaker 2 (10:35):
Seasoned observers of grief noted her reaction. It felt off,
over the top, exaggerated. Was the word used too much performance,
not enough genuine shock or sorrow.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
And neighbors confirmed that feeling they were uneasy about her.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Apparently, so there was already this background noise of unease
about her among some neighbors, perhaps related to the veiled visitor,
perhaps just a general feeling. Her reaction just amplified existing
suspicions for the police, so.
Speaker 1 (11:03):
That suspicion was enough to dig deeper.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Absolutely, they put her under surveillance, specifically her phone, and
that's where the affair with Dya burst into the open.
Speaker 1 (11:11):
They found messages, loads.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Of them, romantic messages, intimate messages, clear evidence of the relationship.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
And the crucial piece, the smoking gun.
Speaker 2 (11:20):
Was one specific message sent from Diya to Rama, the
timestamp three point three pm, exactly when the coroner estimated
the murder was completed, and the content chillingly simple, just
three words, everything was finished. Wow, game over pretty much.
They arrested both of them. Rama confessed to the plant
almost immediately, but then she instantly tried to save herself
(11:42):
wow by throwing Diya completely under the bus, said he
acted alone, that he'd threatened Ramadan, which was a blatant lie,
especially since Ramadan had actually helped Dya financially in the past.
Classic betrayal upon betrayal.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
But Diya didn't play along.
Speaker 2 (11:56):
No, faced with the evidence, especially that message, dia confess
everything confirmed the whole plan. Why he did it so
he and Rama could get married inherit the money, just
like they had agreed.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
So the case was solid, ironclad.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, the evidence, the confessions, it all pointed one way.
Both Rama and Dah were tried, convicted, and ultimately sentenced
to death.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
A truly devastating outcome. They destroyed so many lives, Ramadan's obviously,
their own, their families, and those poor children.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
The three children caught right in the middle of this
whole horrifying mess. It's just catastrophic.
Speaker 1 (12:31):
So when you step back and look at this whole thing, Yeah,
what does it tell us for you listening right now?
What's the takeaway here?
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Well, it's a stark look at how a marriage built
on let's face it, transactional needs rather than genuine connection,
can just curdle into something truly monstrous. The resentment built
over that age gap, combined with pure greed, it overrated
everything else.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
And the sheer coldness of Rama's planning is terrifying. The
way she compartmentalized running a business, raising kids, plotting a murder, staging,
a crime scene, all behind this mask of normalcy.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
That's perhaps the most unnerving part, isn't it That ability
to maintain the facade, to operate with such calculation while
appearing completely ordinary.
Speaker 1 (13:13):
Yeah, and think about the double betrayal at the end.
She was willing to betray Ramadan, the man who, despite everything,
seemed to genuinely love her in his own obsessive way,
and also Daya, the man who literally killed for her,
threw his own life away for their plan.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
She turned on everyone to save herself. And it makes
you wonder, doesn't it, how much darkness can hide just
beneath the surface of everyday life, waiting for the right pressures,
the right moment to just explode.
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