October 13, 2025 • 13 mins
This case tells the grim downfall of Haniya al-Shanbari and her husband, Khader, parents of six. Dissatisfied with her marriage and facing financial strain, Haniya sought a way out. Online she met Mohamed Ibrahim Ramadan, a registered offender in Egypt, and spun a story about moving there for a better life. She persuaded Khader to join her, unaware he was walking into a trap. Together, Haniya and Mohamed enlisted Magdy al-Baghdadi, who ambushed and killed Khader, dumping his body in a sewage canal after stealing his belongings but leaving his passport behind. That detail, along with Facebook conversations between Haniya and Mohamed, gave investigators the trail they needed. The conspiracy quickly unraveled, and by 2023, Haniya, Mohamed, and Magdy were sentenced to death, their plot exposed as a chilling mix of betrayal, greed, and calculated deception.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So we're doing a deep dive today into a really
intricate criminal conspiracy. It's quite a story, Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're talking about six years of planning, crossing.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Border Palestine to Egypt and it all comes down to
this plot a wife against her husband, driven by years
of resentment, and.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It ends tragically and the Egyptian desert. But let's start
right where it really heats up at the discovery. Okay,
where are we March twenty twenty one, but Drashan, Giza Governorate, Egypt.
Picture this dried, dusty air of farmer's out near his fields, right,
and he sees something odd, something bundled, half submerged in
(00:37):
a mass rof sahi. That's a local sewage drain stagnant
water grim scene.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay, so the plice are called in.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
They are they retrieve the body. It's a man fully clothed,
which is you know, a bit strange if it was
just a robbery.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, usually they take everything.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Exactly, but all his valuables are gone. Looks like a straightforward,
if brutal mugging at first glance, but there's one thing
left behind. What's that tucked away in his back pocket?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
A passport a passport they left ID that seems.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Careless or maybe intentional. You'll get to that. The passport
identifies him Catter Shinbari, forty one years old, Palestinian citizen. Okay,
and here's the kicker, the really crucial detail. He'd only
been in Egypt for twenty days.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Twenty days, Wow, that's.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
That's nothing, rarely landed. So the immediate question is what
on earth happened to Catter in those like three weeks.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Right? To understand the murder, you can't just look at
those twenty days, can you.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
No, you absolutely have to rewind years back. You have
to understand the relationship he had with the person closest
to him, his.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Wife, honey, Ali Gebber.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
That's her. Let's go back to two thousand and five.
Catter's twenty five, she's about twenty one, four years younger.
They get married and.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
They start a family that one right, Yeah, six kids
over the next ten years. So from the outside looking in,
probably seem like a normal, maybe even happy family life.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
But appearances can be deceiving, as they say, very much so.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Here the information suggests the relationship really soured over time,
and the main driver seems to have been financial pressure.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
More kids, less money. That's a classic stressor exactly. Katter's
ability to provide apparently declined as the family grew, and
this seems to have built up a lot of resentment,
certainly on Hanya's side.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Okay, but then there's this conflict in the story. Isn't
there about abuse?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Right? This is where it gets really interesting and frankly
quite murky. Later on, Hennya claims Catter was abusive, physically abusive.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
To her and the children, trying to justify her actions.
Perhaps it certainly.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Looks that way, especially when you compare it to what
others said their neighbors back in Palestine. They completely contradicted
her story, uniformly say they described Catter as a good father, dedicated,
someone who really cared about his kid's happiness. It paints
a very different picture.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So the abuse claim seems convenient, at least, maybe not
the real root cause.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
It strongly suggests the motive wasn't self defense or escaping abuse.
It points more towards well malice, resentment over their life,
their financial situation, and.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
She fixated on one solution, not divorce.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Never divorce. That's key. From about twenty seventeen, onwards. Her
one single goal appears to be getting rid of Catter
permanently and crucially doing it in a way that would
leave zero trace back to her. That was always the focus.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
A six year obsession, as Johnny So twenty seventeen is
when she starts actively plotting.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yes, that's when the first concrete plan seems to emerge.
She starts pushing Cotter really hard to leave Palestine. Fine
work abroad, but he didn't want to go. No, he
wanted to stay with the family, with his kids, but
she was relentless. Eventually she wears him down, convinces him
their only hope is a legal immigration to Europe.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Okay, so he agrees to this dangerous journey.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
He does. But here's the truly dark part. Hanya wasn't
just sending him off. She was secretly coordinating with the
smuggler who was arranging.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
The boat, coordinating how she.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Gave him instructions and payment. The instruction was to throw
caught her overboard mid journey, in the middle of the sea.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Just murder amid sea.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yes, cold blooded. But then she calls it off last minute.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
She had a change of heart.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Second thoughts doesn't seem like it was morals or love
kicking in it was purely tactical. She realized the flaw
in the plan. What if someone else on the boat survived.
What if they reported the murder, the smuggler would be caught, right, and.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
He'd immediately point a finger at her to save himself.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Exactly. So she aborted the plan, not because it was wrong,
but because the risk of her getting caught was too high.
Risk assessment, pure and.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Simple, incredible. So that plan fails. She needs a new approach,
someone maybe more controllable.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Uh closer precisely, which brings us to twenty twenty one.
She needs a new pawn.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Enter the Internet, right.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Facebook Henye is three seven, now still married, still plodding.
She connects online with Mohammed Ibrahim Ramadan. He's Egyptian, twenty
five years old, works in a plastics factory, and crucially crucially,
he's described as a registered offender, already known to the police.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
That seems significant, potentially easier to influence, or maybe just
less risk averse.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Perhaps both, and Honey plays this masterfully. She starts feeding
him details about her unhappy life, carefully grooming him, building.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
This connection, seducing him basically.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Essentially, Yes, She eventually tells him she's in love with him,
wants to marry him, but the just.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
One obstacle her husband, COTTERR.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Cotter, he's the only thing standing in their way. According
to her narrative, Mohammed is completely taken in hook line
and Sinker, ready to do whatever she.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Asks, and he gives her the next step she needs.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
He does. He tells her, Okay, if we're going to
be together, you need to come to Egypt. Bring the
whole family, Cotter, the kids, everyone, come here and I
will handle the problem.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Which is exactly what she wanted. She needed Cotter on
Egyptian soil, where Mohammad could operate.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
It gives her the perfect excuse.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So how does she convince Coddr To uproot the entire
family and move to.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Egypt another calculated deception. She tells him she's found a connection,
supposedly through friend's husband, a broker in Egypt who can
get him good work, find them a place to live,
sort everything.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Out, and Cotter, desperate for a solution, buys it.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
He does he wants to provide for his family. This
sounds like the answer, so in March twenty twenty one,
they arrive Cotter, Hanya and all six children, and.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Guess who meets them, playing the role of the helpful
broker Mohammed.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Of course, he even rents them an apartment in Badrashan.
And where does he rent it.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Let me guess, right next door to his own place.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Got it right next door? Maximum convenience for planning and
for the affair.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Okay, So this is the start of those final twenty
days the countdown begins, it does.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
And he trusts Mohammed completely. This guy is his lifeline,
his only friend, his fixer in this new country.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
While Cotter's out pounding the pavement looking for these jobs,
Mohammad supposedly is lined.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Up and encouraged by Hanya to go out, you know,
keep looking.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Mohammed and Hania are together in the apartment, plotting.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Plotting the murder, yes, and carrying on their affair. And
just get this, Hania is pregnant.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Pregnant with her seventh child during all this.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yes, pregnant, but completely focused on the affair and the
intricate details of how they're going to kill her husband,
the father of her children, including the one she's carrying.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
The level of compartmentalization is staggering.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
It really is. So they're strategizing and Mohammad decides he
needs backup for the actual act.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
He's not gonna do to himself.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
No, he outsources the wet work. Essentially, he contacts mag
Biel Dagdati fifty one years old, lives in Saquara and
let me guess, another registered offender. Mohammad pays him specifically
to carry out the murder.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So now we have Hania the masterfind Mohammed the lover
and facilitator, and Magdie the hired killer.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
That's the core team. The plan is set.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
How do they lure caught?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
March twentieth, twenty twenty one, Mohammad calls Cotter says, great news,
found some solid job opportunity.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Playing the helpful broker role to the end exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
They spend the whole day together, visiting potential workplaces, talking
about the future, cementing that trust one last time. This
goes on until evening. Ben On the way back home, supposedly,
Mohammad suggests a quick detour, says he needs to pick
something up from his place.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
But he takes an unusual route.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, Cotter apparently notices the path is strange. It's deserted
quiet off the main track. But he's with Mohammed, his friend, right,
so he doesn't suspect anything fatal. He trusts him, He
trusts him, and that trust is broken in the most
brutal way possible. In this desolate, isolated spot, Magdi appears,
just emerges from the fields like an ambush. He's carrying
(08:48):
a schuma basically a heavy, thick club, and he just
attacks Catter viciously, going hits him repeatedly on the head,
fractures his skull, makes absolutely sure he's dead.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Jesus. Okay, so Katter is dead. What do Mohammed and
Magdi do?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Then they rob him, take his money, his phone, anything valuable,
make it look like a robbery, but they leave the
passport deliberately, deliberately leave the passport in his back pocket.
That was part of their plan, remember for quick identification.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Okay, And then they need to dispose.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Of the body, right, They bring in one more person,
a fourth accomplice, said d l a Sale. He's twenty two,
owns a tooktop.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
A getaway driver essentially, yeah, more like.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
A transport service for the body. They use his TikTok
to move Kater's body to that sewage, drain the mass
rofsaki and dump it there where the farmer eventually finds him.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
The whole thing is just meticulously planned, step by step.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Every stage was thought out, the lure, the ambush, the
clean up, the disposal.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
So the body's dumped, what's the immediate next step for
Hanye and Mohammed.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Mohammed sends Hanya a message on Facebook basically saying job done.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Confirmed on Facebook. Seriously, seriously, we'll come back to that
critical err. Then they wait two days, let a little
time pass, and then then they walk into the police
station together to file a missing person report for Cada.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Playing the part of the worried wife and the helpful
friends exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Their calculation was, Okay, the body will be found quickly
because of the passport. It'll looked like a robbery murder.
By filing the report, they appear cooperative, grieving, deflects any
possible suspicion away from them. Almost clever, almost. But they
made some huge miscalculations, didn't they, especially about the police.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Massive miscalculations. They underestimated the investigators. The police already had
the body already id'd cotterer thanks to that passport. They
so helpfully left, So.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
The investigation wasn't starting from scratch when they walked.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
In, not at all. The police knew who the victim was,
and they knew he'd only been in Egypt twenty days,
So who did he know? Who were his contacts?
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Mohammed the broker is only real contact.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
And not just any contact a registered offender. That's an
immediate red flag for the police. Right, He's instantly person
number one on their list.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
So Muhammad was flagged straight away. What about hernia?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Standard procedure in spousal death often involves looking closely at
the spouse, so suspicion naturally falls on her too. Investigators
start digging into their connection, and.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
They used Facebook.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
And they used.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Facebook for everything, the grooming, the planning, the coordination, and
that final confirmation message That was the fatal flaw.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
They managed all the physical logistics, moving countries, hiring killers,
staging a scene, but failed completely on digital security totally.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
The investigators suspecting the affair and her involvement, got access
to those messages.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
All of it.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
The entire plot laid bare in their Facebook chat history.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So picture this. Hani and Muhammad walk into the flee station,
ready to put on their performance.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Thinking they've got the perfect cover story, ready to act distraught.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
And instead the police basically say thanks for coming in,
We've already read your messages confirming the murder.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
USh exactly that. They were confronted right there and then
with printed copies of their own incriminating Facebook messages, including
Mohammad's job done message.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Wow, arrested on the spot.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Instantly, the perfect plan crumbled because of a digital footprint
they never thought would be traced.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
It's just such a contrast, isn't it. The years of careful,
sinister planning, the multiple accomplices, the international move, this staged robbery, all.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That complexity undone by well traceable dms. It's almost bafflingly
arrogant or naive maybe both.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
What happened to them in the end and Magdi The.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Wheels of justice turned relatively quickly in this case. In
twenty twenty three, Hania, Mohammad, and the hitman Magdi al
Baghdati were all sentenced to death.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
And the fourth accomplice, the Tip Tuck driver.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
The sources focus mainly on the three primary conspirators receiving
the death penalty hey Hanya.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
The descriptions from the court room.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, reportedly quite dramatic. She was seen crying holding her
newborn baby, the seventh child she was pregnant with during
the plotting trying to evoke sympathy, it seems.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Despite orchestrating the murder of the father for seven.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Children, exactly seven children left without a father directly because
of her actions. Cotter's body, by the way, was eventually
returned to Palestine. He got a proper burial back home.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Such a tragic end, and it leaves you with this
really disturbing question, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It really does.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
What kind of mindset, what level of I don't know,
deep seated malice and utter self absorption does it take
to plot for six years to kill your spouse, your partner,
the father of your.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Children, to try it once and fail, then regroup and
try again.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
All while living with him, raising those kids, even carrying
another one of his children during the final stages of
the plot. It's hard to comprehend that level of sustained
deception and coldness.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
It really is that chilling dedication, that psychological aspect that's
maybe the most haunting part of this whole story for
you to think about.
So we're doing a deep dive today into a really
intricate criminal conspiracy. It's quite a story, Yeah, it really is.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're talking about six years of planning, crossing.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Border Palestine to Egypt and it all comes down to
this plot a wife against her husband, driven by years
of resentment, and.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It ends tragically and the Egyptian desert. But let's start
right where it really heats up at the discovery. Okay,
where are we March twenty twenty one, but Drashan, Giza Governorate, Egypt.
Picture this dried, dusty air of farmer's out near his fields, right,
and he sees something odd, something bundled, half submerged in
(00:37):
a mass rof sahi. That's a local sewage drain stagnant
water grim scene.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Okay, so the plice are called in.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
They are they retrieve the body. It's a man fully clothed,
which is you know, a bit strange if it was
just a robbery.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, usually they take everything.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Exactly, but all his valuables are gone. Looks like a straightforward,
if brutal mugging at first glance, but there's one thing
left behind. What's that tucked away in his back pocket?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
A passport a passport they left ID that seems.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Careless or maybe intentional. You'll get to that. The passport
identifies him Catter Shinbari, forty one years old, Palestinian citizen. Okay,
and here's the kicker, the really crucial detail. He'd only
been in Egypt for twenty days.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
Twenty days, Wow, that's.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
That's nothing, rarely landed. So the immediate question is what
on earth happened to Catter in those like three weeks.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
Right? To understand the murder, you can't just look at
those twenty days, can you.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
No, you absolutely have to rewind years back. You have
to understand the relationship he had with the person closest
to him, his.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
Wife, honey, Ali Gebber.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
That's her. Let's go back to two thousand and five.
Catter's twenty five, she's about twenty one, four years younger.
They get married and.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
They start a family that one right, Yeah, six kids
over the next ten years. So from the outside looking in,
probably seem like a normal, maybe even happy family life.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
But appearances can be deceiving, as they say, very much so.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
Here the information suggests the relationship really soured over time,
and the main driver seems to have been financial pressure.
Speaker 2 (02:08):
More kids, less money. That's a classic stressor exactly. Katter's
ability to provide apparently declined as the family grew, and
this seems to have built up a lot of resentment,
certainly on Hanya's side.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Okay, but then there's this conflict in the story. Isn't
there about abuse?
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Right? This is where it gets really interesting and frankly
quite murky. Later on, Hennya claims Catter was abusive, physically abusive.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
To her and the children, trying to justify her actions.
Perhaps it certainly.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
Looks that way, especially when you compare it to what
others said their neighbors back in Palestine. They completely contradicted
her story, uniformly say they described Catter as a good father, dedicated,
someone who really cared about his kid's happiness. It paints
a very different picture.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
So the abuse claim seems convenient, at least, maybe not
the real root cause.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
It strongly suggests the motive wasn't self defense or escaping abuse.
It points more towards well malice, resentment over their life,
their financial situation, and.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
She fixated on one solution, not divorce.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Never divorce. That's key. From about twenty seventeen, onwards. Her
one single goal appears to be getting rid of Catter
permanently and crucially doing it in a way that would
leave zero trace back to her. That was always the focus.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
A six year obsession, as Johnny So twenty seventeen is
when she starts actively plotting.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Yes, that's when the first concrete plan seems to emerge.
She starts pushing Cotter really hard to leave Palestine. Fine
work abroad, but he didn't want to go. No, he
wanted to stay with the family, with his kids, but
she was relentless. Eventually she wears him down, convinces him
their only hope is a legal immigration to Europe.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Okay, so he agrees to this dangerous journey.
Speaker 2 (03:51):
He does. But here's the truly dark part. Hanya wasn't
just sending him off. She was secretly coordinating with the
smuggler who was arranging.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
The boat, coordinating how she.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Gave him instructions and payment. The instruction was to throw
caught her overboard mid journey, in the middle of the sea.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Just murder amid sea.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yes, cold blooded. But then she calls it off last minute.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
She had a change of heart.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Second thoughts doesn't seem like it was morals or love
kicking in it was purely tactical. She realized the flaw
in the plan. What if someone else on the boat survived.
What if they reported the murder, the smuggler would be caught, right, and.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
He'd immediately point a finger at her to save himself.
Speaker 2 (04:32):
Exactly. So she aborted the plan, not because it was wrong,
but because the risk of her getting caught was too high.
Risk assessment, pure and.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
Simple, incredible. So that plan fails. She needs a new approach,
someone maybe more controllable.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Uh closer precisely, which brings us to twenty twenty one.
She needs a new pawn.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
Enter the Internet, right.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Facebook Henye is three seven, now still married, still plodding.
She connects online with Mohammed Ibrahim Ramadan. He's Egyptian, twenty
five years old, works in a plastics factory, and crucially crucially,
he's described as a registered offender, already known to the police.
Speaker 1 (05:11):
That seems significant, potentially easier to influence, or maybe just
less risk averse.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Perhaps both, and Honey plays this masterfully. She starts feeding
him details about her unhappy life, carefully grooming him, building.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
This connection, seducing him basically.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
Essentially, Yes, She eventually tells him she's in love with him,
wants to marry him, but the just.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
One obstacle her husband, COTTERR.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Cotter, he's the only thing standing in their way. According
to her narrative, Mohammed is completely taken in hook line
and Sinker, ready to do whatever she.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Asks, and he gives her the next step she needs.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
He does. He tells her, Okay, if we're going to
be together, you need to come to Egypt. Bring the
whole family, Cotter, the kids, everyone, come here and I
will handle the problem.
Speaker 1 (05:54):
Which is exactly what she wanted. She needed Cotter on
Egyptian soil, where Mohammad could operate.
Speaker 2 (06:00):
It gives her the perfect excuse.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
So how does she convince Coddr To uproot the entire
family and move to.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Egypt another calculated deception. She tells him she's found a connection,
supposedly through friend's husband, a broker in Egypt who can
get him good work, find them a place to live,
sort everything.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Out, and Cotter, desperate for a solution, buys it.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
He does he wants to provide for his family. This
sounds like the answer, so in March twenty twenty one,
they arrive Cotter, Hanya and all six children, and.
Speaker 1 (06:27):
Guess who meets them, playing the role of the helpful
broker Mohammed.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
Of course, he even rents them an apartment in Badrashan.
And where does he rent it.
Speaker 1 (06:35):
Let me guess, right next door to his own place.
Speaker 2 (06:38):
Got it right next door? Maximum convenience for planning and
for the affair.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
Okay, So this is the start of those final twenty
days the countdown begins, it does.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
And he trusts Mohammed completely. This guy is his lifeline,
his only friend, his fixer in this new country.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
While Cotter's out pounding the pavement looking for these jobs,
Mohammad supposedly is lined.
Speaker 2 (06:59):
Up and encouraged by Hanya to go out, you know,
keep looking.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
Mohammed and Hania are together in the apartment, plotting.
Speaker 2 (07:07):
Plotting the murder, yes, and carrying on their affair. And
just get this, Hania is pregnant.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Pregnant with her seventh child during all this.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yes, pregnant, but completely focused on the affair and the
intricate details of how they're going to kill her husband,
the father of her children, including the one she's carrying.
Speaker 1 (07:25):
The level of compartmentalization is staggering.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
It really is. So they're strategizing and Mohammad decides he
needs backup for the actual act.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
He's not gonna do to himself.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
No, he outsources the wet work. Essentially, he contacts mag
Biel Dagdati fifty one years old, lives in Saquara and
let me guess, another registered offender. Mohammad pays him specifically
to carry out the murder.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
So now we have Hania the masterfind Mohammed the lover
and facilitator, and Magdie the hired killer.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
That's the core team. The plan is set.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
How do they lure caught?
Speaker 2 (08:00):
March twentieth, twenty twenty one, Mohammad calls Cotter says, great news,
found some solid job opportunity.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Playing the helpful broker role to the end exactly.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
They spend the whole day together, visiting potential workplaces, talking
about the future, cementing that trust one last time. This
goes on until evening. Ben On the way back home, supposedly,
Mohammad suggests a quick detour, says he needs to pick
something up from his place.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
But he takes an unusual route.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
Yeah, Cotter apparently notices the path is strange. It's deserted
quiet off the main track. But he's with Mohammed, his friend, right,
so he doesn't suspect anything fatal. He trusts him, He
trusts him, and that trust is broken in the most
brutal way possible. In this desolate, isolated spot, Magdi appears,
just emerges from the fields like an ambush. He's carrying
(08:48):
a schuma basically a heavy, thick club, and he just
attacks Catter viciously, going hits him repeatedly on the head,
fractures his skull, makes absolutely sure he's dead.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Jesus. Okay, so Katter is dead. What do Mohammed and
Magdi do?
Speaker 2 (09:02):
Then they rob him, take his money, his phone, anything valuable,
make it look like a robbery, but they leave the
passport deliberately, deliberately leave the passport in his back pocket.
That was part of their plan, remember for quick identification.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Okay, And then they need to dispose.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
Of the body, right, They bring in one more person,
a fourth accomplice, said d l a Sale. He's twenty two,
owns a tooktop.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
A getaway driver essentially, yeah, more like.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
A transport service for the body. They use his TikTok
to move Kater's body to that sewage, drain the mass
rofsaki and dump it there where the farmer eventually finds him.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
The whole thing is just meticulously planned, step by step.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Every stage was thought out, the lure, the ambush, the
clean up, the disposal.
Speaker 1 (09:45):
So the body's dumped, what's the immediate next step for
Hanye and Mohammed.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
Mohammed sends Hanya a message on Facebook basically saying job done.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Confirmed on Facebook. Seriously, seriously, we'll come back to that
critical err. Then they wait two days, let a little
time pass, and then then they walk into the police
station together to file a missing person report for Cada.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Playing the part of the worried wife and the helpful
friends exactly.
Speaker 1 (10:13):
Their calculation was, Okay, the body will be found quickly
because of the passport. It'll looked like a robbery murder.
By filing the report, they appear cooperative, grieving, deflects any
possible suspicion away from them. Almost clever, almost. But they
made some huge miscalculations, didn't they, especially about the police.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Massive miscalculations. They underestimated the investigators. The police already had
the body already id'd cotterer thanks to that passport. They
so helpfully left, So.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
The investigation wasn't starting from scratch when they walked.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
In, not at all. The police knew who the victim was,
and they knew he'd only been in Egypt twenty days,
So who did he know? Who were his contacts?
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Mohammed the broker is only real contact.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
And not just any contact a registered offender. That's an
immediate red flag for the police. Right, He's instantly person
number one on their list.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
So Muhammad was flagged straight away. What about hernia?
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Standard procedure in spousal death often involves looking closely at
the spouse, so suspicion naturally falls on her too. Investigators
start digging into their connection, and.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
They used Facebook.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
And they used.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Facebook for everything, the grooming, the planning, the coordination, and
that final confirmation message That was the fatal flaw.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
They managed all the physical logistics, moving countries, hiring killers,
staging a scene, but failed completely on digital security totally.
Speaker 2 (11:37):
The investigators suspecting the affair and her involvement, got access
to those messages.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
All of it.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
The entire plot laid bare in their Facebook chat history.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
So picture this. Hani and Muhammad walk into the flee station,
ready to put on their performance.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Thinking they've got the perfect cover story, ready to act distraught.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
And instead the police basically say thanks for coming in,
We've already read your messages confirming the murder.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
USh exactly that. They were confronted right there and then
with printed copies of their own incriminating Facebook messages, including
Mohammad's job done message.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Wow, arrested on the spot.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Instantly, the perfect plan crumbled because of a digital footprint
they never thought would be traced.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
It's just such a contrast, isn't it. The years of careful,
sinister planning, the multiple accomplices, the international move, this staged robbery, all.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
That complexity undone by well traceable dms. It's almost bafflingly
arrogant or naive maybe both.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
What happened to them in the end and Magdi The.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Wheels of justice turned relatively quickly in this case. In
twenty twenty three, Hania, Mohammad, and the hitman Magdi al
Baghdati were all sentenced to death.
Speaker 1 (12:45):
And the fourth accomplice, the Tip Tuck driver.
Speaker 2 (12:48):
The sources focus mainly on the three primary conspirators receiving
the death penalty hey Hanya.
Speaker 1 (12:53):
The descriptions from the court room.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
Yeah, reportedly quite dramatic. She was seen crying holding her
newborn baby, the seventh child she was pregnant with during
the plotting trying to evoke sympathy, it seems.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Despite orchestrating the murder of the father for seven.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Children, exactly seven children left without a father directly because
of her actions. Cotter's body, by the way, was eventually
returned to Palestine. He got a proper burial back home.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Such a tragic end, and it leaves you with this
really disturbing question, doesn't it.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
It really does.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
What kind of mindset, what level of I don't know,
deep seated malice and utter self absorption does it take
to plot for six years to kill your spouse, your partner,
the father of your.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Children, to try it once and fail, then regroup and
try again.
Speaker 1 (13:39):
All while living with him, raising those kids, even carrying
another one of his children during the final stages of
the plot. It's hard to comprehend that level of sustained
deception and coldness.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
It really is that chilling dedication, that psychological aspect that's
maybe the most haunting part of this whole story for
you to think about.
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