True Crime All The Time - Mohammed Adam Omar

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

In June 2001, Mohammed Adam Omar, a man known as the Sana’a Ripper, was executed in Yemen. He was suspected of the murders of up to 16 women in Yemen and many others in different countries. Omar worked as a morgue technician at Sana’a University and lured female students to the morgue under the guise of helping them with their studies. He then brutally attacked and murdered his victims. One determined mother brought him to the police’s attention. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss Omar, the Sana'a Ripper. At one point, Omar confessed to killing over 50 women in multiple countries. But in the end, he tried to say that he killed two. That's only one of the questions that remain in Omar's case. Just exactly how many women did he kill? Also, it appears as though he was involved in a body part ring. Many people think others involved were in the upper echelon of society and therefore protected from prosecution.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation informationAn Emash Digital productionThis episode is sponsored by Better Help. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/TCATTSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hello everyone and welcome to episode 310 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in True Crime. Mike Gibson, how are you? Hey, I'm doing good. How about yourself? I am doing very well, much better than I was last week. I had a rough week last week.

Did you? We talked about it. It's the timing of the time change and the... The timing of the time change really got me. Really got me. I can see why. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. had Sandy Peddles Nantucket jump out at our highest level.

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go back into the vault. This week, we selected Megan Smith. That Megan Smith, she's always showing up. Yeah, so a lot of new support. Big shout out to the people that continue to support us. We also had some great PayPal donations from Deanna Johnson. Hey, Deanna. Lina Robeson.

Hey, thanks, Lena. And Sally Karp. Well, appreciate that, Sally. Yeah, thanks to all of you. So Gibbs, right now on Unsolved, we have an episode out on Tara Kallel. It's a pretty well-known, unsolved case. It is. And there are some ties to an unsolved episode that we did way back.

I think it was episode 72 about the polarites. Yes. So many people may remember that. But there's a tie-in with Tara Calico. And so that's what we're talking about. So we'll slide on over and give it a listen. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.

All right, buddy. Are you ready to get into this episode of true crime all the time? I'm ready. We are talking about a man named Mohamed Omar, known as the Sanah Ripper. So it was in June 2001 that Omar was executed in Yemen. He was suspected of the murders of up to 16 women in Yemen and many others in different countries. Omar worked as a morgue technician at Sanaa University and lured female students to the morgue, under the guise of helping them with their studies.

He then brutally attacked and murdered his victims. It took one determined mother to bring him to the attention of police. We're at the Yemen. And like I said on Patreon, I didn't even have to look it up. I knew for a fact, you and I had never gone to Yemen. No. Wasn't even sure where Yemen was. But this is a fascinating case.

There are a lot of interesting details. There's also some grizzles. ones, Muhammad Adam Omar was a man known as the Sanah Ripper. Omar was a rapist and murderer who murdered anywhere from 2 to 16 young women from 1996 to 2000. He strangled his victims and allegedly kept their organs for trading. And he was believed to be a member of a widespread international network. People like to buy organs.

I don't know if they like to buy them, but there is a black market for organs. We know that. Right. You know, there's the movie trope or the TV trope of someone waking up in an ice-filled bathtub missing an organ. Yeah. Unfortunately, that kind of stuff happens. It reminds me of that one time that you invited me to a hotel. I walked in.

I saw the ice in the bathtub, and I knew immediately I had to get out. out of there. I don't even know why you showed up because the first tip off should have been, why is Fergie inviting me to a hotel? And why did you show up with champagne and roses? I never did understand that. What you thought this whole hotel rendezvous was going to be about. I thought, okay. All right. Here we go. It's finally happening. It's all. So, Mohammed Adam Omar was born in 1952. He was originally from Sudan. He worked as a morgue assistant at Sana'a University. He was arrested after the mother of one of the missing students, a young woman from Iraq, filed a complaint that her daughter went missing in December 1999. The mother suspected that

Omar was involved, according to the Yemen Times. Authorities did not seem to be convinced about the Iraqi mother story. And Adam was soon released to carry on his brutal acts of raping, killing, and mutilating university students in a small room in the college more. So, I mean, if that doesn't clue you in as to what we're about ready to get into it, it's going to be rough. Yes, it absolutely is. On December 13th, 1999, 22-year-old medical.

student Zainab, Saud Aziz, went missing at Sanaai University in Sanaa, which is the capital of Yemen. Zaynab's family was from Iraq. Now, sources differ on her age, but they all agree that she was a young woman in her 20s. And again, this is something you and I talk about often. You know, you're gathering research information from all kinds of different articles. You look at Article A and it says that this person's 21. The next article you look at says that she was 23 and 25. And, you know, it's really hard unless you can find three or four that are listing her age, you know, consistent.

Consistent, exactly the same. When Zainab went missing in December of 1999, her family suspected that she was kidnapped to prevent her from testifying it. an inquest about a grade rigging racket. Wow. Something that I know you know a lot about. I just wanted to change a few of my grades in school. Which seems strange if you were this dogy-houser-like prodigy, why did you need to change any of your grades?

Well, that's because A-plus wasn't enough. I want that other plus after that. A second plus. Absolutely. And that people didn't find that strange at all. No. The family's, beliefs were strengthened when Zaynab's uncle Hassan, Motlack traveled to Sana and went missing.

According to the Gulf News, he had also received threatening phone calls telling him to stop looking for Zanab or he would face the same fate. All right, that's a pretty scary proposition. It sure is. You have someone in your family who's gone missing. Obviously, you're going to look for them. Right. You want to know where they are, what's happened to them. to get a phone call out of the blue saying you better stop looking or something bad is going to happen to you. Number one, it's going to scare the bejibis out of you. Right. And I think number two, it only strengthens your thought process that, you know, something really bad is going on here. Yeah. Now you're thinking, well, now we know something did happen to her. It later came out that

he was arrested and held without charge. And according to, Gulf news. Zanab's family said this was an effort to stifle their own investigation into Zanab's disappearance. And that's an interesting statement because if true, that would mean that some municipality, some law enforcement agency would have been wrapped up into that. Yeah. Kind of scary thinking about it that way. Yeah, it really is. Six weeks after Zainab went missing. Rumors came out that she hadn't been kidnapped. One rumor was that she had been raped, murdered, and dismembered. But the Gulf News reported that Zainab's family suspected there was a plot by Yemen officials to sweep the matter under the carpet.

They also wrote that the family claimed that the police investigating Zainab's disappearance spun tales that she had been detained by Yemeni intelligence. because she was involved in political activity. Family reached out to the intelligence service, and they were told that they were not holding Zanab. Zanab's file then went missing from the registrations and admissions department of the university. So there's a lot of stuff going on with the disappearance of this young woman.

In March 2000, her family started to fear that she was dead. Her mother refused to believe that her daughter was abducted. Early in the investigation, she suspected that the university medical morgue assistant was involved. Well, mom's instincts are pretty darn good, you know? Well, we're going to find out. She was pretty spot on here. She insisted that Mohammed Adam Omar be arrested and questioned. Now, the police did question him along with another student.

these individuals, but they were both released for lack of evidence. But Zanab's mom, Karima, refused to accept this. And she told the police to search their homes, as well as the university morgue. She told Gulf News, I had a strong feeling, but no evidence. I was convinced that Omar was the kidnapper, but how could I prove it? And you want to talk about a helpless feeling? Oh, for sure. this lady's on the mark.

She knows it in her gut. She's going to turn out to be right. We know that. But she's very limited. She has no power. She's not law enforcement. She has no official capacity, no power. And all she can really do is hound the authorities to keep looking at this guy.

And I think she does a good job of that, right, keeping the pressure on. Yeah. And the other thing that happened was some. of Zainab's friends reported that she was seen with Omar near the morgue before she went missing on December 13th, 1999. Okay, that's pretty good evidence. I think so. Zanab's mother armed with that information insisted that the police conduct a thorough search of the morgue. And it was on May 10th, 2000, that two mutilated female bodies were found at Sana'i University. Zaynab Aziz and Hosen Etayah.

Hosen was a member of the Hamdan tribe in Yemen, described by the Guardian as one of Yemen's largest and most influential tribes. But let's get back to the finding of two mutilated bodies found at this university. Well, one of them turns out to be Zainab. We already know that some of her friends said that, she was seen near the morgue with Muhammad Omar. Yeah, they're able to place them together. He's not looking too good.

Not at all. At this point, investigators eventually found the remains of more young women inside the university morgue and at other places on campus. Some of these women had parts of their bodies removed. On May 12th, a mortuary technician, Mohamed Adam Omar, was arrested and he eventually confessed to raping and murdering 16 women, including Zainab and Hosen. According to the police, Omar tried to end his own life using the glass from his glasses, but police were able to stop him.

It's a rough way to kind of go about that. Popping your lens out. Breaking it and then using it to try to complete suicide. Yeah. Omar had lived in Kuwait and Jordan. And at one point, he was expelled. from both of these countries. It was also believed that he had once lived in Israel.

He served time in prison there for an unknown crime. After his arrest, investigators were sent to Jordan, Kuwait, and Sudan. So we already mentioned, right, he confessed to 16 murders in Yemen. But he wasn't done. He eventually confessed to more murders. On top of the 16 murders in Yemen, he said that he had murdered 50, women in Kuwait, Jordan, Lebanon, and Yemen since 1975. Wow, over 50 people.

Spanning 25 years. Yeah. So I'm no math whiz, but that's around two women a year. Yeah. Did he kill? According to The Guardian, he said his motive was to send them to heaven. And I mentioned 25 years. You know, to me, it's always kind of mind bogg.

how someone gets away with pretty much doing the same thing over and over in the same place to the same, you know, type of individuals for that long of a period of time. Yeah. How does no one catch on? Well, either he's really good or just simply lucky. Or the authorities weren't good at putting the pieces of the puzzle together or even linking these deaths. Now, they did happen in a number of different countries.

So obviously that's going to be a barrier to putting them all together. The weekly newspaper September 26 quoted Omar saying after his arrest, when I see women and especially beautiful ones, something happens inside me and I can't resist. Something pushes me to kill and I even enjoy it. Man, we have heard that before. And I will say, Gives, as we come up on our six year anniversary, It never stops shocking me. When people talk about the enjoyment that they get from ending the life of another human being. Yeah, scary. Talk about relishing in, you know, some of these acts. Tommy Lin-Sells talked about enjoying seeing the light go out of his victim's eyes. And it sends a chill. It does. Down my spine, just, you know, thinking that.

So let's put it in perspective. I enjoy playing the Xbox. Not hurting anybody. A wife might get upset every now and then because she thinks I should be using my time in a more constructive way. Yeah. But I get enjoyment from that. I get relaxation from that. Now, take that and transfer it to another individual who gets their enjoyment from stalking, hunting, killing, dismembering.

I just can't understand it. I don't think I ever will and probably shouldn't be able to. Well, there you go. You shouldn't be able to because you're not a monster. But you think after six years, you and I would be a little desensitized to that? I am not. And it hits me every time.

According to the paper, during this interview, Omar approached a female reporter and told her, beautiful women like you should not be allowed to live. And this comment caused the reporter to scream and run away. This is something he really believed. He's making these comments. You know, this is, and he's actually taking action in the past on this.

Well, okay, I get it. It's something he believed. Why is he telling the paper this? You know, that's the other thing I don't understand. I get it. There are individuals who have some really strange notions, strange fantasies, strange thoughts. Now, he's already confessed. so maybe he doesn't care,

but why are you going to sit down and give an interview and just kind of let it be known that this is the way you feel? During the same interview, Omar also claimed to be a Sudanese boxing champion. What is it with killers claiming that they're these incredible boxers? I don't know. What he said was he lured medical students

to the mortuary by promising to help them with their studies. he killed them by hitting them in the head. Now, in this interview, he denied selling the victim's body parts, but said that he cut off victims hands and feet, dissolved them in chemicals, and kept the bones as mementos. He didn't even say souvenirs. He said mementos. He used the word mementos. He told September 26, I regret what I did.

And I want to purify myself by turning to God. executing me would purify me from my sense. So the one thing that he didn't do was shy away from what he had done, right? It's not like he said, no, I didn't do this or, you know, concocted a bunch of alibis or stories or whatever. Right. He was accepting. He admitted to everything.

And it sounds like he was ready to take his punishment going as far as saying, you know, go ahead and execute me. And he should be executed. This guy did a lot of really terrible things, and he did it for a very long time. Well, it also doesn't sound like he was remorseful or, you know, really anything like that. He just thought he was doing God's will.

Which is also a very strange notion, right, to think that God would want you to murder 51 individuals, 51 women cut up their body parts, dissolved them. According to a later article from The Guardian, Omar also named members of the university staff, who according to him, were part of a racket that sold body parts. He said that he videotaped the murders and rapes. He said he kept the bones, disposed of the bodies and sewers

and on various places on campus, and sold some of the body parts as well as some of his victims' belongings. So obviously this guy's a monster. But you also have these other individuals that are involved in helping sell the body parts. And then you have these individuals out there buying the body parts. Who are these individuals buying body parts? What are they using them for? Yeah, maybe we'll get into some of that.

But I think to your point, obviously we're focused on Omar here. but it sounds as though there were a lot of individuals doing some pretty nasty stuff. True crime all the time is sponsored by BetterHelp. You know, unfortunately, life doesn't come with a user manual. So when it's not working for you, it's normal to feel stuck. There's a lot of things in life that can make us feel unsure, whether it's a career change, a new relationship, or becoming a parent. Therapists are trained to help you figure out the cause of challenging emotions and learn

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He told her that he was a well-known professor at the medical school. And I guess she visited him several times in the mortuary. They had sex over 12 times before he murdered her. In 1995, four more women were killed. One of the victims, according to the Yemen Times, was named Yasmin. In 1996, he murdered two girls. One of the girls asked him to provide body organs. He asked this girl to come to the morgue.

morgue. And this girl brought with her a friend, but the friend waited outside for her. Once this girl entered the morgue, Adam sprayed a chemical on her face. She went unconscious and fell to the ground. He was worried that he would get caught. So he called the friend in and sprayed her with the same chemical. And according to the guardian, he later said he dissolved both women's bodies and acid. Again, he's a monster. Which is how you get. discussed on true crime all the time. Yeah, that's true. One of his victims he saw in what he later described as a compromising pose with a

friend. So I guess he approached these two girls and he gave them a lecture about Islamic morals. He ended up blackmailing one of the girls to get her into the morgue where he murdered her. So he had a lot of different tactics, right? But the end goal, it seems, was always. the same. How do I get these women, girls, down into the morgue? Because that's where I'm going to do these really, you know, heinous things. And who is he to be giving lectures on morals?

Well, yeah. I mean, when he's doing what he's doing. Well, it's a good point. But what is he doing it? Right. That's the question. He's not doing it to be a good guy to help them on a better path. he's doing it so that he can get something out of it. Yeah. And what he wants is to lure someone down into his morgue. Omar said that he tempted one student into the morgue with the promise of getting high grades in anatomy. He reportedly charged her a fee of $2,500 US, but she failed to pay. When she was about to expose him, he lured her to the morgue and killed her.

So this guy has said a lot of things. He talked a lot. And I think at one point he said that the college of medicine there was in disarray. And that's how he was able to get away with murder for so long. He committed his murders during the day. The Yemen Times learned that he asked his victims to come to the more normally around 4 p.m. So we talked about, you know, how does a guy kill 51 women? Right.

over the span of 25 years. I think he's shedding some light on it, right? This college of medicine was in disarray. Nobody knew what was going on. I'm taking from it. I'm reading into it, but no one was really keeping tabs on him, checking in on him.

So he felt as though he had pretty much free reign. He could do whatever he wanted to do. Made it easy for him to get away with it. Well, there's no doubt. And look at that from the business perspective. the experience that you and I have working in the business world, if you run a tight ship, there's no doubt that people will try to get away with less. Now, if you're really loosey-goosey with things and you don't seem to care, what inevitably happens. People try to take advantage.

They take an extra long lunch like you used to do to me. They don't show up for work. Because why? They don't think you care. They don't think you're going to enforce the rule. But then you realize some people do enforce those rules. Come down with the hammer of four. That's right. No longer did I take a longer lunch than I was allowed. You got no lunch. Gruel.

I got negative lunch. It was just gruel and water. It went the opposite way. I got negative lunch. According to the Yemen Times, more than 60 different reports had been sent to the authorities about the notorious activities of Muhammad Amar. However, it seems, at least by some of the writing that we looked at, that a lot of this stuff was just kind of swept under the rug. Adam says that he is not alone and that he was assisted by others whom he didn't want to identify.

So I think this does kind of go back to the ring or the racket kind of side of things. I think this guy wanted to kill. I think so too. But it also sounds like there was a financial motive. There was a bigger network, bigger thing at play. Yeah, I guess it gave him a purpose. And maybe a cover. Yeah, I don't know.

Yeah. I don't know. Sanii University issued a statement after his arrest that they had only been contacted by two family members about two missing students. It came out that Omar was fired in December 1999 for bribery. but he was then reinstated. Then the university fired him in February 2000 for corruption. The College of Medicine's report confirmed by the criminal investigation states that

Adam was arrested in 1999 for accepting bribes. He spent 10 days in prison but was allowed to return to work. What place of employment could you be found guilty for taking bribes? Spend 10 days in prison and then they say, yeah, just come on. Come on back to you doing your job, man. We need you here. Just don't take no more bribes. According to the Yemen Times, security sources said that the killer sent pictures and documents of the victims, along with a cassette recording to people in Sudan.

These security sources also said that a committee from the Ministry of Interior traveled to Sudan to investigate this. Now, that's interesting, right? So why do that? Why are you taking the pictures and sending the pictures and documents of the victims and some cassette recording to some people? Why would you do that? Because of the network you belong to? Well, I think that's the point. Who are you sending them to?

This is real incriminating stuff. You're not sending them to your childhood friend back in Sudan, right? this has to be to some people who either you're trying to impress or people who are into this type of thing, maybe involved in this same type of racket or whatever. After Omar's arrest, media outlets announced that they were looking for three associates that they suspected of being involved. On May 15th, 2000, the University Board of Directors issued a statement after their meeting. they said,

Muhammad Adam was sent to investigation for taking bribes in December 1999. As he was proved guilty, he was fired in the beginning of February 2000. When the Iraqi mother informed the college of the disappearance of her daughter, the college immediately informed the criminal investigation that carried on a field investigation until it unraveled the crime on May 12th when it found two bodies, one of which was of the Iraqi victim. The college did not receive any reports on other disappearing students.

Only two bodies were found at the college. The University Board of Directors is following up results of interrogation of the administration until the completion of the investigation. So, you know, obviously they've got to put something out because they don't look great. They don't. In the aftermath of, you know, kind of all of this stuff coming out, I think they're trying to do a little C.YA. It sounds like in these different bullet points that they're putting out in their statement, on May 16, 2000, the Yemen parliament announced the formation of a commission to investigate the murders. Because, you know, if you think about it at this point, only two bodies had been found. one was a student from Iraq and the other was a student from Yemen.

Both bodies were hidden in the morgue. But he's already confessed to 50, 60, whatever the total number was, murders. Yeah. So maybe we should get a task force to kind of figure out what's going on. Yeah, who the victims were and where are they? Now, it's believed that Omar smuggled and sold the body parts of his victim. to other countries for experimentation and organ transplants. It's also believed that he used his victim's bodies for autopsy lessons that he held

at the university. So you have the police. And at this time, they were reportedly searching for three associates of his who were suspected of being involved in this smuggling ring or racket or, you know, whatever you want to call it, but I want to go back to, you know, what I just talked about, you know, the question that we posed. Okay, what was he doing with all these body parts? Well, then it comes out. It sounds like some were going for experimentation, some were going for organ transplants. And then he was using the bodies of his own victims to teach lessons on performing autopsies at the school.

I mean, that's pretty brazen, right? I would say so. Yeah. I mean, nobody's going to question how did this person die? And maybe that goes back to, you know, just how much in disarray was this college. And it's specifically the College of Medicine at this university. I would say they were definitely in disarray. Well, it almost sounds like this guy had free reign of the morgue.

He just had dead bodies and nobody really kept track of who they were or where they came from. I don't know a lot about morgues in general. I do know we have a lot of people listening who work in morgues. We have some that are coroners. I'm sure they'll write in. I have to imagine that there's an accounting process. for the bodies that come in and out. I'm assuming it's kind of like a hotel registration.

You know, you check it in. Eventually you check out. You check out. But there's paperwork, right? There's a system. It sounds like here there was no system whatsoever.

This guy just did whatever the heck he wanted to do. Well, no paperwork, no trail that could come back and get you maybe. He couldn't have afforded to have paperwork. No. On May 16, 2000, Students from the College of Medicine held a sit-in strike on campus and demanded that the administration speed up their investigation, announce the results, and interrogate the College Board of Directors and Security, as well as outlined future measures to avoid a repeat of what happened.

Okay, that sounds pretty reasonable to me. You got a lot of students who are probably scared. Yeah. And they want to know that their administration is doing. something. They want to know the results. They also want some things put in place to make sure that nothing like this could ever happen again. You want insurance, right? Taha Hussein, the student and member of the Secretary General of Students' Rights and Freedoms Committee told the Yemen Times, security men were all the time busy monitoring students' activities and checking cards while they were overlooking many incidents of

theft, embezzlement, and recently of brutal murders. Hussein also said that there were complaints about Muhammad Omar sent to the authorities, but nothing ever happened. And I think we said earlier, there were over 60 reports filed about the activities, specifically on Muhammad Adam Omar. In late May, the Yemen police announced the discovery of the remains of, the remains of of 15 women. Some of these women were headless and buried on campus or hidden in the sewer system at the medical school. Now, you used the word brazen. Right. Before. I don't know if it's brazen or

just dumb. I'm kind of thinking just dumb at this point. Because I get it. This guy was a monster and he's you know, carrying out all these very heinous act. But then it was almost like he took very little precautions. Now, he did try to dissolve some of the body parts and acid. We talked about that, but burying the bodies on campus, that seems so strange to me. And risky. Well, yeah, risky, dumb, a good way to get caught. I think you could use all those. On May 27, 2000, on the opening day of his trial, Mohamed Adam Omar pleaded guilty to the murder, rape and dismemberment of 16 women. Prosecutor sought the death penalty.

You know, the other thing that struck me in this case is just how quickly everything happened. You know, granted, this guy had been killing for 25 years. Right. But once they were on to him. Once they were on to him, it was wrapped up very quickly. He went to trial very quickly. On the 29th, Omar admitted in court to killing 11. women while working at the University of Khartoum in Sudan.

He also admitted to some murders in Africa and other places in the Middle East. He pled guilty to these new charges on the second day of his trial. Local media outlets in Yemen suspected that he murdered over 50 women over a 20 to 25 year period. And Omar himself admitted that he wasn't sure. He told some outlets that he lost count of the number of victims he killed. Now, you want to talk about a scary thought. It's you've killed so many people.

You don't even know what the real number is. Yeah, that is scary. The BBC reported that Omar told the judge, the charges are true. This is what I confess to willingly and by choice. Omar's lawyer failed to show up to court. So he said he did. didn't need a lawyer, adding, I cannot defend what I did. What has happened has happened.

If I do not receive punishment, I might go back to my crimes again. So in no way is this guy trying to get out of anything. No, he's saying up front, if you don't put me away, I'm probably going to do this again. Yeah. And I think you could probably take out the word probably. Yeah, that's true. Or might. He said might. I think he would have kept doing it. He'll do it again. Like a lot of killers. Very few of. them in my opinion stop just stop on their own serial killers right people that have murdered multiple individuals because like we talked about they develop uh i don't want to use the word taste but they get a certain feeling from doing what they do and then they it's like they're chasing

that feeling they're going after it they want it again and again again yeah they're high prosecutor said in court that he had hated women since he was seven years old. And the inciting incident for his hatred of women, they said, was when his mother cheated on his father. In response to this, his father killed his mother's lover and cut up his body. Wow. So he's mad at his mom and therefore maybe develops a hatred towards all women. But it's also telling to me that his father dismembered this man that he killed because Muhammad Omar goes on to dismember his victims as well. He learned it from his dad. Omar said, I never trusted a woman since that day. I don't believe that my son is my son. And I don't believe that my children are my

children. It was believed at the time that he had a wife in Yemen and two children with a Sudanese woman that he had divorced. But I, Obviously, he didn't believe that any of these kids were his. He said that. Right. The prosecution said that stealing gold from the victims was another motive for the crimes. They also said that Omar had an accomplice who was a Yemeni woman, but he killed her. Because she knew too much.

I don't know that to be the reason, but I think that's a pretty good supposition. According to the Yemen Times, Omar, was also accused by Yasmin Aloadi of selling the victim's goal. Yasmin fell in love with Omar, but he murdered her when she told him

that she was pregnant. He said that he regretted killing Yasmin because in his words, he might have had a good relationship with her, but he hated all women. Yeah. He didn't trust anyone. So I just thought

some of this was interesting. You know, him saying I never trusted a woman from the time that he was seven years old, but he apparently married a couple of times. He had some children with some different women. And he murdered this Yasmin, but said he regretted it because he thought they really could have had something together. I've said it before. I will say it again. Life's too short for a day without fun. Get a thrill whenever you need it with slot a mania. The world's number one free slots game, you'll have endless excitement at your fingertips with 170 free to play slot games, huge jackpots, and interactive community, and a million free coins. It's the perfect escape from your daily routine. I love

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one million free coins. That's Slotomania on the app store or Google Play Store for one million free coins. On May 30th, the Yemen Times reported that students from the medical school chose to file a criminal suit against university administration and security guards for failing to carry out their duties. The Yemen Times wrote that when Zanab's mother approached the school. She was dismissed by the dean. She went to the dean's office and was told that he was not responsible for 5,000 students. Security guards implied that Zainab eloped with a friend. The vice minister of the interior suggested that she looked for Zainab in apartments and dance floors. So it really does sound like she was dismissed by everyone she encountered. It really does. Because they actually

did do that. And what about this dean saying that he wasn't responsible for 5,000 students? Is that the whole purpose and kind of the definition of a dean? You're responsible for all the students. Yeah. To a degree. I mean, you can't monitor each and every person at all times, but you have the overarching responsibility. It's like a CEO of a company, right? You're, it's your people. You're responsible for them. Yeah. The buck stops with you. Yeah. When I was a dean, I cared about everybody. I know you did. That's just the way you roll.

So there were a number of demonstrations. We talked about the threats. Well, the students eventually did carry them out. They had multiple demonstrations. One was led by Zanab's mother. She and protesters marched from the university to the cabinet office where they were holding a meeting. And she was one of six people who were chosen to meet with the prime minister.

after this demonstration, the prime minister ordered the suspension of the dean, the vice dean, and all security guards at the College of Medicine. So obviously he didn't feel as though they had done a very good job. Well, because they did not. The Yemen Times reported that after Adam's arrest, the Sudanese community in Yemen released a statement, condemning his crimes and saying that it was not a reflection of Sudanese people. And that makes sense. I mean,

I don't care where you're from. You know, if it came out tomorrow, Gibbs, that there was a serial killer living here in, in my community. Yeah.

Okay, well, people are going to come out and say, this is not a bad place. This guy, I'm assuming as a guy, is not a reflection

of our city as a whole. Absolutely not. We're not bad people. This guy's a bad person. He doesn't, you know, reflect our values and all that. I could understand why they would come out and do that.

The Guardian reported that in early June 2000, three members of the university staff were arrested. Muhammad Omar named these three individuals as his accomplices in the trading of body parts. So again, we're going back to this racket. Yeah. And kind of unraveling that piece of it, Muhammad appeared before the magistrate on Saturday, June 3, 2000. And it was during this appearance that he changed his confession and said that he only murdered two students. And it was, you know, the one woman from Iraq and the one student from Yemen. He told the court, I only killed two students, Hosen, A. Yemeni, and Zanab and Iraqi.

And why would he do that? Why would he change his story? I don't know. Why did any of these guys? change their stories. Yeah. Why do they admit to killing 30, 40, 50, 60 people sometimes go into great detail. And this guy even took it a step further and confessed in court and said, yeah, everything I said was true. But now he's saying, you know what?

No, I only killed two people only. Get your air quotes up. Now, there were some reports that the reason he retracted his entire confession was because, one of the victim showed up in court. The week before, he was shown a photograph of a woman named Nada Yassin, who was listed as missing since 1998. Omar confessed to murdering her and even gave details about the murder. But on June 3, 2000, Nada showed up in court.

She told the judge that she wanted to set the record straight because the press had reported her death. Okay. Now we got to Henry Lee Lucas. situation going on where an individual is confessing to a crime, this crime being a murder that is later proven obviously to be false because the person is still a lot. She showed up in court, fully covered by a black cloak and veil with only her eyes showing. The judge asked her to remove her veil and have her sister who was in court verify her identity.

When Nada showed her face, her sister cried and hugged her. and she told the judge that it was her sister. According to the Guardian, Nada Yassin, left her home in Abu Dhabi in 1991 to study medicine at Sunah University. According to her sister Aisha, she regularly contacted her family until October 1998. But that's when she stopped calling. And she also stopped collecting her monthly allowance. Would make things very suspicious.

Yeah. I would be very worried as a parent. After Nada revealed her face, one journalist noted that she looked different from some of the pictures of her. And something she said in court didn't line up with what her relatives said. And Nadiyaasin wasn't the only person on the victim list to come forward. The Associated Press reported that two other women contacted them on June 3rd. and said they were medical students at the university who were reported missing.

They were assumed to be victims of Muhammad Omar, but obviously they couldn't have been. They were both alive as well. Yeah, they were present. Newspapers had printed a list of the 16 victims based on Omar's confessions, but Omar told the judge, I killed only two women. They accused me of killing 16 women, and I said, yes. I don't know why I said, I killed the other. others. Why would you ever say yes to something if you didn't do it, knowing what the outcome could be?

Well, now you're talking about numerous wrongful convictions where people have confessed, though. Now, the one thing I will say is, you know, he's not going into great detail that, you know, these were coerced or that he was beaten or anything like that. He just says that they said you killed them and he said, yeah, I did. But prosecutors said they had proof that connect. Omar to more than two murders. Forensic reports stated that the remains of five people were found in the Sana'a University Medical School Mort. So the judge decided to reopen all the investigations in the case. In late June 2000, dozens of bodies and body parts found in the university mortuary were sent to Germany for DNA testing to see if they matched the victims of Muhammad Omar. The court,

heard that German forensic experts searched the mortuary and found 21 bodies, two sets of mutilated remains, and what they described as dozens of body parts. German experts were able to confirm that at least two of the women they found were murdered. One of them was from Yemen and one was from Iraq. And they are two of the victims Omar confessed to killing. Experts believe that not all of the bodies they found were listed in records. Some were used to train med students, but at least eight were unidentified. And their presence in the mortuary is still unexplained. The experts reported that the body parts could have come from many different bodies. So, you know, the one thing that I have to point out here is that the setting for these murders and really for the investigation is a mortuary.

Yeah. It's not somebody's home. No. Where you would not expect to find a number of bodies. So it has to make it much, much more difficult. You're not digging in someone's crawl space and Gacy's crawl space and uncovering bodies that you know have no business being there. I mean, really is almost the perfect cover up. Yeah. The only scenario that I could really think of that, might be better for a killer would kind of to be have their own crematorium or work in a crematorium something like that on november 19th 2000 the court sentenced mohamadham omar to death for the murders of two students and it was said Gibbs that he only had a 60 day window before he would be executed by firing squad or beheaded he was also ordered to receive 80 lashes for alcoholism.

That's not something you hear in a lot of true crime episodes. You do not. 80 lashes. Omar confessed to strangling the victims, dismembering their bodies, dissolving the remains in acid, and throwing the remains in a sewer. And we said, right,

these German scientists were able to confirm that two women were victims of Omar, but even though he had confessed to so many murder, it sounds to me like it was really just these two murders that they were able to conclusively put on to him. Yeah, but even at that, I mean, at least it should get a bad guy put away.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think what we're going to be debating here is how many people did this guy really kill, how many body parts, how much of it got lost in what was a strange setting, right?

mortuary, this morgue. University staff were questioned based on the suspicion that Omar didn't act alone. The court also ordered the university to pay over 30,000 pounds in compensation to the victim's families. On January 21st, 2001, Yemeni authorities claim that Omar was a Mossad agent. According to Gulf news, the officer in charge of Omar's case alleged that he had been working for the Massad since the 1970s, and that he had entered Yemen several times since the mid-70s and confessed to doing so. According to this guy, Omar was arrested in Yemen in the mid-70s and spent time in jail. He was released and deported. He entered Yemen again in 1984 to spy on Palestinian military camps. There are some reports that he was in Lebanon in the 1980s and then moved to Jordan.

it was reported by Gulf News that he used fake passports and that one of his Jordanian passports with the name John Adam was confiscated. So now we got a real Jason Bourne thing. Getting ready to say that. That's thrown into the minutes. So this guy that said he was an officer in charge of Omar told papers that Omar being recruited as a morgue assistant was all arranged and that he was really recruited by a Sudanese professor at the university. So this was a big rabbit hole in this case. We really could have gone down it quite a bit. There's a lot of, like I said, Jason Bourne type stuff with conspiracy theories of him

being an agent placed in this position. But on June 20th, 2001, Muhammad Adam Omar was executed by firing squad in a square near the university complex. He was sentenced to death for the murders of Hosen, Ataya, and Zainab Aziz. Thousands of people witnessed this execution. So he first got his 80 lashes for drinking alcohol. Right.

Which is banned in Yemen. That's why he got the 80 lashes. Then he was shot five times in the heart, killing him. Zanab's family was angry, that they weren't invited to witness Omar's. And they voiced some suspicions that he wasn't actually executed. But we just said a thousand people watched. Zaynab's mother told Gulf News, I've been killed three times.

First, when my only daughter was kidnapped from her university. Second, when Zanab's body was cut into pieces by Omar. And now finally, by the Yemeni authorities. Gibbs, this woman demanded to execute Omar himself. Oh, she wanted to... She wanted to pull the trigger. Yeah. But her request was denied.

She said, it was only my feeling, which led the whole world and the authorities to the serial killer. And now I feel that Omar is still alive because I did not see him die. I do not believe that he was executed. And I think the main crux of the problem was that they weren't local, right? They didn't live in Yemen. they wanted the authorities to postpone it so that they could travel, but the authorities wouldn't do it. They were told they could have a video cassette of the execution. Can you imagine that?

No. No, I cannot. Hey guys, gather around. They also requested to view the body and have a phone placed over Omar's head before he was executed so that they could hear his voice. All that was denied. They also were not told where he was buried. Well, because they would probably go dig him up, right? Just to verify that it was him.

Yeah, I understand that. So, but all of this, I think, kind of led to them not completely believing that he really was killed. It just takes a little bit of doubt. Get people thinking. According to Gulf News, Zanab's family was still left with many questions, such as why was Zanab's uncle arrested and held without charges until right before Zanab was found? why do the authorities seem reluctant to investigate the possible selling of body parts? Why did two mystery women tried to poison Zainab's family when they visited Sanat?

Why did Yemeni authorities insist that Zainab be buried in Yemen and not in Iraq? Why did they refuse to hand over her remains for almost a year? So obviously this family went through hell. They lost a daughter. They did. Yeah. But then even after that came out, it just sounds like for them it was one nightmare after another.

They didn't trust the authorities. They still don't trust the authorities. They also believe that there was a bunch of people trying to kill them. I think in their minds, it's impossible to trust the authorities. Yeah, I would agree. In August 2001, the New York Times published an article on remaining questions in the case. They wrote much about the trial, including. curious shifts in the prosecution's case at the trial, and Mr. Omar's frustrated efforts to offer

a version of events, different from that of the prosecution, worried many yemenis. A common view voiced widely in Senaz's bazaars was that Mr. Omar may have been the scapegoat in a wider sex and murder scandal, possibly involving dozens of murders that might have involved powerful figures protected at the trial. Well, I can see where they get this theory. Yeah, I mean, when you look at the number of murders he initially confessed to, we asked the question, why would he do that? Well, was it to protect other powerful figures?

Maybe. I don't know. It's a theory. According to the New York Times, one theory among people who doubted the prosecutors was that the morgue was used to dispose of the bodies of women who were involved with brothels in Sana'a. President Ali Abdullah Saleh and officials at the school denied that anything was wrong with the trial. The Yemen Times reported the general belief among the public is that there are partners and motivations for committing these crimes and those partners

may amazingly be among the highest classes of society. I don't know if any of this is true. What I will say is it wouldn't be the first case in history where powerful people were protected. Very true. That has happened time and time again throughout history. And probably will continue on. It probably will. According to local papers, Omar made a final appeal to be allowed to make a statement before his execution. According to his lawyer, Omar was only given one chance to make a statement away from police and prosecutors, this statement happened during a preliminary stage of the trial when he was allowed to see his lawyer in prison. But when officials from the political security organization, which has been described by the New York Times as a shadowy agency,

widely feared in Yemen, overheard Omar saying that he wanted to make a statement, different from the prosecution, they ended the meeting. His lawyer said, we had three. He had three, five or six minutes together, no more, and that was the last time I was ever able to speak to him alone. Originally, prosecutor said that Omar killed 51 women, but according to New York Times, as inconsistencies came to light, the state shifted, saying there had only been 16 victims, all in Yemen, and that Mr. Omar had only ever worked previously in his native Sudan as a Khartoum hospital grave dick. Then at trial, he was only charged with two murders. The two students found in

the more drains. Both victims' families expressed their wishes to have the cases reopened, but the government refused and said that based on their review, Omar acted alone. The new foreign minister of Yemen, who was the founding dean of the medical school in the 1980s, initially criticized the school at trial for failing to keep accurate records of their cadavers. In another interview, he said, it's a closed issue. Interesting, huh? Well, it goes back to the conversation we had earlier. Is there not a system in place to keep track of cadavers that are, you know, going into and

coming out of this more? Yeah, pretty simple process, I would think. Omar's lawyer told the New York Times, I believe we will ultimately know the truth with the passage of time. And my personal belief is that when we do, we will finally know that Mohammed Adam Omar never killed anybody. I kind of wish that he was given the opportunity to have a one-on-one with his attorney in private without having the secret police break it up. Right. And maybe that's part of conspiracy theories. You know, if he's allowed to talk, does he implicate some of these powerful figures. It's been 21 years since the execution of Adam Omar. Although his case is officially

closed, you'd have to say Gibbs are still some questions remaining about number one, possible accomplices. And then I think number two, to go along with that, it's the selling of victims body parts. It's this body part racket that has been referred to. I don't know. if we'll ever get all of the answers to these questions in this case. It seems to me as though, whether you believe in some of the conspiracy theories or not, everything's kind of shut down. Yeah. Like, okay, we got him convicted of the two murders.

He was executed. We're done. We're not looking into anything else. No more follow up. Yeah. That's kind of the way it seems. And I think any time you have that, it's going to, lead to a lot of speculation. It's going to lead to people throwing out conspiracy theories and

stuff like that. So, you know, his lawyer said, I don't think he killed anyone, but he said he killed two. Yeah. These two girls, these two women, for which he was ultimately convicted. At one point, he said he killed 51 or maybe even more. I don't know. It's such a strange story that unlike a lot of cases, I don't really know where I'm even leaning towards. It's kind of hard to believe what really happened besides knowing the two. Yeah, I believe those two. Right. For sure. Try to figure out what occurred with everything else. But then I think a lot of people would make the argument. Okay, if he killed those two women. Right. Are you telling me he didn't kill more? He didn't, he wasn't part of this body part racket.

But, you know, at this point, it's just conjecture and speculation. I don't know that we'll ever really know. But that's it for our story on Muhammad, Adam, Omar, and our first trip to Yemen. Yeah, we were in Yemen. We were. Time to get back home. It's a long flight. Long flight.

We got some voicemails. You want to check those out? Let's hear them. Hi, guys. This is Erica from San Diego. I was just curious. I know I'm. I'm further back than you guys are currently,

so I'm not sure if you guys are currently doing this. But I was, I thought it would be fun if you guys did, it doesn't have to be like a set thing or like set time, but if you guys did like bloopers or like at the end of an episode, I know you guys are always funny during the episode. It's always funny. sometimes when you guys just accidentally forgot forget that the mic is still on i don't know if you have thought about that or if anybody else has mentioned it maybe just like one or two things that

that happens during an episode i think would be funny and just something else to get people cracking up because you guys are really great um so i hope you are all doing well and keep on time taking. Have a good day. All right. Awesome. Thanks for the voicemail. So we have over the years put bloopers out on Patreon. You have. Now, I haven't done it in a while. I need to get back to it. The other thing is, I feel like we used to mess up a lot more. We did. When we were first starting out. Yeah. There were a lot more of what I would call bloopers. Like, we would go down whole avenues. Oh, yeah. For five, 10 minutes and realize that we didn't know what. to heck we were talking about. That's true. And we were totally off base. Yeah. And we had to backtrack and

kind of redo it. So I would throw that up on there. Yeah. Or us making a bunch of mistakes. And there's been times you accidentally forgot to turn the mic off. Or on. Or on. I've been a couple of times where we've recorded entire episodes or we've gotten like 30 minutes in. It was so good too. And it was all. It was gold, Jerry. Yeah. And I look over and no, the light's not red. I know. Hey, guys. This is Oliver from Stockbridge, Georgia. I'm just just wondering, since you all read so much about true crime,

if you had any cases that you just, like that one case that you just won't read about or look into. For me, it's the Hinter-Kifeck murders. I literally, like, almost, like, shut down whenever I see, like, somebody post something about it. I absolutely cannot watch it, listen to it, hear about it, nothing. So I was wondering if you guys had any cases like that, like that one that just said it's a little too close to home. I love listening. You guys are doing a great job and I hope you're feeling well and I hope your families are feeling well. So for me, I would say the answer is no. I mean, there's no case that I just absolutely can't look into or, you know, hear about. I think you have had some. Yeah.

That you just did not want to do. I shy away from. Yes. Little, I don't want to say you used the word squeamish, but some of them hit you very, very hard. They do. Not saying that I'm, I'm a heartless person. No. Just that they don't affect me maybe in the same way that they do for you sometimes. The one thing I will say is we try to shy away from, from those that are more in the media spotlight. There have been some where we've been working on.

And then wouldn't you know it, Netflix comes out with another true crime doc. Right. On the subject that we were going to do and we don't do it. Because I feel like, I don't know. I feel like it's almost like bandwagon type thing. Yeah. And I don't want people to think that we're jumping on it.

That's right. Hi, this is Alicia. I was just listening to the Reginald Brooks episode. And do you make a comment about artificial raspberry flavoring coming from the anal glands of fever? But it's actually the vanilla flavoring. I don't know if this has already been addressed because I'm not caught up yet. But I just thought I would throw that out there. Um, love you guys, much love from southern West Virginia.

Um, stay safe and keep your own time ticking, guys. Yeah, that came up quite a bit. It did. And still does from time to time. Yeah. I will say you have argued vehemently. Yeah. About that.

You still claim to be one of the nation's foremost experts on, uh, beaver anal glands, which is, I don't know why you put it on a business card. I thought that was over the top, but. So you go squeeze one? You don't know. Do what you do what you want to do. Raspberry, vanilla. Whatever it makes.

I'm really not into it now. So we had no mailbag this week. So that is it for another episode of true crime all the time. So for Mike and givey. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.