True Crime Campfire - Hate Crime: The Murder of Nazish Noorani

Episode Date: November 6, 2020

Hate can take many forms. There’s the kind that’s just fear and bigotry—the ugliest human failings—in disguise. There’s the kind that’s really just the dark mirror image of love. I loved you, you hurt me, I hate you. There’s the kind that’s born of envy. And then there’s the kind of hate that’s all about selfishness. “You’re in the way of something I want.” Each of these incarnations is dangerous in its own way. In the story we’re about to tell you, a brutal murder seems at first to be about one very specific kind of hate. But as secrets come to light, it turns out to be about another kind entirely.Sources:Investigation Discovery's "Deadline Crime with Tamron Hall," Episode "Witness to Murder"Oxygen's "Snapped: Killer Couples," Episode "Kashif Parvaiz and Antoinette Stephen"https://www.nj.com/morris/2015/06/ex-girlfriend_describes_moms_last_words_after_she.htmlFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. Hate can take many forms. There's the kind that's just fear and bigotry, the ugliest human failings in disguise. There's the kind that's really just the dark mirror of love. I loved you. You hurt me. I hate you. There's the kind that's born of envy. And then there's the kind of hate that's all about selfishness. You're in the way of something I want. Each of these incarnations is dangerous in its own way.

In the story we're about to tell you, a brutal murder seems at first to be about one very specific kind of hate. But as secrets come to light, it turns out to be about another kind entirely. This is hate crime, the murder of Nazish Naurani. So, campers, we're in Buntan, New Jersey, a tight-knit, peaceful Pakistani immigrant community, the night of August 16, 2011. The Naurani family were wrapping up a business. big family dinner. Ramadan was going on, so they were breaking there all day fast, and it was a

kind of celebration. Everybody was all dressed up, they'd made all kinds of special food. Also, it's traditional for anyone who's doing their very first fast to get presents, because children don't fast until they hit puberty, so there were gifts for them, just a big, bright family get together. They were also there to give their youngest sister, Nasish, a bit of a send-off. Nas, or Nas, as they called her, was going to be taking her two kids and moving to Boston soon, to join her husband Kachev Parvez, who was studying for his Ph.D. in architecture at Harvard. They'd been apart for a year, and it had really been weighing on Nizh. It's hard to feel like a family when your husband and the father of your kids is hundreds of miles away.

Everyone started to break up around 11ish and head back to their own homes. Several family members lived within a block of each other on the same street, so they didn't have far to go. Nazish and Kashv started packing up to leave. They put their youngest son in his stroller and asked Naz's sister Lubna if she'd mind to watch the older son for just a few minutes while they packed some stuff into the car. They'd swing the car around and get him in just a bit. So Lubna said sure, and Nas and Kash have headed out, pushing the stroller in front of them. Just a few moments later, Lubna was in the kitchen cleaning up when she heard a sharp pop-pop-pop-pup from outside. Her first thought was fireworks, but then her daughter ran in, terrified, and she realized

something was wrong. Someone was screaming for help outside. Several of the Naurani siblings had heard the noises, and they ran outside to see one of their worst nightmares unfolding in the street. Kashv and Nizh both lay bleeding on the ground from gunshot wounds. Several neighbors were kneeling over them, cell phones in hand to call for help. Their little boy was still in his stroller, untouched but terrified. Kashif was writhing and moaning in pain, grasping his bleeding leg, but Nazish, their gnaz, was quiet and still, eerily still. Someone yelled, She's not breathing.

It didn't take long for paramedics and police to arrive. On the way to the scene, one of the responding officers noticed a blue car, driving like a bat out of hell in the opposite direction, with its headlights off. Odd, but he didn't have time to investigate. The EMTs did everything they could, but Nazish was dead before they reached her.

This beautiful young woman, only 27 years old, such a bright, energetic, loving sister and daughter and wife and mom, lay dead in the street. Her body had blocked her toddler son's stroller from rolling down the steep hill, possibly being killed himself. It was the last thing she ever did for him as his mom. Kachif was still alive, though,

and they rushed him into an ambulance. Amazingly, despite the intense pain he must have been in from the gunshot wounds, he was conscious and talking. And what he told the detectives made their blood run cold. It had been three black men, he said, and before they started shooting, they yelled,

you fucking terrorists. Terrorists? A hate crime? Had bigoted violence invaded their quiet, usually supportive community? It sure sounded like it, and the detectives knew they needed to work fast to nip that awful shit in the bud immediately before it could spread.

Anti-Muslim violence spiked sharply all over the country after 9-11. In Boonton, only an hour from New York, had a big Muslim population. When Nizish's brother, Kaleem, heard about what the shooter had said before opening fire, he thought, it could happen. Any place with a big enough Muslim population could be a target for someone who wanted to act out

their bigoted anger. And the detectives knew that a shooting like this could be enough to spark total panic in the community. They went to the hospital to talk to Kashif. He'd been shot four times, lost a lot of blood, but by some miracle, none of the shots were life-threatening, and Kashif was eager to help. He said, he and Nas were pushing their little boy in a stroller, walking toward their car, when three black men had stepped out of the shadows, shouting bigoted threats and waving guns. Kashiv said he put his hands up in front of him and said, please, don't shoot. But the men had opened fire, shooting him and Nas again and again.

Kashv clearly wanted to help, but he was having trouble with some of the details, mostly with regard to who got shot first, how many shots were fired, stuff like that. It wasn't surprising, given what he'd just been through and the amount of meds he was on at the time. Yeah, definitely. So the detectives brought in one of their most experienced interviewers, Captain Jeff Paul. Captain Paul had decades worth of experience working with crime victims, and he was a calming presence, good at putting people at ease and helping them remember exactly what happened.

He sat down next to Kashif's hospital bed and said, Let's start at the very beginning. Tell me about you and Nazish. Nazish and her family had moved to the States four years earlier, and she'd immediately thrown herself into the life of her adopted country. And one afternoon, at a cultural festival, she met Kashif and got well and truly slept off her feet. Nas was gorgeous, just like him, and she came from a good Muslim family, just like his. Kachif was studying for his master's degree in architecture at the time. He had big ambitions, big plans for his future.

And Nazish fit into them nicely. Kashv had always been firm with his parents that while he'd let them choose his career path for him, he would not let them choose his wife. He wanted to love marriage, not one that they'd arranged for him. But once they met Nazish, any worries they had had about that must have disappeared because Naz was exactly the kind of girl they'd have chosen for him anyway. And thinking about this, I just give him. a mental image of the kind of utter knob that my parents would have picked for me to marry if

they'd had the option, and it is not pretty. I'm just telling you now. But fortunately, they love my husband, so it all worked out. Before long, Kashif and Nasish got married and moved to Brooklyn. They had their two kids, and everything was roses. About a year ago, Kashv took the big leap toward his dream of starting his own architecture company someday. He got his acceptance letter from Harvard. It meant that he and Nas would have to be separated for a little while, though. They decided that the best thing for them to do was for him to go ahead to Boston, get settled into school, find a place to live, and then she and the boys would join him. So he'd been there for about a year now. At first it had been hard, he said, but he made friends fast. And of course,

Nas and the boys were just about to join him. Captain Paul said, okay, so how's your marriage been going lately? And he probably expected this to be a rapport building conversation. And he probably expected this to be a rapport-building conversation, but he also thought, maybe he'll say something important without even realizing it. Maybe he and Nasish were involved in something that led to this somehow. Sometimes when you just let a victim talk, they'll end up zeroing right in on the key to the whole case. What he wasn't expecting was for Kashif to say, we didn't get along. She barely tolerated my presence. She turned her back on me when I was talking, hung up on me when I called. so mere hours after his wife had been gunned down in the street right in front of him

Koshav launched into a tirade about her Nas was greedy, materialistic she spent money they didn't have on useless stuff for the house she cared more about money than she did about him and the children just on and on and on and on damn dude they always always do it Whitney why why do they always do it

Yeah, they just can't help themselves. It's bizarre. They just need on some deep level to share how much they hate their wives, I guess. Just must seem like a good idea at the time. Of course, he was also pretty doped up, probably, so maybe his inhibitions were just really low. But yeah, it is just bizarre. But it happens all the time in these cases. So a minute or so before the captain had sat down and started this conversation, another detective had asked Koshif if they could take his cell phone as evidence. And he'd seemed reluctant, which took the detectives aback. one of them had gotten on his cell phone to start the process of impounding the phone against Koshav's wishes and this was apparently on Koshav's mind now because the next words out of his mouth were

okay look you can go into my phone but you're going to find some pictures and some stuff in there from another woman I've been having an affair Whoa wasn't expecting that Captain Paul just sat back and let him talk Her name was Yelena Belarusitz

and he told her he and Nasish were divorced, which they weren't. They'd met in a lecture in New York five years earlier, so their affair was almost as old as his marriage to Nas had even met Yelina once, he said, but he just introduced her as a friend. And Nas had bought that line at first, but lately Kashiv had a feeling she knew. On one of her visits to his apartment in Boston, Nas had found some bras and panties Yulina had left there, and he tried to play it.

off like, oh, those are yours. Don't you remember? You left him here, which just is hilarious to me. That's some next level gaslight him right there. It's like, oh, come on. You remember this whole ass bra and panty set you've never seen before in your life, don't you? Yeah, nice try, Jack Wagon. Just as a rule, please assume that somebody who owns bras and panties know which ones they own. Yeah, usually. That shit is expensive and we don't easily forget about them. Like, if I, if I can't find one of my bras, I go into full meltdown mode because you have different bras for different situations. Yeah, it's right. It's just worth its weight and platinum. We don't forget what bras we own. Kasha. No. So, obviously, because

she was not a complete potato, Nasish didn't buy this. She told her sister, Lubna, about it later, and she was under no illusions about the fact that her husband was clearly stepping out. She might not have realized how long had a bone going on, though, or how serious it was. So, hmm, an affair. Captain Paul wondered, could there be more to this murder than initially met the eye? Could this Yelena have decided to get her romantic rival out of the picture? Or could she have an angry boyfriend behind the scenes? Who knew?

But the more he spoke with Kosh of Parvez, the more Captain Paul's spidey senses started to jangle. Something just didn't feel right about this guy in the story he was telling. Every time they asked him about the shooting, something about the story seemed to change. and clearly there were some big problems in his and Nizhishish's marriage. The detectives interviewing Nizh's family were getting some of that same stuff. Nas had not been happy in her marriage, especially not since Kashv moved to Boston. He had quickly gone from calling and visiting as much as he could to basically absentee husband and father. And when he was home, they just fought all the time.

Nas' brother Kaleem said, I never liked him. I told her the first time I met him. and when they asked him why he said he lies all the time about all kinds of stuff he was always making up little stories to big himself up kalem said he was a bullshit artist so back at the hospital captain paul decided to push koshaf a little he said mr parvez why don't you just tell me what really happened and Kashif was quiet for a moment, and then he said, it was an accident. Uh, so that's a record scratch moment, isn't it, Camper's? An accident. How do you go from hate crime to accident? I can't wait to hear this, right? So, Captain Paul read Kashif his Miranda rights, and dug in for what he suspected, was going to be a very interesting interview. But after this initial tantalizing statement, Kachov suddenly became harder to pin down than a raindrop. He hemmed, he hawed, he changed the subject.

But Captain Paul kept pulling him back to the topic at hand, namely that he knew Koshav knew who murdered his wife. And finally, he tossed out a name. And a hell of a name it was. Nomi Toe. Whoa. Yeah, Nomi Toe. Nomi was a truck driver from his old neighborhood in Brooklyn. Koshif said. Nomi was having marriage issues too, and they often confided at each other

over drinks at the neighborhood bar. Just, you know, like bros do. Right. And one night, Nomi had leaned in and said, you know, there's only one way you're getting out of this mess with Nazish. You have to take her out. Or better yet, let me do it for you. And Kashv said, he'd agreed. Divorce was frowned upon in his culture. It seemed like the only way out of the misery that his marriage should become. Now, how that equates to an accident in his mind, I can't imagine, but okay. Good to know that people will just offer to kill somebody for you in a bar, if need be, though, right? Honey, I accidentally hired a hit man. Whoopsie-doodle. So the investigators had a name to work with now. They set out to track down this no-me-toe, ASAP.

Interesting thing about that name, by the way. Apparently, Nomi is a really common Pakistani nickname. And then they add like a descriptor to it. So like I might be Nomi Cat or Nomi Podcast. And Katie, you might be Nomi Volleyball or also Nomi podcast. Nomi To, of course, was a tow truck driver. Oh, cool. So it's like a Japanese honorific like Sahn or Chan? Yeah, I guess so. Or similar anyway. I was just kind of disappointed that he was a tow truck driver and that it wasn't that he had some kind of like freakishly large big toe or something. like that. He had, I was thinking he was a podiatrist. Oh, there you. Yeah. All right. So, some of the investigators set out to look for No Me Toh. And in the meantime, others were starting to comb through Koshav's phone. And they got lucky. Koshav's cell phone provider was one of the few that held on to text messages for quite a few days. If he'd had any other provider, they might not have found what they found. And what they found was an avalanche of text.

nearly 400 of them in the few days leading up to Naz's murder. This was going to take some time to go through. Over in Brooklyn, the investigators were finding that lots of people had heard of Nomi, but that was because there were approximately a gazillion people with that nickname in the neighborhood. Nobody knew who the hell Nomi To was, and by the end of the long, long day, they were convinced he didn't exist. Kashev had made him up. Oh, Lord.

So why? What or who didn't he want them to find? Their next stop was the mistress, Yelena. When they showed up at her door, she was all smiles and eagerness to help these nice investigators with whatever they might need. But once they uttered the words, Kashif Parvez, Yelena clammed right up, refused to answer any questions, and pretty much shut the door in the door. their faces. Hmm. Hmm. So back at the station, the forensic folks were tackling the mammoth task of pouring through

those 400 texts on Koshav's phone. And it's harder than it sounds. So when they get the raw information from the phone company, it's not like they can just look and immediately see who Kashv was talking to. They just see numbers, and then they can read the messages. So they had to suss out who belonged to what number, first of all. And then they had to read through all those messages to figure out. what, if anything, might be relevant to the case.

It was a grind. A grind that I would personally love, but that's just me. Because you're a massive nerd, yes. Yeah. After hours and hours of work, though, something stood out like a neon sign. It was a text to Kashif from a Boston number, and it read, You hang in there. Freedom is just around your corner.

Could mean nothing on its own. But when they started looking at the other texts from that same number, oh, campers. It got real interesting, real fast. Just before Naus's murder, Koshav had the following text exchange with whoever owned that number. Okay, now I'm Koshif and Whitney's the mystery texter. I'm down Church Street. I know, I saw. I'm driving to the nearest precinct to judge their driving distance. You'll have a 10-minute head start.

I know. It's just that since we're close to Lubna's house, plus they're going to be awake, they'll come out first. I'll be running right their way. Holy shit. So, no way that's an innocent conversation, just minutes before Naz was gunned down. It made the hairs on the back of the forensic text next stand up. Here were the final moments of a murder plot playing out text by text. And so matter of fact, too, like they're just deciding what to order for lunch or something. Yeah. The prosecutor in the case later described it as like the script.

for a horror movie. And let's just talk for a second about how fucking ridiculous it is to use your own phone for this. Just, oh my lord, bless his heart. This dude was not good at murder plots. You can't muster the common sense to get a dang burner phone, my dude, Mr. Frickin' PhD from Harvard. The thing killers tend to be such wet banana peels when it comes to the shit, isn't it? Like, pal, you didn't think the cops would look at your phone? Why? Why? They look at everyone's one, especially his spouse. Yeah, he seemed genuinely surprised when they asked to, like, oh, shit, yeah, I probably should have thought of that. He thought he'd say hate crime and they'd be, like, searching the streets immediately.

Say, you know, it was, it was three guys yelling terrorists and the cops were like, okay, we'll take your word for it. No problem. When news filtered down to the new Ronnie family that the detectives were looking hard at Kashiv, they were devastated, but not entirely surprised. Kalim, Nasish's brother, later told journalist Tamara Hall, that a couple of months before she was murdered, his sister had texted him, if I'd die or something, it's him. And Kalima

tried to reassure her, I don't think he could do it. You know, he just thought he was full of shit, he wouldn't have the guts. And that conversation haunted him now, but he still stood by what he said that there was no way Koshif had done his own dirty work. Somebody else had to be involved.

And of course, now that they'd seen those texts, the detectives were thinking the same thing. So the next step was to figure out where those creepy messages were sent from and by whom. So they worked with a cell phone company to figure that out. And not only were they able to find out that the phone number originated from Massachusetts, but on the days leading up to the murder, it had hit off cell towers leading all the way from Boston down to a town right outside Boonton, New Jersey, where the murder had happened.

And after the murder, the phone had just beep-bopped its little way right back up to Boston. So, well, well, well. When they contacted the phone company to find out who had registered that cell phone, it came back to a Kunjanjama Stephen. So was this their killer? So this information led them to a pretty well-kept house in a quiet suburb of Boston. A few of the investigators headed over there. They knew that the phone was currently inside this house, currently transmitting a signal.

All they had to do was knock on the door and put the habeas gravis on their hitman. But as they were waiting, they got some unexpected news. Apparently, Kunjanjama Stephen was a middle-aged woman, living in the house with her husband and their two daughters. So they didn't figure she was their killer, so it could be her husband? They had no idea. So they decided to just sit on the house for a little bit. Just keep watch, see who all was coming in and out, who they might be associating with. And as they were sitting there, they whipped out a laptop to look again at some of the surveillance footage from the night of the murder. They looked again in particular at the blue Toyota can.

Camry seen speeding away from the murder scene, the same one that one of the responding officers had blown past on his way there, the one with its headlights off, and suddenly one of the detectives looked up and said, hey, that same blue sedan was sitting right there in front of them, parked in the driveway of the house they were watching. So I'll be damned, right? Now we're cooking with gas. Now some of you all might be thinking, hey, hang on a second, how many blue Toyota Camry's must there be in Massachusetts? sits. And you're right to ask the question, but here's the thing. This particular Camry had a pretty little glass ornament mounted on the dash, a glass ornament that was also clearly visible on that surveillance tape. It was almost as good as a fingerprint. This was the same car. And not to give more murder advice, but this is why you shouldn't have any identifying characteristics on your car. Back at the hospital, Captain Paul was being updated on all these developments as he sat and talked with Kashif. And at this point, the case was heating up to the point where he needed to arrest our guy. So Paul started reading him his charges, conspiracy to commit murder

and murder in the first degree. And as he recited all this, Kashif's heart monitor alarm started going off. His heart rate was flying off the charts. I guess something was making him nervous. Hmm. Medical staff came flooding into the room and shut up. And loved Captain Paul out the door. It was all trie dramatic. But then they got him sorted out, popped Mazzanax or something, and Captain Paul

came back into the room to talk with Kachif some more. But Kachif, it seemed, was done talking. He just kind of gazed out the window, looking blank. Oh, poor puppy. Did your little murder plot not go quite as plan, darling? Will.

Oh, bless his heart. So, Captain Paul figured, well, he's tapped out and he turned around to leave. And right before he reached the door, Koshav suddenly said, the funniest last line from a murderer that I've ever heard. What's going to happen to her? She works at Best Buy. You tell me about Best Buy. It's so weird.

It's so weird. I don't understand it at all. Like her working at Best Buy would affect the outcome of the case. Now, to Captain Paul, this rang a bell. Best Buy. He had seen something about that in the case file. And keep in mind, morons always give the police more than they ask for. Like, holy shit, dude.

You just gave him the key. So Paul picked up his phone. Back at the house in the Boston suburbs, a detective's phone rang. Hey, this is Captain Paul. There wouldn't, by any chance, be somebody living in that house who works at best by, would there? Because we've got somebody in her case file who does. And her name is Antoinette Stephen. Lo and behold, Antoinette Stephen just happened to be one of the daughters of our cell phone registry.

Kunjanjama Stephen. She was also an architecture student in Boston and a friend. of Kashif Parvez. That was all they knew at that point. So they brought her in for questioning. She told them, yes, she was good friends with Kashif. Had been for years. They confided in each other a lot.

She also admitted being near Bhutan the night of the murder. She said she'd driven down to visit with him while he was home with his family in Brooklyn. That was all. She denied having anything whatsoever to do with the murder. Why would she shoot her good friend and his wife? That's just ridiculous, officer. And honestly, it did seem kind of ridiculous. Antoinette sure as hell didn't seem like a killer.

A pretty intelligent young woman in her mid-20s, Antoinette had grown up in India. And ever since she and her family moved to the States, she'd been energetically pursuing her goals. She'd never been in any trouble before in her life, but the investigators could tell she was holding something back, so they kept at her. And before long, Antoinette cracked.

She and Koshif were in love, she told them. They'd been having an affair for years. Oh, you too, huh? That's what the detectives must have been thinking anyway. Where was Yelena Belarusits and all this? And did those two know about each other? or no. Sure didn't seem like it. Clearly, Antoinette had it bad for Kashif and felt certain that he had it bad for her too. They'd plan on being together. Despite the religious differences between

them, Kashif was Muslim, Antoinette was Christian. Well, it looks to me like Koshif was slamming ass all over the tri-state area, unbeknownst, of course, to his two mistresses. Antoinette seemed to be totally clueless about Yelena, but she knew all about Nizish, at least. she thought she did. And it was clear she wanted the detectives to know that Nazish was far from an innocent victim. She was an evil woman, a horrible, monstrous failure of a mother. Kashif had told her all about it. That woman was going to let her little boy die. When the detectives asked her what in the living hell she was on about, she spilled out an extraordinary story. Kachaf had been telling her that his and Naz's older son had sickle cell anemia. He was desperately sick, he said,

but Nazish, she refused to get him the treatment he needed. What kind of mother does that? The little guy just kept getting sicker and sicker, and he would likely die unless Nazish stepped up and started doing the right thing. So, of course, Antoinette was horrified. Koshav seemed so desperate, so terrified for his little boy, just broke her heart. Nazish must be evil.

Okay, so fair enough, I guess. You're in love with this guy. He's telling you this awful sob story. You're in full on empathy mode. wanting to help. But Antoinette, my girl, if this story were true, then he's this kid's father.

Why the hell would he be dicking around at Harvard when his kid is dying and his wife won't take him to the doctor? Like, shouldn't he be your priority? I'm not a parent, but if one of our cats was that sick and for some reason my husband wasn't taking care of him, I would drop any and everything to come home and sort it

out. So did that not occur to you, Antoinette, honey? I mean, maybe he had some bullshit cover story for that too, but I can't imagine what it would be. So I feel like my response would be a dude, go the fuck home and look after your kid. Like today, why haven't you done it already? What? Like, why is it all on her? Why can't he do something? But, of course, they say love is blind, and I guess for Antoinette, that was true. Maybe on some level she wanted to believe it. Because if Nas was evil, if Nas was a terrible mother and a terrible person, then maybe Antoinette didn't have to feel all yucky and

guilty about sleeping with her husband. Just a thought. I don't know. I think Antoinette was easy prey for Kashif. She'd never had a boyfriend before she met him. So she was naive about relationships. And whatever else he was, Kashif was definitely a charmer. Oh yes. Some very good looking in the whole thing. And he didn't just go to Antoinette for sympathy. He took money off her too. Wow. Yeah. Fed her a whole line about how expensive the little boy's medical treatments were when Nas was willing to get them for him, I guess. But apparently

Antoinette didn't see the contradiction there. And Antoinette dipped into her hard-earned, painstakingly saved tuition fund to help him. Ugh. This mofo, I want to fire this guy into the sun. I just want to watch him vaporize so bad, just

fow. Bye, Koshif, you twat. And of course, by the way, the kid never had sickle cell anemia. Like, Koshav just made that up. Just out a whole cloth to manipulate Antoinette. And all the while, he was seeing Yelena behind her back. So when this butthole had time

to sleep, I cannot imagine. He's got a wife and two kids back in Brooklyn. He's got to go see them from time to time. He's got two mistresses. I'm exhausted just thinking about it. Like I said before, I think, I'm proud of myself if I can, like, put groceries away and vacuum on the same

day. So I don't know how these people do it. Just powered by evil, I guess. Apparently, narcissism is better than a monster energy drink with a side of pixie sticks. Just puts pep in your step. Man, maybe I should try that. I have zero relationships and I'm exhausted. Try narcissism.

It'll put some oaks on your walk away. Oh, God. Campers, I'm tired, is the point. Anyway, so as Antoinette spilled all this out to investigators, Backed the police station, officers executed a search warrant on the house where Antoinette lived with her parents, and they did not have to look for very long. In Antoinette's bedroom, they found a box containing two guns. One would match the bullets that killed Naz Narani. One matched the ones that wounded Kashif.

Yeah, it was the only clever thing they did using two guns to make it look like there was more than one shooter. That was actually clever. If they hadn't been such pumpkin heads about the rest of it, they might have actually gotten away with this. So, good thing that wasn't the case. Take a shot if you're playing the drinking game, Whitney just compared someone to food. Yeah, that is a... Food is never far from my mind. I'm so hungry.

Once Antoinette realized they'd found the guns and the text messages, she saw the writing on the wall. I'm sure learning about the existence of Yelena didn't hurt with this either. and hearing from the detectives that Kashif had been lying about the sickle cell anemia. Soon, Antoinette had to face the ice, cold realization that she had been played by a guy that didn't care anything about anybody but himself, a liar and a narcissist. He'd sold her a bill of goods, and he'd turned her into a killer. And now she wanted to atone for it. As a practicing Catholic, Antoinette was scared for her soul.

She told prosecutors she wanted to make a deal, and she agreed to testify against Kashif at his trial. In exchange, she'd be given a lighter sentence, the minimum for the murder charge she was facing, 30 years. At trial, Antoinette told her story tearfully, how Koshav had groomed her for months with horrible stories about Nazish's outrageous failures as a mother. and terrible stories about the little boy's suffering. He'd made her believe that the only way they could possibly save the boy's life

and be together was to murder Nausish. She took them through the planning. She would have to shoot him too, Koshav told her, to make it look real. Surely the police would never suspect him if he was injured in the attack. That would be ridiculous. Baby, honey, sweetheart. All I have to do is stay calm and talk the most shit about my dead wife while being interviewed. They'll never, never suspect a thing.

Their initial plan was to make it look like a robbery. And at first, everything seemed to be going according to that plan. After she shot Nausish enough times to make sure she was dead, she shot Kashif, just as they agreed. But when he started screaming in pain, Antoinette panicked and ran. She'd forgot to take his wallet in Nausish's purse. Whoopsy-Doodle. So there goes the make it look like a robbery plan, which was so silly in the first place. Like, why would muggers be on a quiet residential street like that?

Oh, my God, you turnips. So, there go again. So Koshav had to come up with the hate crime story on the fly, which I think is a better story, actually. Oh, and by the way, real nice, blaming it on black people. because it's not like they don't have enough to deal with already without you throwing a racial hoax into the mix. Gross. Not to mention the fear that her family and neighbors must have felt in their own community, feeling like there was someone out there that would hurt them just for existing. It was truly like a racial hoax within a racial hoax. It's especially disgusting to me.

The other part of the plan that went awry was that the little boy wasn't supposed to be there. I guess Nause just decided to bring him on the short walk to the car at the last minute. Antoinette said when she saw him in his stroller, she hesitated a moment. But then she thought, this might be their only chance to go through with the murder. So she went ahead and killed a woman in front of her child. Koshif's defense, of course, was that Antoinette was an obsessed, angry lover. According to him, she'd been devastated at the thought of Nause and the kids moving to Boston to be with him. No more cozy nights together in Koshif's bachelor pad.

So she took matters into her own hands. It was an argument that a lot of jurors might be persuaded by, except for this. Yeah, campers, if you thought this story could get any weirder, then, well, you don't know us as well as you ought to yet. because not long after Koshchiff landed his ass in jail awaiting trial, detectives had gotten a tip that our boy was run in his mouth to a fellow inmate, trying because, of course, he was, to find a hitman. He wanted to take out various members of Nas's family. Basically, anybody with a realistic chance of getting custody of his kids. His plan, you see, was to make bail, then kidnap his kids and flee back to Pakistan with them. so as we've said many times folks just don't do this don't do it your fellow inmates are not your new bestest friends they do not give a fuck about you you try to hire one of them to kill somebody for you all you're going to accomplish is a conspiracy to commit murder charge on top of whatever you've

already got koshif is not a camper did not get that memo fucking dip shit No bail for you, bud. And that ducklings was not all. The investigators had also learned that looking for outside help to take out his enemies was a definite pattern for Kashiv, even before he started grooming Antoinette to be his personal assassin. On his computer, forensic texts found a treasure trove of bizarre evidence. Years before Naz's murder, as early as 2009, he'd spent thousands and thousands of dollars on voodoo websites in a site called Extreme Black Magic, requesting everything from a spell to make Nas leave him to a spell to make her kill herself.

When regular old black magic isn't strong enough, use extreme black magic for your murderous needs. It reminds me of those commercials in the 90s and early 2000s when all the snack foods suddenly became extreme. You know, it wasn't regular Doritos weren't good enough. It was extreme Doritos, Extreme. Everything was extreme. It's X-Games mode. Yeah, exactly. So it's extreme black magic. The text found a whole series of increasingly irate emails where Kashif demanded to know why there hadn't been any results yet.

Because he'd paid his money. He's expected her to, you know, just drop over, I guess. It reminds me of the Amy Allwine case, doesn't it, you? Oh, totally. He'd also asked these black magic practitioners about various poisons he might use to murder Nazish undetected. And last but not least, buckle up for this one he was never enrolled at Harvard

or Columbia where he supposedly got his master's or anywhere else he just made it all up to impress people and he'd faked his various diplomas and acceptance letters just like Scott Peterson

remember his fake diplomas so dude was living like not even a double like a triple or quadruple life at this point I'm barely making it with my one life again he's just powered by evil And Naz's family testified that Kashv had been physically and verbally abusive to her, physically abusive on more than one occasion.

Her sister Lubna had encouraged her to go to the police about the abuse, but Nazish didn't want to. Like so many women in abusive relationships, she just felt stuck. She loved him, and she wanted her marriage to work. She wanted the man she'd fallen in love with back, the charming, kind lover she'd met at the cultural festival, the man who'd swept her off her feet. What so many people in abusive relationships don't realize is that that man was never the real Kashv. That was the mask he used to lure her in. That was not him. So unsurprisingly, when the jury got a load of all that, it was pretty much lights out for our boy Kashiv. It only took them four hours to convict him of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder.

He was sentenced to a minimum of 73 years in prison. What a waste. This guy was all of 29 years old, for God's sake, with his whole life ahead of him, if he just hadn't pulled this nonsense, not to mention Nazish's life. And because of his big bag of selfish bullshit and his fear of disappointing his family and his community by getting a divorce, just like so many people in these cases, we have this awful story. At the sentencing, the judge called him beyond redemption.

And Naz's brother Kalim gave a really powerful victim impact statement. At one point, he looked right at Kashu. his former brother-in-law, a man who had set off his inner alarms from the moment he met him, and he said, you are a failure as a husband, father, son, and a human being. And above all, you're an evil murderer. Hell yes, Kaleen couldn't have said it better myself. Yeah. At her sentencing, Antoinette cried, as she apologized to Nazit's family.

She said, I need you to know that I did not do this out of envy or greed or to replace her or any kind of motive like that. She did it because she thought she had to To save a little boy's life She'd been manipulated and she was so, so sorry Well, yeah, I would flip and hope so She said the murder would haunt her for the rest of her life Especially, she said Nause's last words, which were still echoing

in Antoinette's head As she died, Nause had whispered Allah The name of her god A Catholic herself, Antriman told the court, I know she's in heaven now. She was sentenced to 30 years in prison per her plea deal. So I don't know if Koshif really wanted both Antoinette and Yelena, or if he just wanted

Yelena and decided to use Antoinette because she was young and naive and madly in love with him to do his murdery dirty work so he could sort of gradually face her out and just be with Yelena, or if he just wanted to spread himself around like Philadelphia cream cheese and he didn't really want either of them. I really don't know. But I think Antoinette genuinely thought she was doing a good thing, as messed up and thoroughly wrong as that is. I kind of suspect Kachif was going to drop her like a hot potato once he got like a comfortable enough distance away from the murder. Because the thing is, Antoinette was Christian and Indian, and apparently Kashv's family would never have accepted her because of that. So I think he probably wanted to be

with Yelena, if anybody. Or he was just going to go on a fuck tour of the greater an area and not be tied down to anybody. And it's interesting to me how this case really highlights that no matter where we come from, when it comes to true crime, human beings tend to do a lot of the same stuff. Everybody involved in this case grew up in a different culture. We have Kashif and Nazizh in Pakistan. We have Antoinette in India. They were all immigrants, newcomers to this country.

And yet how many times have we seen this exact story, you know, playing out on like Dateline or 48 hours with people who grew up right here? I mean, I would agree with that, and it's somehow both hopeful and filled with the spare, that for better or worse, people are the same, no matter where they're from. We're all awful. That's the last takeaway from this. Oh, man. It's so creepy to me to think of Koshaf at that, like, bright, happy Ramadan celebration dinner the night of the murder. Like, he's sitting there texting back and forth with his hit woman.

as his wife and his kids and his in-laws were all chatting and laughing all around him and opening presents and stuff. Ugh, what kind of a mind does that? It just, it creeps me out. That is not a mind I would want to live in. So maybe the worst thing that can happen to somebody like Kashif is to have to be Kashif. So that was a wild one, right, campers? You know, we'll have another one for you next week.

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