- 1 hour ago
Category
📺
TVTranscript
00:04a fatal fall from a second floor window of a detroit mansion i start screaming and i run to
00:12my brother's room we need an ambulance let's tell the window can't you follow
00:16a devoted mom's life cut short bustle arrives sees his estranged wife dead and he drops in shock
00:26was it simply just tragic misfortune this was an accidental fall i'm yeah i'm pretty sure
00:33the physical examination did find fractures consistent with a fall of this kind or murder
00:40somebody was there we know that it's undidated i mean if you're in the room with her they just
00:44say you're in the room with to my mom's wife man
01:10nada harania moved here to michigan from syria in the middle east her husband basil
01:17altantawi was a medical doctor and set up a practice here in metro detroit
01:22nada and basil had come to the united states from syria they were raising their children in
01:29farmington hills which is a very nice suburb of detroit they were devout muslims they were members
01:34of a local mosque and they had three children their son muhammad and two daughters including
01:41aya my name is aya altantawi my mom was a very very kind person she put everybody before her
01:51and she loved us she loved her kids she and i we had a pretty good relationship we bonded over
01:57makeup
01:58she was very very good at it she was very passionate about the gym about working out just feeling like
02:07the best version of herself such was nada's love of fitness that she eventually turned her passion
02:13into a career working as a personal trainer at her local gym in farmington hills she was becoming more
02:21independent she was actually living her life for the first time she and i would go to the gym i
02:27would
02:28do my session she would be working out or she would be teaching her own clients and then we'd work
02:33out
02:33for a little bit at the end and then we'd go home nada embraced the sense of freedom and independence
02:39that her new career gave her but her husband basil wasn't so supportive he didn't like it he didn't
02:48think it was necessary for her to be independent he thought that his role for the family was to be
02:55the provider so there was no need for her to be independent because we all were reliant on him and
03:00he was
03:01there to provide everything we needed so he didn't like that he wanted i think us to be just lost
03:07without
03:07him my dad was very old school in his thinking to put it nicely so my mom wanting to get
03:14a job to work
03:15at the gym to live her life to him was she's becoming americanized and he didn't want that
03:23there became turmoil in their marriage based on nada's desire to become more westernized and
03:30basil's desire to have a traditional wife within their religious practices he did say that once she
03:39removed the hijab that she wasn't really a person anymore he didn't consider her to be a person
03:45and that that was the part that really disturbed me they would have arguments but at first it was
03:52always don't talk about it around the kids wait until the kids are gone but eventually that pretense
03:57dropped and it was just all out in the open constant yelling and screaming for my dad towards my mom
04:03he was becoming violent uncontrollable in his fits of anger and he wanted to put us in a little box
04:11and
04:11hide us away and lock the key he was a man who was used to being in control and that
04:20included in
04:21his tradition uh being in control of his wife and he was losing that control and it was very upsetting
04:29to
04:30him in early 2016 basil and nada's volatile relationship escalated to whole new levels around valentine's day
04:39i remember i woke up to hearing them screaming and arguing and i opened my door and i went to
04:47the railing to look down to see what was going on and my dad was holding my mom's phone and
04:53he was
04:53like walking around the house trying to get away from her and like he wouldn't give her her phone back
04:58and he went to their bedroom and he was standing behind the door and my mom put her hand in
05:06the door
05:06to try to pry it open and my dad slammed it shut on her hand
05:12eventually i called the police and they arrested him they took him to police station they put a
05:18tether on him an ankle monitor so he wasn't allowed to come back to the house under any circumstance
05:24basil would eventually be charged with domestic violence he would plead no contest but it would be
05:30the beginning of the end of their marriage basil was also issued with a protective order banning him
05:38from the family home shortly after his domestic violence charge nada started divorce proceedings while
05:45juggling her career alongside parenting three young children as a single mom this divorce between basil and
05:52nava was definitely what i would call a high conflict divorce there was a lot of contention i was
06:01concerned about nava's general safety but there was a court order in place that protected her a lot of times
06:08nobody knew what she was going through because she didn't want to talk about her issues she wanted
06:12to talk about what was bothering the people that she loved so that she can try to help them most
06:18of the
06:18time we didn't know what the details of what she was going through approximately 18 months after the
06:26incident between basil and nada on the morning of monday august 21st 2017 14 year old aya was preparing
06:36for her usual school day it was the second week of my sophomore year of high school i was excited
06:44but
06:45that day i woke up late normally my mom would already be awake she would have had her coffee or
06:51whatever i think i remember hearing my brother's shower on but nobody else was awake in the house
06:59so i thought okay let me get ready and then i'll see where everybody else is at i finished getting
07:05ready
07:05and i sat on my bed and i was like okay this is really strange it's like 6 15 ish
07:09nobody else seems to
07:11be awake we're gonna be late so i called my mom or didn't get a response so i was like
07:15okay i'm gonna
07:16go find her and see what's going on i went to the guest bedroom that was where she would do
07:23her makeup
07:23every morning the window was open and i thought maybe just in case let me go look out there
07:30the guest bedroom was towards the back of the house it was two floors up and looked out over a
07:36concrete patio which was 22 feet down inside that guest bedroom a stepladder a bottle of cleaning
07:44solution on top of it next to it a bucket of water all right next to that open window
07:50when aya looked out the window two floors below she saw the lifeless body of her mother nada
07:56on the patio face up still dressed in her pajamas
08:02i start screaming and i run to my brother's room
08:08i opened his door and i said our mom's outside our mom's outside he's like what what are you talking
08:14about i think he was falling behind me at this point and i was i was running out the garage
08:19to go
08:19around the house and i just i was telling him come on like we have to go our mom's outside
08:26despite how distressing this was i had just seen her mother she was able to get her brother to come
08:32down to the patio where her mother was and she called 911
08:40911
08:42what's going on there um i don't know we were we were we were
08:46we were talking about my mom and i was the other one that was opening she never opened
08:50then she fell
08:51your mom now like two stories yes
08:56Oakland county police officers raced to nada's home
09:00while a 911 operator stayed on the line with aya
09:04is he breathing i'm about to see breathing
09:10i'm not going to say i don't know this was an accidental fall i'm yeah i'm pretty sure
09:17aya gave her brother muhammad the phone at this point he then started following the dispatcher's
09:22instructions to give cpr to his mom
09:25okay i'm gonna tell you how to do it okay
09:29one two three four one two three four
09:34yeah stick up the pace one two three four
09:38one two three four
09:40one two three four
09:43one two three four
09:45at around 6 40 a.m as muhammad was performing cpr on his mom the police arrived
09:54i had directed the officers as they arrived
09:57while the 9-1-1 operators probed muhammad on what had happened
10:02so what happened to your mom there
10:04look ready she fell off the building
10:06how did she fall
10:09i didn't go to the room like this
10:11she was there she screamed i couldn't look
10:14do you know what the house she fell or what she was doing
10:18yeah she was on that soft floor she was washing her cleaning the window
10:21she was cleaning the window
10:23yeah
10:25officer nathan jordan was the first one to arrive on the scene
10:29he checked nada she was still warm to the touch
10:33but she would later be declared dead on the scene
10:42after mother of three nada harania fatally fell from a second floor window
10:48her 14 year old daughter aya who had found her mother's body
10:53was unaware that she had been pronounced dead at the scene
10:57when they took her i was under the impression that she was going to the hospital to be worked on
11:02i thought okay she's going to be in the icu obviously critical condition but not death
11:07i thought we probably wouldn't get any update for a couple hours but she was still alive
11:12but now she was declared dead on the scene but i didn't know that until hours later
11:19ayah's younger sister had been asleep during the whole incident so the only people who were there
11:25at the time were ayah and her brother muhammad so they were both interviewed by police at the scene
11:38in the guest bedroom there were streaks on the window
11:42as well as an iphone left on top of the dresser there was no immediate signs of a struggle or
11:48forced
11:49entry that the police could see so they assumed that this had been a tragic accident whilst nada had
11:55been cleaning the window she'd fallen they were asking us a lot of questions they were asking
12:01what our mom's normal routine was if it was normal for her to clean the windows i said no that's
12:08not
12:08normal any cleaning that she would do would be like washing leftover dishes from the night before
12:13but not cleaning outside of a window she would normally hire a company to come do that and then
12:18they were also asking about my mom's history if she ever attempted to harm herself and i adamantly
12:25immediately said no and my brother was like ayah you didn't know this but yeah she tried to kill herself
12:30once and i turned to him and i was like what are you talking about no she didn't and he's
12:35like
12:35ayah you you didn't know this but yeah she tried taking a bunch of pills i just didn't think it
12:40was true
12:41i thought there would have been no way i didn't know about it if our mother overdosed it didn't make
12:47sense no matter which way i tried to spin it there was no plausible explanation as ayah and her siblings
12:55were all under 18 and alone emergency services called their estranged father basil to come and look
13:02after the children basil arrives and he sees his estranged wife dead on the patio and he drops to his
13:12knees in shock at this point ayah still didn't know that her mother was dead it was the first time
13:21basil had
13:22returned to the family home since the protective order his behavior and comments to his daughter ayah
13:28raised suspicions among investigators that day i had jim so i was wearing leggings and a shirt and
13:36the back of it had an open back cut out my dad comes into the house and he's like ayah
13:42what are you
13:42wearing you're gonna go to hell if you keep dressing like that and i'm just thinking what is wrong with
13:46you this is the first time you're seeing me in over a year and a half and the first thing
13:51you're saying
13:52to me is ayah you're gonna go to hell if you keep dressing like that ayah's father immediately
13:56commenting on her state of dress after ayah has just witnessed this very traumatic experience and is
14:03a child who actually needs consoling is very telling about his sort of attitude approach to family and
14:10i believe attitude towards women as well still unaware that her mom nada's fall was fatal
14:17ayah was desperate to find out her condition my dad took us to a bunch of different places that day
14:23i
14:23think we were coming back from one of his friends houses we were in the car my dad driving and
14:29he was
14:29on the phone with his mom talking in arabic um and we were pulling up into our driveway and he
14:35said
14:37oh nada's dead everybody gets out of the car and i say to my dad when were you planning on
14:43telling me
14:44that our mother was dead and he turns to me and his face like drops he starts crying he turns
14:48to me and
14:49he he's like ayah we have to stick together we only have each other now we have to be there
14:53for each
14:54other and he's hugging me and i just have my arms down at my sides i'm not hugging him back
14:59i didn't trust him i didn't feel safe with him i didn't
15:03i didn't want to be around him i think it just reinforced that any hope i had for him
15:11changing becoming empathetic becoming a father was gone
15:22security and stability are key pillars of any child's upbringing just needs basic fundamental needs
15:29and for ayah all of that has been ripped away in a matter of hours her mom has passed she
15:35already
15:36has a very complicated relationship with her abusive father and so that's really got to put her in such
15:42a difficult and emotional position which is a huge amount to try and comprehend at just 14 years old
15:50on august 22nd the morning after nada had died the medical examiner carried out an initial autopsy on her
15:58body she had suffered scrapes and fractures consistent with a fall from height but there was no blood found
16:05under her body she also had a scrape on her head which had not bled as profusely as would have
16:12been
16:12expected and no bleeding on the brain meaning her heart had stopped pumping before she went out the window
16:22that means she couldn't have jumped she couldn't have accidentally fallen she died before she fell on the patio below
16:33they went back to run further tests and at the same time police returned to the house with a search
16:39warrant
16:40there were six security cameras around the outside of the house and they confiscated the equipment
16:45for further review unfortunately none of the cameras looked directly at the guest bedroom but there was
16:52a bit of footage found that blew the investigation open
16:59detectives came across surveillance of the spot where nada's body was found and on footage recorded at 5 54 a
17:07.m
17:07they saw nada's body falling to the ground but when they looked at it again
17:13they spotted something chilling in the shadow of the second floor bedroom from where nada fell
17:20on the left of the frame a light appears to come on followed by a curtain opening in the guest
17:27bedroom
17:28a person with short hair could be seen opening a window before something heavy was dragged over to it
17:35and thrown out of the window just before nada's body fell to the patio below
17:44this is not someone who's accidentally fallen to their death they're on their own someone else is there
17:49and is involved this fundamentally changed the investigation this was now a homicide not an accident they could
17:59clearly see somebody had pushed nada's body out of the window but whose shadow was it the first person
18:07who came to mind for many was not as a strange husband dr basel al-zantawi basel's history of domestic
18:16violence after slamming a door on nada's hand stood out as a red flag for detectives
18:23the police immediately looked at basel as a suspect and you can understand why in the us it's estimated
18:29that up to nearly 50 percent of all female victims of homicide have been murdered by intimate partners
18:36past or current and so combining that with basel's history of domestic violence and abuse can really
18:44highlight why he was a probable contender for police suspicion and why they wanted to ask him some very
18:49significant questions investigators were also aware that during divorce proceedings between basel and
18:56nada he had become the subject of another criminal investigation basel had found himself in some serious
19:03legal trouble after there had been an investigation into his clinic basel was convicted of healthcare
19:11fraud in the state of michigan that was handled by the attorney general of the state of michigan at the
19:16time he had to pay a heavy fine and he lost his medical license but investigators were shocked to
19:23discover that their prime suspect basel had an airtight alibi as part of his protective order basel wore
19:32a gps tracking ankle monitor that fed his location to authorities 24 7. turns out he was 20 miles away
19:40when nada died basel ralton towy was not the killer
19:51after detectives spotted a shadowy figure on a surveillance camera pushing the body of 35 year
19:57old mother of three nada harania from a second floor window investigators began to narrow down their hunt
20:04for her killer they now knew that her abusive estranged husband had a rock solid alibi so the
20:12investigators now needed to know the whereabouts of the children at the time of the murder and try to
20:19work out if somebody had broken in to kill their mom the day after nada was killed police wanted to
20:26interview both ayah and muhammad and their dad basel suggested that the best place to do that would be
20:32the family home ayah went to school and when basel went to pick her up muhammad was being interviewed
20:38by police sat at the family's dining table detectives quizzed 16 year old muhammad about his mom
20:46do you and your mom get along well yeah i mean we're pretty normal we've been pretty normal for like
20:52a while like the only time i um i told you this morning uh we kind of had issues you
20:59could say is at
21:00beginning of like the divorce case by that side how long is that thing going on uh near the two
21:05years a year and a half now muhammad's attitude towards his parents divorce comes up and he
21:11acknowledges that there was some difficult feelings there which is understandable and happens i'm going
21:16to say in pretty much every case of divorce where children might find that situation difficult so
21:22nothing raises initial significant alarm bells all right like how often do you talk to your dad
21:29say pretty like maybe every three every three four days three or four days your dad pretty close
21:34yeah all right muhammad still seems to have a pretty strong relationship with his father and certainly
21:40stronger than that that his sisters have with him and perhaps that just expresses that this is a very young
21:47person who maybe doesn't understand the violence that's occurred between his mother and father
21:52because clearly that's disrupted the relationship between his father and his sisters but doesn't
21:58seem to have between them would you know if somebody came over to the house last night
22:04i mean if somebody came in the house or anything would you know i'm i i should yeah
22:11i got up around six o'clock then six or five i got into the shower and then what i
22:18started to put my
22:19clothes get my school stuff ready and then around 6 30 that's when my sister yelled police knew that it
22:26was only the children who'd been in the house that day so they began to question muhammad about who this
22:32figure that they'd seen on the cctv could be somebody was there we know that it's on video
22:40so we know that somebody was there when it happened we're trying to find out if it was
22:43something done by an accident which accidents happen all the time it doesn't change anything
22:48or if it was done on purpose that's what we're trying to find out yeah
22:56i i don't want to like i said i don't want to say anything about my sister about
23:01i mean if it comes down to her then yeah she was awake before me
23:06although muhammad claimed his sister was awake before him investigators already knew
23:11it couldn't have been her in the guest bedroom the investigators had a crucial detail from this
23:18footage that the person had short hair so that ruled out ayah but you're telling me right now that
23:25you weren't in the room like maybe helping her clean the windows or holding the ladder or anything
23:28like that when this happened when this accident happened no although muhammad denied being in the
23:34guest bedroom with his mother that morning police continued to press him about his whereabouts
23:40i mean if you're in the room with her did you say you were in the room with her i
23:45mean
23:49not i mean the only thing that i really did um i saw her walking upstairs with some stuff and
23:56she said to go get spray bottle and then i brought her that and then i just that's it i
24:02loved
24:04muhammad's story has now shifted significantly now this throws into question all of the account
24:11that he's made prior because it's impossible now to know which elements have been fabricated which
24:16elements are based in truth it's okay seriously accidents happen all right we just need to know
24:26so my mother's wife man muhammad i understand that i understand that wholeheartedly we just need to
24:33know why so we don't look into this further okay what happened
24:43under pressure muhammad's story really starts to fluctuate quite a bit he admits that he was in the
24:50room with his mom he was helping her out while she was cleaning holding the ladder for her but then
24:55when she fell in shock he took himself off to the shower i i i i looked down i don't
25:02wanna i mean i
25:04don't want to do it i don't i didn't know what to do i mean so like i said i
25:08thought i was like
25:09in dreaming so it's in my room immediately and i just want to forget about it because i just saw
25:14my
25:15fucking fuck man when you're looking at a police interview there is a very key difference between
25:21someone adding in additional pieces of information and changing information and what we're starting to
25:28see here is that muhammad is starting to err on changing information and that can be a real red flag
25:35for potential deceit at this point basil arrived home and stopped the interview i i need to not tell
25:43me now i don't want to go any further i have to try to not tell me because when i
25:46came back it blew up
25:47my mind because my daughter asked me what's going on that why they don't let us go back to the
25:51house
25:51so this is actually now it's like a uh you know you're investigating a child here following muhammad's
25:59shock confession that he was in the room at the time of his mom's death
26:03police interviewed the children separately to avoid them communicating or corroborating on one version
26:09of events i used her police interview as an opportunity to explain that she didn't want to
26:17live under the care of her abusive father when we got to the police station and we were being questioned
26:23that was when i was able to make that very clear that regardless of what happens i'm not going back
26:31home
26:32with him um and yeah i chose to go into foster care me and my sister were going to go
26:38live with a
26:39family relative who i knew had known for the majority of my life and i trusted and i felt safer
26:45with them
26:45so it was a no-brainer for me on august 24th 2017 three days after nada's fatal push
26:55ayah received an unexpected message on her cell phone i got a text from somebody that i had gone to
27:02middle school with and he had texted me saying i am so sorry for your loss um but do you
27:08think he did it
27:09and i was like do i think who did what he said i'm so sorry you didn't hear you're they're
27:13charging your
27:14brother i found out from a middle school classmate that my brother was being charged with the death of
27:21my mother i was in shock it was more like an out-of-body experience where okay yeah i went
27:29through
27:29this and i'm telling you all about it but i'm not feeling the emotions that are connected with it i'm
27:34just i don't know i i
27:40on the day this case happened i went out to the family home tried to talk to neighbors but they
27:46didn't know this family very well the family kept to themselves but after a few days of it being in
27:51the news nada's friends started calling police nada would tell them that muhammad her son blamed her
27:59for the trouble in the family and that she would always have her daughters but she was dead to her
28:05son
28:07processing the news that her brother had been arrested and charged for the murder of his own
28:13mother aya reflected on muhammad's behavior in the lead up to nada's death he was becoming a lot more
28:20assertive a lot more violent i think he genuinely thought that now that our dad's out of the house
28:28he has to step up and be the man and put us in our place my brother was in contact
28:36with my dad a lot just
28:39became a little like spy essentially for my dad because this was during their divorce case
28:49i had an encounter with muhammad that led me to believe that muhammad had taken his father's side
28:57in the divorce it's actually a blizzard here in michigan and i parked my car close to the house
29:07i met with nada i had not seen muhammad and then when i went to leave when i went to
29:14get into my car
29:16muhammad was actually standing right behind my car and he seemed to be recording my license plate the
29:23only thing i could think of that made sense under the circumstances that he was going to be reporting
29:28to his father so he was trying to find anything he could to give to my dad to use as
29:34leverage
29:35is my guess in the divorce case so it made sense that he did it so i still thought okay
29:41maybe somehow
29:42he accidentally did it or he didn't mean to do it or i don't know i guess i didn't fully
29:47believe that
29:47it was 100 intentional aya is a young and vulnerable girl in this situation whose entire life has been
29:55torn apart in a matter of moments and so of course she's clinging on to the hope of her brother's
30:00innocence because she's already lost her mother and her father and now this is her potentially losing
30:35her brother too
30:36that whatever he said in that interview couldn't then be admissible in the court case
30:41the court ruled in their favor meaning prosecutors were unable to call in muhammad's kitchen table
30:47interview for the trial but in november 2017 during a preliminary court hearing new details of nada's autopsy
30:58report were revealed to the public for the first time the key finding which investigators were already
31:05aware of was that nada had died by asphyxiation she had been smothered to death
31:15armed with evidence that nada had been murdered investigators continued to build their case
31:21and discovered that muhammad resented his mother for the failure of his parents marriage
31:26and had taken his father's side during the divorce
31:31in the very beginning of the divorce case our mother would ask him where he was going when he was
31:37going to meet up with our dad and he wouldn't tell her but then he would ask us where we
31:40were going and
31:40expect answers or when she would try to take his phone because he was texting her dad and he wasn't
31:45supposed to he would not let her and it would turn into its own physical altercation and he would then
31:51take her phone instead it was just very bizarre despite her brother's arrest and his murder charge
32:00ayah was still holding on to that hope that he might be innocent i lost my dad long before my
32:07mom died
32:07i lost my mom i didn't want to lose my brother too i think that's part of the reason why
32:12i was not fully
32:13accepting that it was 100 intentionally premeditated murder there has to be some other explanation maybe
32:20he did do it but how do you kill your mother how do you kill anyone much less your mother
32:30after extended legal wranglings over the use of a police interview
32:34muhammad altantawi spent years awaiting trial for the murder of his mother nada harania who had been
32:41suffocated before being pushed out of a second floor window in march 2022 nearly five years after nada's
32:50death muhammad altantawi murder trial began muhammad altantawi would go on trial charged as an adult with
32:58first-degree premeditated murder i was not at the trial i had at that point moved uh jobs and moved
33:10back to the prosecutor's office who was prosecuting muhammad so i had nothing to do with the prosecution of
33:17the case by order of the uh prosecutor although muhammad altantawi was only 16 years old when he killed his
33:25mom
33:25he was tried as an adult because michigan state law allows prosecutors to charge juveniles as adults
33:32in cases of serious offenses such as murder a case like this is extremely rare and there's a name for
33:40it matricide maternal homicide where a child kills his or her own mother the death of a mother at the
33:48hands
33:48of a child almost unheard of in opening statements at the trial prosecutors focused on the motive and
33:57also the family dynamics that muhammad had a hatred for his mother her growing need for more independence
34:03her new americanized lifestyle and the timing nada was set to give a deposition against muhammad's
34:10father in the divorce he wanted to stop that nava came to my office on a friday before she passed
34:20away
34:20to prepare for a deposition that was to be held the next week where basil's attorney would question nava
34:29and i in turn would question basil and i got the impression that she did not think that the deposition
34:36was ever going to take place why that is i don't know i was very concerned about it and i
34:45assumed that
34:46now that knew something that i didn't know that was going to happen between the meeting in my office
34:52on friday and the deposition which was scheduled for the next week as it turned out we'll we'll never
34:58know because now that passed away a couple days later this case wasn't just about the physical facts
35:06of who was where and when it was about a family split down the middle and whether hatred between
35:14a father wife and a son could really cause someone to kill the big question for prosecutors
35:22was whether they would be able to convince the jury that a son was capable of killing his own mother
35:29part of the prosecution's case focused on inconsistencies at the crime scene the prosecutor
35:35explained to the jury that this was not an accident that nada had been suffocated before she fell and
35:42that the scene had been staged the ladder next to the window with a cleaning bottle of solution on top
35:48of
35:48it one detective testified that's not a solution that's used to clean windows and next to nada's body
35:56on the patio below was a towel a cloth that had some solution in it it may have also been
36:02used to
36:03suffocate nada
36:06then it was time for the prosecution's key evidence the surveillance video footage prosecution showed the
36:15jury of the video evidence the shadows from the surveillance cameras a person with short hair
36:21dragging something over to the window then hoisting it out to the window just moments before nada's body
36:28would hit the ground they also pointed out that inside the house were only the three children and
36:36only one had short hair muhammad at one point in the video muhammad could be seen giving his mother
36:44cpr but according to the prosecution only half-heartedly furthermore while on the phone to emergency
36:53services he was not giving her chest compressions at all and was simply counting one two three four
37:01one two three four one three four prosecutors suggested that this was because muhammad already knew
37:10his mother was dead
37:15then they highlighted key evidence from muhammad altantawi's phone
37:21prosecutors knew it would be extremely difficult to convince a jury that a 16 year old son would kill
37:27his own mother but they had more good circumstantial evidence including muhammad's phone records
37:33in fact he had his mother in his phone as a contact named dog to call somebody a dog
37:41and your own mom nonetheless who did nothing to deserve that just why muhammad saving his mother's name
37:50as dog in his phone is incredibly misogynistic language and really implies a hatred not just towards
37:59his mother but to women and i think we can really see a potential influence there from his father's
38:06own attitudes and behaviors towards women in his life and how that might have impacted then on muhammad's
38:12own opinions and behaviors too the prosecution also used muhammad's phone to demonstrate motive
38:19just weeks before she was killed nada texted her son muhammad to tell him she would have to testify
38:26in the divorce case she would have to say truthfully about what happened with abuse
38:32and misconduct prosecutors argued that muhammad wanted to protect his father that this had
38:37serious legal and personal implications that he wanted to stop nada from testifying to protect his father
38:45but there was more strong evidence prosecutors presented to the jury that muhammad took pictures of
38:51the guest room and that open window and sent them to his father three weeks before nada was killed
38:59also revealed was further evidence from his phone in the early morning hours of the day that nada died
39:04there were phone calls between muhammad and his father he had told police he was asleep before
39:12learning of his mother's death even though the trial raised some questions about what basal knew about
39:18what muhammad was planning to do to nada basal altantawi has never been charged with anything in
39:25connection to her murder i had testified at the trial about what was going on in their family five years
39:31earlier when she was only 14. i didn't see it as testifying against my brother i was there to testify
39:39and tell the truth and that was it one of the things that i addressed in court while testifying was
39:45the
39:46fact that my brother saw the divorce as being a splitting the feeling to two sides he and our
39:51father and the other being my mother and i and that our agenda was to destroy our father's life to
39:56take his money to take his house to ruin his career his life which wasn't the case in response to
40:04the
40:04prosecution muhammad altantawi's defense team laid out their arguments in an attempt to introduce
40:10reasonable doubt to the jury they pointed out that there was no way of proving that the person in
40:17the window was muhammad or even the size age or sex of the person casting the shadow the defense also
40:25made the case that muhammad was skinny and there was no way he could overpower his own mother who had
40:31been working out in a gym the defense attorney argued the timeline was too tight not his body fell at
40:385 53 in the morning the children woke up at six not enough time to commit the murder to clean
40:45up the
40:45scene and to hide evidence on monday march 14 2022 after deliberating for only two hours the jury found
40:56muhammad altantawi guilty of first degree premeditated murder six months later at sentencing muhammad
41:05continued to declare his innocence then came the victim impact statements from aya and muhammad altantawi's
41:13father basil he was trying to use everybody else's story to gain sympathy and he didn't even talk about
41:20how he was sad about our mom he didn't talk about our mom at all as basil left the courtroom
41:27i have
41:28followed him to the lobby to confront him i got in his face and i started yelling at him and
41:34i would have
41:36gladly punched him if i didn't have six deputies holding me back and i wouldn't have regretted it
41:41i don't think he understands why i felt that way i don't think he ever will understand why i felt
41:47that
41:47way because i don't think he's capable of empathizing with anybody i don't think he's capable of thinking
41:52about how other people could be affected from his actions it's sad for me to think about being related
42:02to such pathetic people muhammad was sentenced to 35 to 60 years in prison with the judge saying he
42:12understood the consequences of his actions and was deserving of such a stiff penalty i have not had any
42:20contact with my brother since the trial or his sentencing ended have i thought about it yes and
42:26the only reason that i would talk to him again not because i want to but because she was also
42:31his
42:31mother and i recognize that i am the only person who would be able to offer him the opportunity for
42:37me to go to her grave and have him be on the phone and say whatever he would want to
42:41her and it doesn't
42:43mean that i like him that i love him that i support him that i want anything to do with
42:48him that i want a
42:48relationship with him it means absolutely nothing other than i'm presenting you with an opportunity
42:52that i don't think anybody else would give you since her mother's death in 2017 and the pain of the
43:00trial
43:01aya has committed herself to helping other victims of crime find justice for their loved ones
43:08my career plans are to go to law school um become a criminal prosecutor and if somebody's going through
43:17something like domestic abuse or whatever the case might be where and they feel like they can relate
43:21to me or my mom or any part of anything that we went through i want people to know um
43:29and see that
43:30i might be biased but i don't think i turned out too terribly all things considered and your life isn't
43:38defined by what happens to you what people do to you your life is what you want it to be
43:42what you make
43:43of it and that's all that matters i remember my mom as somebody who was incredibly selfless and kind and
43:55caring and she put everybody before her and didn't want anybody to ever worry about what she was going
44:01through and didn't tell almost anybody what she was going through and i know she would want everybody
44:06that she loved everybody that she loved everybody in her life to be happy and to not dwell on what
44:14happened to her and it sucks that i don't have her but knowing that she can't be hurt anymore is
44:21that's enough for me
44:24so
44:31so
44:39so
45:01Transcription by CastingWords
Comments