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Sword and Scale contains adult themes and violence and is not intended for all audiences.
00:00:06
Listener discretion is advised. So what happened to your mom there? Looks like she fell off the building.
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How did she fall? I didn't go into the room. I just screamed. Hello and welcome.
00:00:30
This is Sword and Scale, a show that reveals that the worst monsters are... in case you're wondering what the hell that was about well um you should be on our social media
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because if you're not you're missing out on all the fun um some idiot named james i don't know
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what the hell his last name is uh but apparently a renowned expert on podcasting
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came by to drop off his words of advice, you know, to make my podcast better. You know, he,
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he came over to tell me that the long pauses in between words that I exhibit sometimes when I'm
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formulating a thought that, that means that I'm a narcissist because apparently he saw some video
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online somewhere that told him all the signs to look for in, in a narcissist and he was hurt by
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one. So he's got to go around telling everyone that they're a narcissist now. So James, thanks
00:01:57
for that. And thanks for all the sales of the mug we made with your tweet on it. If you want to find
00:02:03
that, you can just go to store.swordandscale.com and look for the narcissist ceramic mug. It's got
00:02:11
my picture on it. You'll love it. And I think that I'm right about the fact that most of you come
00:02:17
here for for the sass for for the for the smart ass remarks that i make right any idiot can read
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you true crime stories any moron can pretend to have chemistry with some other moron while they
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talk about someone's last day on earth but you don't come here for that you come here for the
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narcissism you come here for the personality they're not here for you james they're not here
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for the soy-filled husk of a man telling them what's appropriate to say and not to say online.
00:02:48
They're here for my meltdown, James. Starting a business sounds exciting until you actually do it.
00:03:05
Then suddenly you're the product guy, the website guy, the shipping department, the marketing department,
00:03:10
customer service, all of it. And if you're anything like me when I started, you're thinking,
00:03:15
am I doing this right? Is anyone going to actually care? That's where Shopify makes a lot of sense.
00:03:23
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00:03:27
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00:03:32
so you can build a clean, professional online store that actually looks like your brand.
00:03:37
And once you're up and running, Shopify has tools for inventory, payments, analytics, returns, and international shipping all in one place.
00:03:46
They even have AI tools to help you write product descriptions, improve page headlines, and enhance product photography.
00:03:54
Plus, easy email and social media campaigns to help customers actually find you.
00:03:59
It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 a month trial today at shopify.com slash sword and scale.
00:04:12
Go to shopify.com slash sword and scale. That's shopify.com slash sword and scale.
00:04:20
Cha-ching. We play a lot of 911 calls here on the show, and naturally, nearly every call has something to do with murder.
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Now, we all know that not every 911 call is being placed because someone is being killed or has been killed.
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More often than not, the calls coming in the dispatcher for things like health emergencies, car accidents,
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maybe a suspicious person prowling around the neighborhood, or even sometimes things like brush fires and structural accidents.
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Any event that requires the immediate response of police, fire, or EMS warrants a 911 call.
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Early in the morning of August 21, 2017, a call such as this came into the Farmington Hills dispatch team,
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reporting the discovery of a body outside a home on the west side of the city. This wasn't just any home, though.
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It was a nearly two-acre estate built right alongside the Farmington Hills Golf Club.
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These people had money, and lots of it. I'm already on the phone. I am 911 What is the exact address of the emergency Howard Road Farmington Health And the phone number
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Where's the phone number you're calling from? We need an ambulance. What's going on there?
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I don't know. We were late for school, so I'm trying to find my mom. And I looked at the one next door with Oklahoma. It's never open.
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And she fell. Your mom fell? Two stories, yeah. She fell two stories? How old is your mom?
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33, I think. Okay, you excited? All right. The caller was 14-year-old Aya Altantawi,
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who had just discovered her mother lying unresponsive on the ground outside the family's sprawling 10,000-square-foot mansion.
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Okay, is she breathing? Come on, is she breathing? Her neck wasn't set around her neck.
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I don't know. Is she breathing? Come on, talk. Is she breathing? Hold on one second while you get him on the way, okay?
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Hold on. Okay, I'm not going to wait for him. Hold on. Hold on. No, tell him. We're not going to get him.
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Oh my God. Where are you going? Keep calling me. Here I'm going to check and stop.
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You want to hug me? I want to see. I can't get this in my hair. Okay, I have them on the way.
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Are you able to check and see if your mom is breathing? My gosh. Do you know how?
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We don't know how. Hello? Hi. Are you there? Yeah, we don't know her. Okay. No, don't do that.
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The thing is on the way. Is she on her back? What? It appeared to Aya as though her mom had fallen from the window on the second floor,
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directly above where her body now lay, motionless. The window was positioned at a considerable height.
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Both the first and second floors of the house boasted high ceilings, so this wasn't your typical residential second-story window height.
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She fell a significant distance, landing on concrete. To make matters worse, it remained unclear how long she'd been lying there.
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And how old is your mom? I think she's 33. 33? No, you'll get it. I need it. Let's see when they come.
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And is she conscious that or no? Is she? No, still not. I don't know how long you've been out here for it.
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I know how long you've been out here for it. I know how long you've been out here for it.
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At least 6.50 because that's when I called her on book for school. She didn't enter.
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Okay. All right. I want you. You're not sure she's breathing at this point? No. Nada Haranye was the 35-year-old mother now lying unconscious on the concrete.
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She lived in the home with her three children. Among them, her daughter Aya, who made the 911 call.
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But at this point, Aya's 16-year-old brother, Muhammad, had also come down to investigate the situation.
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Additionally, there was Nada's youngest daughter, who was nine years old and still sleeping in the house.
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It had been nearly two years since Nada and her ex, Basel Atantawi, had separated.
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Basel no longer lived with the rest of the family. Our parents are divorced and my brother's son was allowed to be living with him.
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Me and my sister, we only have a vacation rate. Okay. And he says he fell over two stories?
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Yeah, more or less. But our house is quite pretty next to us. It's just three stories out of the two.
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Okay. And this was it? You're not including the basement. Okay, this was an accidental fall?
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Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Okay, I want you to get down next to her. Okay. Okay, are you next to her?
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Yeah. Okay, do you see her chest rising and falling? No. You don't? Okay. The 911 operator asked Aya if she knew how to give CPR,
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but for some reason, Aya handed the phone off to her brother, 16-year-old Muhammad.
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The operator then instructed him on how to resuscitate his mother, and he started the chest compressions, counting back to the operator.
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She's outside, right? Yeah, she's on the concrete. She's outside on the concrete, okay.
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Yeah. Okay. Okay. One, two, three, four. 5 9 11 13 Pick up the pace 1 2 1, 2, 3, 4.
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1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. Keep going. You're doing good. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.
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1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3. Jeff, please bear with you. Yes. Keep going until they get up next to you, okay?
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Keep doing it. Okay. So what happened to your mom there Looks like she fell off the building.
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How did she fall? I didn't go into the room. I was just scared. I was clean. I couldn't look.
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Okay. Do you know how she fell or what she was doing? Yeah, she was on the top floor.
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She was watching or cleaning the window. She was cleaning the window? yeah okay is she always up this early in the morning yeah yeah yeah so we have school today
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you have school today yeah okay where do you go to school it's in white okay okay and what's your name my name is mohammed
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okay and what's your last name mohammed a lc a n t a w i okay okay all right i'm gonna let you go
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okay do you have the fire department there with you now yeah yeah yeah okay all right you did a
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You did a really good job, okay? Thanks. Okay. All right. Are you okay now? Or do you want me to stay with you?
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Yeah, we're here. We're good. Okay. All right. I'll let you go then, okay? Okay.
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Bye. All right. Bye-bye. Where's she at? One, two, three, four. One, two, three, four.
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One, two, three, four. I got it. Yes. Go out to the driveway. Direct the fire department in.
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All right, guys? Who else is home, guys? Okay. Go inside. I'll be with you guys in a minute.
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All right? Police. Okay. Who else is home? Your little sister? Is she sleeping or is she awake?
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Is she sleeping? Okay. Let's go. How old are you guys? 14, 16. 14, 16. who's the lady that's injured out back to you guys?
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My mom. Is that your mom? Yeah. Okay. What's your mom's name? I don't know. An idiot.
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When's the last time you guys saw your mom? What time? What time? Maybe 7 or 8. Okay.
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And when did you guys find her? This morning. I called her twice at 6 because she had a week to 7.
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That's for fun to answer. So I called her again at 6.30 because we're supposed to be
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schooled by 640 and she couldn't answer so I went upstairs and I saw her room was on
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the light I went upstairs and I saw that the guest room the light was on and I thought she was in there
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I checked her and I was still here and I saw the window and there was painting stuff
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and she went on her face in the morning because she wakes up early so I went to work out the window
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and I thought about, like, just in case maybe I know it's possible, but she was out there and then I called her over there and went outside.
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Okay. So this was around 6.30 this morning, you think? Yeah. Okay. Like 6.35. By the time the children discovered their mother's body, it was too late.
00:15:23
Officials took Nada from the scene for an autopsy. Later on, they located the three children.
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They were at Nada's estranged husband, Basalantantawi's, home. They wanted to speak with all three kids again about the timeline and the details of what had happened.
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Even more importantly, the Altantawi mansion boasted 13 different cameras. And police needed passwords to get access to the main security system so they could check to see if Nata's plummet to death was caught on video.
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That way they could, you know, confirm that it truly was an accident. I called up a company called TELUS Electronics who installed the system.
00:16:08
And they said that there is, obviously there are cameras all over the house. If the lights are going, that means it's probably connected to the camera system, which rewrites on top of each other.
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So if it's recording, then it'll only record for so long. You have a one terabyte hard drive in there, and basically it'll just always record.
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So depending on what quality you have, how much it's recording, which cameras are on,
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or whatever, depends on how quickly it cycles through. So what we want to do is just take a look at that and just make sure there's nothing
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suspicious on it. Obviously, people are calling. You guys are going through a divorce.
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So what we want to do is we want to just take that, take a look at it, either have our guys
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take a look at it or some computer people so they can pull the information off of it
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and just make sure there's nothing on tape that's suspicious or anything like that.
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Yeah, but I mean, if we don't over what the people, you know, and this is more, let's make sure
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there's nothing on and then just move on. Okay? No problems with that? I mean, I don't know.
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I don't think I have a problem, but like I said, the whole thing is talking to me and
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the whole situation is bizarre. Absolutely it is. We don't deal with this every day either.
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It's not something that normally happens, and you can see how, if you remove yourself out of the situation, and it's not personal,
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you can see how it would be, oh, man, something must have happened, right? You understand that?
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This is the FLIR DVR recording system. Does that sound right? You don't remember?
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I knew how to check this. Okay, you never had record? I wouldn't have looked at that.
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I don't know how to leave it. no logon and password or anything What are the cameras actually They all over the house What are they I don know If you walk around outside you can see they little they about that they black
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You know, there's one right over here, outside your garage. It's just kind of like main points of entry.
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Is it us? Like on the outside or something like that. I mean, you pull up the driveway, like when you pull in your driveway, you look up left,
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you can see a little camera that just kind of points down. Basel Antantawi, not his estranged husband, seemed not to know much about this security system.
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He didn't know how many cameras there were. He didn't even seem to remember what they looked like.
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He did, however, seem very reluctant to trust the intentions of police. It seemed to him like they were already going down a path of pointing fingers, and he didn't like that.
00:18:49
later on police showed up at fossil's house where the children were staying hoping to bring them
00:18:56
back to the station for formal interviews but that didn't go too great the reason we're coming back
00:19:01
is we wanted to talk to you guys at the station and try to block everything about okay timelines
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and that kind of stuff okay is that all right with you yeah to your daughter and you and
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your son. And your other mother. Yeah. Two daughters. Yeah, right. Kind of all at the station where we can maybe have a chance to, like, lock it all down.
00:19:24
All the station. Yeah. It's kind of a standard procedure. That's what we do. Law enforcement requested that Basel and his three children be interviewed at the police
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station, as is standard procedure. You heard the cops say that quite a few times.
00:19:39
For the girls who were still in school, it was suggested that they be picked up by the school liaison officer and brought straight to the station.
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Basel was obviously wary of this idea. School liaison officers, the school guys who were playing clothes or whatever, they can go, they can give her a ride to the station.
00:20:00
Because like I said, I was planning to take her to anything. We may not be there that long at the station.
00:20:06
And we just... I mean, I don't know. Should I possibly have a turn with you? I don't understand what's going on.
00:20:12
We're just... This is standard procedure when we're trying to... We have to... Obviously, it's kind of weird what happened.
00:20:19
We're just trying to find out exactly what the kids might have said. She might have said she wasn't feeling well earlier in the night.
00:20:26
If there was, you know, she got into an argument with somebody. Like I said, I have no problem.
00:20:30
But you guys have already talked to them so many times. Well, we don't want to scare the kids either.
00:20:45
We don't want to scare anybody. If you feel more comfortable doing it here, we can talk here.
00:20:51
Yeah. Sure, I understand. We're going to wait and see what the boss has to say about that.
00:20:58
We just want to make this as easy and comfortable as possible. We're not trying to intrude and make people feel uncomfortable.
00:21:05
We don't want anybody to get strange. And it's just that situation. I know. You have to understand from our standpoint, too.
00:21:12
It's not every day somebody goes out a window, right? Reluctantly, the detectives decided to interview Basel's son, Muhammad.
00:21:21
He was upstairs in his room. The evidence from the audio suggests that he had been living primarily with his father
00:21:28
even before this tragic accident occurred. The girls were staying with him temporarily as Basil only had visitation rights with his daughters.
00:21:38
Before proceeding, though, the detectives requested that the loud music be turned off.
00:21:44
As they waited for Aya and her younger sister to come back home, the police sat down with Muhammad and asked him some basic questions about the previous night.
00:21:55
Like they said, it's not every day that someone just goes out a window. Normally they either jump or are pushed.
00:22:06
The Farmington Hills Police were pretty certain that one of these two scenarios was the truth.
00:22:13
They just needed to figure out which one. Starting a business sounds exciting until you actually do it.
00:22:34
Then suddenly you're the product guy, the website guy, the shipping department, the marketing department,
00:22:39
customer service, all of it. And if you're anything like me when I started, you're thinking,
00:22:44
am I doing this right? is anyone going to actually care? That's where Shopify makes a lot of sense.
00:22:51
Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world,
00:22:56
including 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. They give you hundreds of ready-to-use templates
00:23:00
so you can build a clean, professional online store that actually looks like your brand.
00:23:06
And once you're up and running, Shopify has tools for inventory, payments, analytics, returns, and international shipping all in one place.
00:23:14
They even have AI tools to help you write product descriptions, improve page headlines, and enhance product photography.
00:23:22
Plus, easy email and social media campaigns to help customers actually find you.
00:23:28
It's time to turn those what-ifs into with Shopify today. Sign up for your $1 a month trial today at shopify.com slash sword and scale.
00:23:40
Go to shopify.com slash sword and scale. That's shopify.com slash swordandscale.
00:24:00
On August 21st, 2017, 14-year-old Aya Altantawi discovered her mother Nada's lifeless body
00:24:11
sprawled across the pavement, right outside of their opulent Farmington Hills mansion.
00:24:17
She called 911 and eventually handed the phone to her 16-year-old brother, Muhammad, who
00:24:23
rushed outside to see what Aya was screaming about. the two accepted CPR instruction from the 911 operator
00:24:30
and waited for the police to arrive the next day police drove over to Basel Antintalwi's house
00:24:38
the children were to stay with their father while the case was in progress the girls were still in school while police knocked on Basel's door
00:24:48
they would eventually be brought home by the school liaison officer while they waited police questioned Mohammed
00:24:56
hoping to get some information about the family dynamic, people who may have wanted to hurt his mother,
00:25:03
and most importantly, the home's extensive security system. I'm sorry, what's your name again, sir?
00:25:09
Mahoney. Mahoney, I'm Richard. How's it going? Again, we're sorry about your loss.
00:25:14
I'm sure it's tough. Like I said, we're just kind of trying to go through things here
00:25:19
to find out what transpired, if anything, your mom might have said or the way she was acting or anything like that
00:25:25
that might have led you guys to believe that she was upset about something or anything?
00:25:29
So you just kind of walk us through. Did you have school yesterday? No, not yet.
00:25:33
You didn't have school yesterday? Yeah, I went to school. Okay, what? When did you?
00:25:37
I guess not yesterday. The day before it was Sunday, so not that either. Okay. So what went on?
00:25:45
It started like Sunday evening. What was going on Sunday evening? I mean, not really anything.
00:25:50
We all stay in our rooms for the most part. I bought messages on their computers.
00:25:53
I bought my computer. I mean, we ate lunch. She's walking around the house. I think she came back with my sister from getting school supplies.
00:26:04
And then I didn't really talk to her much. She was talking to my sister. And then, like I said, I was paying attention.
00:26:09
I was my phone eating. That's about it. What was she doing the whole time? Did she seem upset?
00:26:15
What kind of mood was she in? She seemed fine, I'd say. I mean, like I said, she came back with school supplies
00:26:21
and went straight to her room. So, and then she slept like a few hours later. Your mom did?
00:26:27
So what time does she normally go to bed? Normally I'd say around 10, maybe, late 9.30.
00:26:33
9.30 or 10? Do you recall what time she went to bed last night? Around late 7, maybe early 8, I think.
00:26:39
You know why she'd go to bed three hours earlier? No. Like I said, we didn't really talk much yesterday, so.
00:26:46
How are things between, you know, your mom and your sisters? You know, girls always arguing about something or fighting about something?
00:26:52
or are you getting in trouble for anything lately? You know, is your mom mad at anybody about anything?
00:26:57
I'd say just a normal, like, you know. Teenage stuff? Yeah, a parent's a little bit.
00:27:01
Like, a couple days ago, like, my sister, her room was pretty dirty, so, you know, my mom told her to clean her room.
00:27:07
It's about it. You have a beautiful house here. Does your mom clean it or do you have a cleaning lady?
00:27:11
Well, we all clean. It's what we do. So, like, if I make a mess, I have to clean it.
00:27:16
All right. How's your sister's relationship with your mom? No big arguments or anything with your sister lately?
00:27:33
No, no, no. By all accounts, Nada was a hardworking, loving, and doting mother. She woke the kids up for school every day, cooked, cleaned, and did all the normal full-time parenting duties,
00:27:46
while also juggling a career as a fitness instructor. Now, where does your mom work?
00:27:53
Franklin Athletic Club. Okay, does she work every day or is it by appointment only?
00:27:56
I'm pretty sure it's every day. I'm not as familiar with it myself. She hasn't really told me about it much, but from what I heard from my sister,
00:28:03
it's like she has clients and they schedule it with her. That's how her schedule kind of works.
00:28:07
Well, absolutely. Did the people ever come here to work out? No. Okay, it's just so.
00:28:10
It's at the gym, yeah. It's at the gym. The people who took Nada's classes absolutely adored her.
00:28:18
After hearing of her tragic passing, the gym's Facebook page flooded with comments like this.
00:28:24
Nada was such an inspiring woman. She truly made so many people's lives happier.
00:28:30
She would always greet you with a smile and knew everyone who attended her class by first name.
00:28:36
She was so passionate, and I am so, so glad I knew her. Franklin was a place she was certainly appreciated.
00:28:45
I do not doubt that she was an amazing mother, too. We spoke with Nada's oldest daughter, Aya, and she filled in the gaps for us on the true Altantawi family dynamic.
00:28:58
My mom, she grew up in Dubai. She lived there until about like 12th grade, I want to say, and then moved to Syria, where she originally was from.
00:29:04
My dad was born and raised in Syria. My dad is 11 years older than my mom was. So she was 18 when they got engaged or married.
00:29:14
And then pretty soon after they moved to the U.S., they went to Pennsylvania first so that my dad could finish up his studies with med school and all of that.
00:29:23
But yeah, they primarily just moved to America for job opportunities, as most people typically do.
00:29:30
Aya's father, Basil, was a physician in Michigan. getting his initial med schooling in syria back in 1993 a little less than 25 years after the
00:29:40
school was founded he then finished up his fellowship and residency in america soon after
00:29:47
basal and nada began building their family they started off living very traditionally with basal
00:29:54
going out to work and nada staying at home to take care of the children my mom was incredible person Everyone loved her She was like the definition of you know when you hear people saying that oh this person like when they walk into the room
00:30:07
it's like a light walk. Whatever that saying is, I don't know. But she was the definition of that pretty much.
00:30:13
She was a huge people pleaser, huge extrovert. So anything she could do to make other people happy,
00:30:19
she would do it. She was always there for everyone. And I think that was kind of her way of forgetting about her own troubles that were happening at home is by focusing on how she can make other people's lives better.
00:30:30
But she was very, very, very much into the gym. I mean, I she started going to the gym before I could even remember.
00:30:38
Like, I can't tell you when she started going. But I got into the gym because of her.
00:30:43
She ended up actually teaching at a gym that she would work at, which was really great.
00:30:49
and I don't know I mean you know when she was still alive I was going through my like pre-teen
00:30:57
teen years of being you know a dumb teenager essentially and just like wanting my own space
00:31:03
and and thinking that parents are lame and I don't want to be seen with my parents.
00:31:08
Though the family as they often do seem to be pretty normal happy successful even on the outside
00:31:15
But tensions had been brewing for quite a while. Aya remembers that she first noticed problems in her parents' marriage becoming evident all the way back in 2011.
00:31:27
Honestly, we didn't really see too much of it, you know, the fighting and all that.
00:31:33
My parents definitely tried to keep it just between them while, you know, my siblings and I were still kids.
00:31:38
But as we got older and as the fighting became more tumultuous, more just happened more often, it was it got a little bit harder to hide.
00:31:49
I want to say the time that I started to notice things was actually when we were in Lebanon.
00:31:55
Me, my mother, my brother and my sister were there for a little family reunion from my mom's side.
00:32:01
So my dad was staying in America because he had work. and I remember we were walking down like a pier
00:32:09
and my dad or my mom got a call from my dad and so me and my brother, we hung back with my mom
00:32:15
while our family walked ahead of us and she answered the phone and I remember he,
00:32:21
it took my mom a few minutes to get him to calm down and figure out what was going on
00:32:25
but basically what had happened is he had invested a ton of money, if I remember correctly, was a quarter of a million
00:32:31
into stocks and he lost it all. And my mom was telling him, apparently it was a conversation
00:32:37
that they had had before. And he had brought it up to her and she told him, you know, don't do it.
00:32:41
You don't know what you're doing with money. You don't know how to invest anything. If you want to
00:32:45
do it, that's fine. But hire someone who actually knows what they're doing. Obviously didn't listen
00:32:49
to her. So from what I remember, it kind of started there, or at least that's when I started
00:32:55
to pick up on it. I want to say that money was a huge stressor in their relationship just because
00:33:01
my dad wasn't smart with finances, so he didn't really know how to manage it correctly. And
00:33:07
especially, you know, given that our family was well off, he just didn't know how to manage it and,
00:33:14
you know, make sure that we weren't spending money frivolously. I think that was the first
00:33:19
time that I noticed it. But then with my mom, it kind of started to pick up when she expressed
00:33:24
wanting to get a job and start working, go back to school, that sort of thing. When they initially began the separation and divorce process in March of 2016, things changed drastically for the Altantawi family.
00:33:39
Since Basel had moved out, Nada trimmed her budget by canceling luxuries like the maid service, and she landed the fitness instructor position so that she could bring in some income of her own.
00:33:51
After all, she and Basel had been separated for nearly two years with no divorce finalization.
00:33:58
Everything was all up in the air legally, even if they considered themselves already divorced in the eyes of Islam, their chosen religion.
00:34:07
So my parents weren't legally divorced, but in terms of religion, in our religion they were divorced by then.
00:34:16
That was like the very first step that they took was getting divorced religiously.
00:34:20
Getting divorced through the American system obviously is a much longer process because you have to figure out kids and you have to figure out finances and houses and cars and
00:34:29
whatever, all of that. But in terms of the religion, they were already divorced.
00:34:33
Nada very quickly began the process of starting a new life without Basel. Our way of bonding was going to the gym or shopping. That was it. And for the last couple
00:34:44
of months, we purchased a new house and was completely remodeling it. So anytime she would
00:34:50
be going over to the house and I wasn't asked, well, I'd be like, oh, I want to come.
00:34:53
So we were doing that a lot, figuring out how I wanted to decorate my room, that sort
00:34:58
of thing. Now, are you guys staying here? Are they planning on selling the house, do you know?
00:35:04
I think, yeah, they're selling the house, this house. They are going to sell this house?
00:35:08
Did your mom have any places she was moving to or been looking around or anything that
00:35:11
you know? She's not, not really that I, she told me about yesterday. I heard my sister talking about that they got in your house.
00:35:19
So she got a new house. Oh, you did? Yeah, that's what my sister said. Do you know what that is?
00:35:25
No. Mohamed told police that he heard his sister talking about the new house with their mother.
00:35:32
And that's all he knew about the situation. While it was true that his mother and sister didn't willingly tell him anything about the new house,
00:35:41
it was not true that he found out by listening in on their conversation. no he I'm pretty sure he found out on his own because he was like snooping so he he would go
00:35:53
into her room and go through papers and whatever he would take her phone he essentially he was trying to act like he was the parent he would go through her phone go through all her belongings ask her where she going when she coming back who she going to see that sort of thing
00:36:06
So I'm pretty sure he did find out on his own. Muhammad didn't have much information about the new house,
00:36:13
but chances were it would be smaller and quite a bit less opulent than their current abode.
00:36:19
These kids had it made. And, you know, it'd be painful for any kid to give up the amenities they were used to.
00:36:27
It's a lot easier going from rags to riches than riches to rags. That's for sure.
00:36:33
The Altantawi house had everything. From the custom fireplaces, high ceilings, and chandeliers,
00:36:40
to the features every teen dreams of. Their own massive bedroom with private bathrooms,
00:36:47
high-end computers, walk-in closets, a movie theater, in the basement, with a whole separate kitchen and living area, and a home gym and even a sauna.
00:36:58
Needless to say, the house was massive enough and had enough features to entertain the kids for days
00:37:04
on end. They could go several days without seeing each other in person, like over the weekend,
00:37:10
for example. The night before his mother's death, Muhammad knew his sister Aya was in her room,
00:37:16
only by her shuffling noises and the light that emerged through the cracks around her bedroom door.
00:37:23
What are your sisters doing? Or do you know? My youngest sister, she's going to sleep.
00:37:30
And then my other sister's on her computer. And then I'm on the computer. So you guys didn't really see each other the whole evening?
00:37:35
No. Okay. You're in your room the whole time? Yeah. Well, no, I went to pray to the mosque again on my bike.
00:37:42
I came back around. So I left around 8.30 and I came back around 9.15. At 8.30, Muhammad said he left the house on his bike to visit the mosque and pray.
00:37:53
The Altantawis were devout followers of Islam when they lived back in Syria, and they continued their practices after settling in Michigan and starting a family.
00:38:02
They instilled the same values in their children, raising them up to be good Muslim kids.
00:38:08
Muhammad himself seemed pretty devout for a 16-year-old, choosing to ride his bike to the mosque multiple times a day to pray
00:38:16
instead of getting into trouble with drugs, alcohol, and girls. Okay, now forgive me, I'm not so knowledgeable about your religion and stuff.
00:38:26
Is that something you do every day? Yeah, every day. Every day? Five times a day, yeah.
00:38:30
Okay, so you ride your bike to the mosque? You left the house at 8.30. And then what time did you get back?
00:38:35
9.15. 9.15. All right, and you didn't go with your friend yesterday? Yeah. Do the women not have to go and pray?
00:38:44
No. They don't? I mean, it's just, I don't know. What nationality are you? What nationality are you?
00:38:50
I was born here, but like my ethnicity is Syrian. So the girls don't have to go to pray five times a day?
00:38:56
Yeah, they should pray at home usually. Okay, so that's an option you can do. You can sometimes pray at home, okay.
00:39:01
So we definitely, I mean, women could go to the mosque for sure. It just wasn't, I mean, with men, it's for the five daily prayers,
00:39:09
it's mandatory to go to the mosque if you can. For women, it's if you want to, you can go if you
00:39:14
don't want to, you can do it at home, it doesn't really matter. For the most part, yeah, everything
00:39:18
that I learned about my religion did come from primarily my father. There was a little bit that
00:39:24
I learned from my private schools, but it wasn't stuff that like hadn't already been told to me by
00:39:32
my father. I mean, you know, for for me growing up, my parents were definitely very, very religious.
00:39:38
Just that's it was something that they might fathom or so was something that they just pushed upon us.
00:39:43
And, you know, it was fine with me. I the thing that I struggled with is that if I didn't understand something about the religion, I'd want to ask why.
00:39:51
And I'd want to understand before I, you know, just did things blindly. That's just how I've always been.
00:39:58
And whenever I'd ask my dad questions, he would just say, well, that's what it says.
00:40:02
So you just have to do it. And that wasn't really satisfactory enough for me. How long does the prayer last?
00:40:07
I'd say maybe like 20 minutes max, like 10 minutes for the prayer, and then you have 10 minutes to talk with people, talk with friends.
00:40:14
Okay. And then they, like, close the doors? No, no, the doors open all day. Okay.
00:40:19
Yeah. Were you there with your friends yesterday? Yeah, I didn't go with them, but I saw a couple people, yeah.
00:40:24
Okay. You're saying your mom went to bed before you left? Yeah. And when you got back, she was not up?
00:40:32
I don't know. You just assumed she was asleep or whatever? Here's where this interview gets really good.
00:40:38
So you don't know if your mom had any problems with anybody or anything like that?
00:40:42
No. All right. So last night you went to bed about 11.30? Sunday night, right? Sunday night, yeah.
00:40:51
Now, would you know if somebody came over to the house last night? I mean, if somebody came in the house or anything, would you know?
00:41:00
I should, yeah. Most likely I should probably be able to pay attention. I don't know, would there be like a door chime or anything like that?
00:41:07
Yeah. Muhammad made it clear to police that he didn't hear anyone come into the house after he came in for the night.
00:41:15
Because of their security system, he was sure he would have heard something. The four of them went to sleep for the night, and early the next morning, just after Muhammad got out of the shower,
00:41:27
is when he told police he heard his sister scream from the patio down below. police then had to determine whether any of the kids knew how the security system worked
00:41:39
whether any of the 13 cameras had a central control panel and if any of the cameras recorded footage rather than just displaying it live
00:41:47
now we noticed that you know there's a security system here do you know how that works
00:41:54
no no i wasn even like i would have we had more cameras in the back of the house You weren aware there was cameras all around the outside of the house No No I knew there was some in the garage door or something like that
00:42:07
but I didn't know any specifics about it. Do you know the code to it? No. You don't have accesses or anything like that?
00:42:15
No. No one has really... I mean, it's just kind of there. No one used anything since we moved here, so...
00:42:21
Do you know where it's kept? The code? Like the hard drive and everything for the...
00:42:27
No. You don't know where that's kept? No. I thought it was in the Wi-Fi room, but apparently not,
00:42:32
because this morning you guys went to go to a friend or something like that. Okay.
00:42:39
Well, we did. We took it. And it's working. So everything's on video as to what transpired.
00:42:48
so we're trying to find out if you have anything that you want to say about that or
00:42:56
not really no no not really i mean no no okay well we're 100 sure that this wasn't accidental
00:43:10
See what I'm saying? Okay. So trying to figure out is what happened and why it happened.
00:43:23
Because watching the video, nobody leaves the house. Yeah. So there's your mother, you, your sister, and your little sister.
00:43:35
That's what we're trying to figure out as to what happened. If it was an accident, if it was an argument, if it was something that was, you know, spontaneous, something accidental, that's what we need to know.
00:43:49
Because we want to get a resolution to this. I know you do, too. The actions happen all the time.
00:43:55
You know, somebody could be helping somebody with something, holding the ladder, something like that, and something happens.
00:43:59
That's why we need to know what happened. And that's why we're looking to you, because you're the oldest, and we've watched the video.
00:44:08
Police went into this interview having already watched the recorded footage from the security cameras.
00:44:14
They already knew the cameras not only saved the recorded footage, but they caught crucial parts of the event in question.
00:44:24
Muhammad didn't even know his family had that many cameras surrounding the house, let alone what they recorded at night.
00:44:31
Muhammad's father Basel was nearby for this interview and when he saw it going a certain direction he quickly stepped in on his
00:44:39
son's behalf you told me that's like a routine question then I come back with it
00:44:43
but now you're telling him that he's lying just now he can explain it to you he's shocked
00:44:53
and my eye is the same so I don't want them to see anything in the front except I have an attorney
00:44:59
his underage, you know that? We know that. That's why we asked you if we could speak to him and you said yes.
00:45:04
No, I need an attorney now. I don't want to go any further. I have to tell you how to an attorney because when I came back
00:45:09
it blew up my mind. My daughter asked me, what's going on dad? Why did you let us go back to the house?
00:45:14
So this is actually now you know, you're investigating a child here. There was more than what was originally told to us.
00:45:21
So, I mean, you're more than welcome to I mean, your son can tell you what he told us.
00:45:25
There was more that occurred that night. He is shot. My daughter is shot. I am shot.
00:45:30
We are crying day and night. He never lied. My son never lied. My kids never lied.
00:45:35
I mean, never lied. I didn't lie. I just didn't say everything that happened. Sure.
00:45:39
He didn't lie. He just didn't tell us everything that happened. So if someone is...
00:45:45
His mom is dead, man. I understand. I understand. So what you're talking about...
00:45:51
Please, sir. I don't want my kids to talk to any of you anymore. Okay. All right.
00:45:56
Okay. I mean, I want to know everything as you want to know. But the way it is like this, I see there's something putting so much burden on side,
00:46:06
and we are not, we didn't eat since the morning. And now I come back with my daughter.
00:46:09
She's telling me, Dad, why did they not let me? Like, we have to get permission to come back to the house.
00:46:14
So she's scared, and I'm scared, and he's scared and confused. This is part of our, we had the timelines that didn't quite match up with what was said on the scene.
00:46:24
You are talking with a child confused. We're not talking about like 10 minutes or five.
00:46:29
Your son is not confused and he's not a child. He's a 16-year-old. He's not a child.
00:46:36
When you say child, it makes him seem like this. He's your child. Evidence at the crime scene did not point to an accidental fall.
00:46:45
There was not a drop of blood on the concrete or on Noda's body when she was found and she landed face up.
00:46:52
what law enforcement saw on the video footage made them turn their attention directly toward
00:46:59
muhammad at first muhammad tried to insinuate that if his mother was murdered his 14 year old sister
00:47:07
may have had something to do with it because she was allegedly awake before muhammad was
00:47:14
but police quickly explained why that theory didn't quite check out that was the first day
00:47:21
of our second week of school. And we had to go be at like this location where a bus took us to school
00:47:28
by 630. And so I had been waking up by like six at the latest to get up and get ready for school.
00:47:36
And I'm the type of person who sets like 20 alarms each within like two minute intervals of
00:47:41
each other. So I'll hear one of them at some point, like I'll wake up. But my brother had
00:47:46
been waking up at like 630, 633, which is when we had to be there. So we were running late because
00:47:51
of him. But that day I didn't wake up until like 615, 620, I want to say, which was already weird.
00:48:00
And when I woke up, my brother was already awake, which was even weirder. I mean, now's the time.
00:48:05
If we're going to be honest about it, we've got to be honest about it now. Because once this ball gets rolling, it's up to prosecutors and stuff like that to explain something as an accident or not.
00:48:14
Now's the time we need to do it. Yeah. We know that somebody was in the room. And we're about 99.9% sure it's a male that was in the room from the picture, from the video.
00:48:26
But we have to slow it down and get a snapshot of it. and that's what MSP's doing right now.
00:48:31
We got it shipped off to the state lab and they're going to blow it up and it's going to show who was there.
00:48:36
The security camera footage, that's when I was like, oh yeah, he did it. The footage, which by the way,
00:48:42
you can watch if you're a PLUS member, clearly shows shadows cast onto the ground
00:48:47
from the window above. A large looming figure can be seen moving around before a smaller figure
00:48:55
is seemingly thrust from the window and falls to the ground below. Given that Muhammad was the only male in the home that night,
00:49:05
it was damning enough evidence to make an arrest. We begin with breaking news. A murder in a Farmington Hills mansion.
00:49:12
A victim of a 35-year-old woman, and we're told there was plenty of family trouble there.
00:49:17
Seven investigator Jim Kirchner live on Howard Road where this happened early Monday morning.
00:49:21
And Jim, we understand it took police a while to figure this one out. Yeah, this has been going on since Monday morning, but let me tell you, just as we're coming on the air,
00:49:30
I just got off the phone with Farmington Hills Chief Nebus, who tells me a 16-year-old son of this victim is now in custody,
00:49:38
is now the murder suspect being held at Children's Village here in Oakland County.
00:49:43
That's the juvenile lockup. The chief says they got a call into 911 at 6 a.m. Monday morning at this mansion that a woman had fallen from a second-story window.
00:49:52
But then they determined this was no accident. The autopsy is done on this victim, but they're not releasing the cause of death.
00:50:00
And that could be because there are other injuries in addition to what would have been sustained from the fall from a second story window.
00:50:07
I asked the chief if the 16 year old is cooperating. Is he answering police questions?
00:50:12
The chief would not answer that. Muhammad was arrested, arraigned and swiftly charged with second degree murder all in the same week.
00:50:22
For the time being, he was to be held at Children's Village without bond, despite his lawyer's plea to the judge that Muhammad was a star student with no criminal record.
00:50:34
The prosecutor's office had a different perspective. Muhammad had murdered his own mother while his young sisters were in the home with him.
00:50:46
He was violent and dangerous and should be kept off the streets. Here's the kicker, though.
00:50:54
Investigators agreed that Muhammad couldn't have done this on his own, especially given what Nada's autopsy results would show.
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00:52:50
16-year-old Mohamed Altantawi had been arrested and charged with the second-degree murder of his mother,
00:52:58
35-year-old Nada Haraniye. and by the time November 2017 rolled around, about three months after Nada's death,
00:53:07
the medical examiner released some damning information about the autopsy results.
00:53:12
It was early on in their investigation that police say they realized that the death of the 35-year-old Farmington Hill's mother of three was no accident.
00:53:20
Prosecutors say 16-year-old Muhammad Altenawi murdered his mother and today a forensic pathologist from the medical examiner's office
00:53:28
testified that Nada's primary cause of death was asphyxiation from smothering. You heard it right.
00:53:36
Nada, a 135-pound grown woman, was dead before she went out the window. In your opinion, doctor, this happened before or after the body falling out of the window?
00:53:49
My observation indicates that they cut in before. I think that the positioning of her body was not what you would expect from someone falling out of the window Not only had Nada fallen face up onto the pavement her feet faced the house
00:54:07
The medical examiner determined that Nada had likely been smothered with a damp towel or cloth prior to being tossed from the second story.
00:54:16
The only reason Mohammed had thrown his mother's body out the window was to stage the scene and make it appear like an accident.
00:54:27
And why on earth would a devoutly religious 16-year-old suddenly decide to murder his own mother?
00:54:34
Further evidence in Aya's own firsthand testimony explain that also. The first domestic violence incident that happened,
00:54:46
that was like one of the major ones, if not the most major. we actually didn't end up calling the police
00:54:51
and that wasn't allowed to be talked about in like any of the court stuff we came back from London
00:54:57
my parents were arguing my dad had my mom's phone in his hand and they were on the phone with my mom's dad
00:55:05
so my grandfather and they were sitting at the top of the stairs she was trying to get the phone back from him
00:55:11
he wasn't giving it to her so he ended up pushing her down the stairs and she like twisted her ankle really badly
00:55:17
I had like a panic attack. My first panic attack ever, as far as I remember, was that night.
00:55:24
So that was the London incident. And then about a month later was the first recorded incident of
00:55:30
domestic violence where the police were called and I was the one that called the police.
00:55:33
The second one was kind of along the same lines. You know, he had her phone. They were on the phone
00:55:38
with her dad. He wouldn't give it back to her. He ran into their bedroom to hide. And my mom was
00:55:44
trying to push the door open she had her hand like between the door and he like saw her hand but then
00:55:49
he like slammed the door anyways and he closed it on her her hand so her thumb got injured somehow
00:55:54
the third one was just that when the police came and took him away the first time the time that I
00:56:00
called he wasn't supposed to come back but he did anyways so then my mom called the police and then
00:56:04
my dad was like running through the house with my brother and they were my brother was like talking
00:56:09
to him in Arabic and he's like go hide here like they won't find you here and then I'd be like oh
00:56:12
they're hiding over here and they would be like yelling at me. It was really funny. But yeah,
00:56:16
so then he got taken away that time and wasn't allowed to come back. After Basel was ordered
00:56:21
to leave the home, Nada filed for divorce. In a separate case Basel battled on his own,
00:56:29
he faced charges related to Medicare fraud and two counts of health care fraud, which resulted in him having to spend one day in jail and pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars
00:56:40
and restitution. Yeah. So with that, that was also something big in the family. I remember we
00:56:47
were driving in Detroit one day. I don't remember exactly for what, but it was my entire family,
00:56:51
both of my siblings and both of my parents. And we were passing by like the Blue Cross Blue Shield
00:56:57
building. And my dad goes, you know, pray that these people leave me alone. This was all in
00:57:04
Arabic, but that they like get off my back, whatever. And to me, I didn't really know too
00:57:08
much about it at that point. But my sort of train of thought with everything in that case was,
00:57:15
you know, obviously, this is a very, very big corporation, they make a ton of money,
00:57:19
you're one person, you know, you run your own clinic, if you haven't been doing something
00:57:24
so blatantly wrong, why would they be coming after you in the first place? So even though I didn't
00:57:29
know details about it, I thought that he was guilty of whatever they were accusing him of.
00:57:34
And so when my dad said to, you know, pray that they get off his back, my parents and my brother, like, were literally praying out loud.
00:57:43
And I didn't say anything. I kept my mouth shut. So my brother turns to me and he's like, why aren't you saying it?
00:57:47
And I was like, I'm saying it in my head. And he's like, no, you have to say it out loud for it to count.
00:57:50
And I was like, no, I can, you know, say it subconsciously and it'll be fine. He was like, no, we have to say it out loud.
00:57:55
So I know you're actually saying it. According to cell phone evidence, Nada was involved in a text conversation where she stated that she had information on Basel that could land him in prison for further financial crimes.
00:58:09
Could that have added another, even more pressing element to the motive of Nada's murder?
00:58:16
His medical license was suspended by the state of Michigan in February. State officials citing negligence, incompetence, lack of good moral character, a criminal conviction and unethical business practices.
00:58:29
Police say he is not involved in the murder. This is the thing that really bothered me, I think, especially within the divorce cases, that his license was suspended.
00:58:38
I believe it was for about six months, maybe a year. but once the term ended, he always had the option to go back and apply for it to be reinstated.
00:58:47
It was never like a, it's done, you can never get it back type of thing. He just chose to never
00:58:52
go and get it reinstated because he used that as a strategy in the divorce case to be like,
00:58:57
I shouldn't have to pay child custody. I shouldn't have to pay any bills because I don't have a job.
00:59:01
In the throes of these very adult problems, Muhammad chose a side. He was angry at his
00:59:09
mother for divorcing his father and blamed both his sister and mother for trying to ruin his
00:59:14
father's life. He thought that his mother was trying to take all of his father's money. And
00:59:20
he thought Aya was trying to ruin his reputation by doing things like, oh, I don't know, calling
00:59:26
the police when Basel became violent. So when the police came and took my father away both times,
00:59:33
my brother immediately just started to turn on me and my mother even more because they were like,
00:59:37
they were both saying, you know, what are you doing to him? Like, this is my brother and my father were saying, what are you doing to my dad?
00:59:44
Like, this is ridiculous. Like, he's done everything for you. They're going to take him to jail to send that.
00:59:50
And so my my brother felt really bad for my dad. And like he when the police came and took him like he was bawling his eyes out According to Aya Muhammad had a strained relationship with his mother and sisters even before the separation But once Nada filed for
01:00:06
divorce, things got much worse. So when he, when my dad wasn't allowed to come back, he literally
01:00:13
did say that, okay, now that dad's gone, like I'm the only man in the house. I'm the one who's in
01:00:17
charge now, like what I say goes. And that translated into everything. So what we ate,
01:00:23
what we dressed, where we did, where we, he would just try to control everything. Um,
01:00:27
and when my mom growing up, we never were really like disciplined by my mom or like grounded,
01:00:33
things like that. Like we never had our phones taken away. So when my brother was contacting my
01:00:39
dad and like sending him pictures of what my mom was doing, like things like that, just being like
01:00:43
his little spy, essentially my dad was allowed to have contact with any of us. Um, unless it was
01:00:48
through like a third party supervised person, he could request that. And then they would set it up
01:00:53
he never requested it. He would just sneak my brother out. My brother would sneak out of the
01:00:57
house. They would see each other like that, but he never requested to see my sister and I,
01:01:00
and I never requested to see him. So it was fine. But yeah, so my mom, you know, tried to take his
01:01:05
phone away, uh, to discipline him and be like, you're not supposed to be texting your dad. Like
01:01:09
you can't be sneaking out of the house, things like that. And at that point, my brother started
01:01:13
getting really into working out and like building muscle and like taking these protein shakes and
01:01:19
powders and whatever it was. So he was a lot stronger than my mom at that point. So her trying
01:01:25
to take his phone from him and like discipline him would result in a physical altercation.
01:01:29
And so at one point she, you know, she knew that it wasn't going to work out. And so she just
01:01:33
stopped. She kind of just let him do his own thing. And he just, he started to get like a,
01:01:38
he was very, very, very short tempered. He was very, very assertive, very violent. And he was
01:01:47
just always like a ticking time bomb. You never knew what was going to set him off. You never knew
01:01:51
when he was going to be set off, but at any moment he could just blow up at you.
01:01:55
Muhammad was very easily influenced and manipulated by his father, the only person he cared to try to
01:02:01
earn approval from. During the early morning hours the day his mother's body was found,
01:02:08
Muhammad had numerous phone calls back and forth with Basel. This all occurred well before Muhammad
01:02:13
told police that he was awake. Even more telling was his mother's contact name and his phone.
01:02:22
Muhammad had her listed under B for bitch. Yeah, that's the Muslim way right there.
01:02:30
You just call your mom a bitch. Hmm. When Muhammad finally went to trial in 2022,
01:02:37
his charges by this point had escalated to first-degree murder, and he was being charged as an adult.
01:02:45
His defense attorney's main argument was that Muhammad could not have pulled this off on his own.
01:02:53
The attorney stated that it was, quote, inconceivable that Muhammad killed Nada.
01:02:59
The scene was set up so professionally to look like an accident both before and after the killing took place,
01:03:07
it just couldn't have been done by a 16-year-old. though he may not have had physical help inside the home while he set up the cleaning supplies
01:03:18
and the ladder events which were also backed up by the security camera footage he may have
01:03:24
had instruction from his own father why was he on the phone with his dad in those early morning hours
01:03:32
including times right before and right after nada was thrown out the window Here's another damning piece of circumstantial evidence.
01:03:43
Both Basel and Nada were scheduled to give depositions for their divorce just two days after Nada was murdered.
01:03:52
You might be wondering why on earth was Basel not charged with anything related to this crime?
01:04:00
But it's not enough to convict him. I mean, it's all circumstantial, I think. So they I mean, they're they wanted to get my dad more than anything.
01:04:09
I think I mean, I wanted that, too. I was like, if you can get my dad and let my brother go free and that's the only way like do it.
01:04:16
My dad is the actual culprit of everything. He's the one who manipulated my brother.
01:04:20
And that's not to say that I don't blame my brother because I do. I mean, regardless of how much he was manipulated or brainwashed or whatever term you want to use, he was still at the end of the day.
01:04:28
He was 16 years old. even if he was eight years old like you know that killing someone much less your own mother is very
01:04:35
very wrong like that you know what is right and what's wrong so yeah he's definitely at fault
01:04:39
but he's also not the person that's been behind everything you know like yeah he took away my
01:04:48
mother's life and that's huge that's definitely he needs to pay for that but at the same time like my
01:04:52
dad put my mother through years and years and years of hell and he got my brother to kill her
01:04:57
If he had the ability to kill my mother, I absolutely 100% without a doubt believe that he would have done it.
01:05:02
But because he couldn't do it, he had my brother do it. So, yeah, throughout the entire case, they have been trying to find anything to use to get to my dad.
01:05:11
But they're my dad is stupid, but he's he's smart in picking a scapegoat and making sure that he doesn't fall for his own actions.
01:05:19
So he was able to get away with it. And while his son was in prison for crimes he may have orchestrated himself, Vossel went about the community begging and pleading for sympathy and, you guessed it, money.
01:05:34
The whole not being good with finances thing didn stop with my mom It continued on with him So when all the money was split up while my brother was sitting in jail refusing to say a single bad word about my father my father went on during winter break in December went to Las Vegas and gambled away a quarter of a million dollars in one night I mean when everything was still happening this was when I was like 16 17 still having to do mandatory visitations with him
01:06:05
And people in our community still had like a good perspective of him and sympathize with him.
01:06:10
He went around collecting money from the community saying that it was to help pay for legal fees for
01:06:16
my brother. And people were giving him money. Guess what he goes and does with the money?
01:06:20
buys a brand new sports car. So then at that point, people were like, what the hell is wrong with you?
01:06:25
Like, we're going to stop giving you money. It's like, he's not a smart person. The same community that was silent
01:06:31
during NADA's domestic violence experience initially stood up to both defend Muhammad and Basel.
01:06:40
Funny how that happens in some communities. It took an act so blatantly ungrateful and greedy
01:06:47
to finally turn his own community against him. All the while, Basel made the same claims over and over.
01:06:59
His son, Muhammad, was innocent. My son never lied. My kids never lie. Apparently, to Basel, his son would never lie.
01:07:10
But I guess we should disregard what his daughters had to say. Right? Is that how that works?
01:07:17
After all, it kind of contradicts the whole idea that Muhammad is innocent. You know, I haven't been able to be like this happened to me and my family, but I wasn't allowed to know anything about what was being said.
01:07:31
I was allowed to know anything about the trial until it was over. And so just everyone giving me their opinions on it.
01:07:36
And like I said, that's fine. But you can't sit here and tell me that what I went through is incorrect.
01:07:40
Like I lived through it. You didn't. you know and so I wouldn't just re-emphasizing I wouldn't I wouldn't be doing this if there was
01:07:49
no reason to be doing this you know I don't I don't wake up one day and decide hey let me go
01:07:53
ruin my brother and my father's life like no they did that to themselves it's the consequences of
01:07:58
their own actions maybe they didn't expect to be caught or they didn't expect to have repercussions
01:08:03
but like wake up you're you're an adult there this is what happens when you do things like this
01:08:08
you get in trouble for it. So I don't know. I mean, I've, I've made my peace with everything.
01:08:14
I've put it all behind me. I've moved on. This is to me, just another step in my healing journey is,
01:08:20
you know, actually being able to give my voice and tell people everything that I went through
01:08:26
and my mother has gone through as opposed to just having everyone be like, Oh, this is what
01:08:29
you went through. And this isn't what you went through. Basel himself is someone who seems to be
01:08:34
preoccupied with getting money, either legally or illegally, and spending it frivolously.
01:08:42
He used Islam as a way to control people around him and keep them under his thumb.
01:08:48
He was very quote-unquote old school or extreme in the belief system he taught his family.
01:08:57
My dad, in the trial and like everything, every aspect of his life, was very, very religious,
01:09:03
very, very cultural. If our religion or our culture said something that contradicts like
01:09:08
American law, you listen to the religion, you ignore the American law. Like that's to the
01:09:13
extent that he was out with it. And so, you know, a lot of things that were said online is that
01:09:19
we were forced to like dress a certain way or we couldn't work because of the religion. And
01:09:24
none of that is true. I mean, my dad had an issue with the way that I dressed and it wasn't even
01:09:30
like breaking religious guidelines at that point at all. But that was just more of a cultural thing.
01:09:36
Same with working. There's nothing in our religion at all that says that woman can't work. But I
01:09:41
think for him, he just used that as a tactic to maintain control over us. And so and he was just
01:09:48
very, very old school in his thinking. I mean, I remember when I brought up telling him that I was
01:09:52
going to go to college one day and I was still in middle school at this point, he responded that,
01:09:56
no, you know, we'll discuss it when you get to that point. And I said, OK, like, yeah, for sure.
01:10:00
But just so you know, like I am going to go to college, I'm going to become a lawyer.
01:10:04
And he's like, no, you know, your job as a woman is just to stay home and take care of the kids.
01:10:08
And once again, like nothing about the religion says that. If anything, our religion emphasizes women having financial and like just independence in their life in general, not having to be reliant on anyone.
01:10:20
And so whatever you do to get to that point, great. My dad was just, no, women have to stay home.
01:10:26
Men are in control. And that's about it. anything that kind of, I guess, like in the media was portrayed as us becoming more Americanized,
01:10:33
anything that kind of made it seem that that was the case, he was very much against. And it was
01:10:39
kind of ironic to me when I first saw the very first time I read a headline that said that
01:10:44
he had issues with us becoming Americanized. I just kind of laughed to myself because I was like,
01:10:49
if you had issues with us becoming Americanized, why would you move to America to start your family?
01:10:53
You know, like just what are you expecting, especially given that he was born or both of them were born and raised in Syria.
01:11:00
That's where they grew up. You should know that when you move to America and you give birth to your kids in America and that's where they're being raised, they're going to adapt things that they see around them and their culture and the environment.
01:11:12
So obviously it's going to be our upbringing is going to be extremely different.
01:11:15
If you were going to have such an issue with it, you shouldn't have moved to America in the first place.
01:11:18
that's kind of on you. So I'm not religious. I do practice some aspects of it, but it definitely
01:11:26
just doesn't have anything to do with my father. I think it's just for me relearning the actual
01:11:32
religion itself as opposed to what my father has taught me, which is a very twisted version of it.
01:11:38
The same grandiose and manipulative attitudes followed both Basil and Muhammad into the courtroom
01:11:46
in early 2022. A jury deliberated for just a few hours before finding Muhammad guilty of his crimes.
01:11:55
When sentencing rolled around, Muhammad, 21 years old by this time, decided to fire his legal team and represent himself.
01:12:04
During his sentencing hearing, both Muhammad and his father caused numerous disturbances.
01:12:10
Muhammad himself wasted hours of time raising objections to words and phrases that were used in his pre-sentencing investigation report.
01:12:20
Some of his objections related to the portrayal of his family's Syrian culture and their faith in Islam,
01:12:27
claiming law enforcement was prejudiced and bigoted. How many times have we heard this shit before?
01:12:35
He brought up his father's domestic violence history and explained why he thought it was all unfair and untrue.
01:12:43
And he even tried to challenge a report that referenced a time police were called to the house because Muhammad was, quote,
01:12:52
playing with knives. He thought that was irrelevant. I guess. You'd think with nearly five years to think about what he'd done,
01:13:02
Mohammed would have found some crumbs of virtue left inside of him, somewhere rattling around.
01:13:10
Something to bring forth and finally take accountability for what he had done. But I guess for some people that's asking for far, far too much.
01:13:22
Well, this past March, a jury needed just three hours to find Alton Tawi guilty of first-degree premeditated murder.
01:13:29
He says he's innocent. Pamela Osborne has been following today's hearing. This did not go smoothly, Pam.
01:13:35
It did not. There were several outbursts in that courtroom today. It took the judge four more hours to even get to the sentencing part.
01:13:41
Here's a look at some of what played out in court. Five years ago, I got arrested for, as I said, the worst crime imaginable.
01:13:52
oh man and for her to die at 35 years old a terrible death by any means mdoc's requested
01:14:00
sentence for 40 to 80 years i don't care i don't know but honestly i don't know what you would want
01:14:06
to see from it because it was just four hours of him rambling like for until we actually got
01:14:12
sentencing part it was literally four hours of him rambling it was ridiculous i was falling asleep i
01:14:17
was playing games on my phone like I was I didn't want to be there I was like I thought I was showing
01:14:22
up to say my piece here his his sentencing and then leave I didn't expect to be here for the
01:14:28
entire day so um yeah no it was it was a mess Muhammad maintained his innocence throughout the
01:14:36
hearing exclaiming that someday his conviction would be overturned a lot of arrogance there
01:14:43
I guess that's pretty obvious. When it came time for victim impact statements Basel Alton Tawi took the stand speaking not about the true victim in this crime but about his oh son
01:15:02
He was a loving, and he's still a loving, caring, supportive human being. That he's been convicted, roughly convicted, also that impacted me and his sister.
01:15:13
That's not what the victim is, Pat's sake. It's about, sir. You are not the victim.
01:15:17
He, I said he, not I. But if he's talking about you, sir, he's referring to you as a victim.
01:15:24
You are not the victim here. His mother wasn't taken away. She wasn't killed. He murdered her.
01:15:32
He murdered her. And the evidence backed it up. The jury took no time at all to convict.
01:15:39
And this judge did not have a good impression of Muhammad or his father. Not after that massive waste of time in the courtroom.
01:15:47
As a result, she handed down a sentence of 35 to 60 years in prison. I really liked her. I thought she was really fair.
01:15:58
I talked to the prosecutors about why she gave him somewhat of a lighter sentence.
01:16:03
It wasn't a light sentence by any means, but it wasn't the maximum. And she was being really strategic because everyone knows that my brother is going to appeal the case.
01:16:13
and I was also asking why she let him ramble on for like five hours but yeah it was all um part
01:16:19
of strategy I guess and she knew that he was going to appeal so she didn't want to give him any basis
01:16:25
that he could appeal the case on and have the verdict to be overturned or have a sentence be
01:16:30
shortened so by letting him ramble by letting him say anything and everything he wants to say
01:16:34
he can't go back later and be like oh well the judge wouldn't let me speak or she wasn't
01:16:38
letting me represent myself um and then with the sentencing nobody can be like oh well you gave him
01:16:43
the maximum sentence and for whatever reason that wasn't fair. She gave him a fair sentencing,
01:16:48
very fair trial, so he has no leg to stand on in terms of the appeal. If all of his future parole hearings result in denials, Muhammad may end up spending the entire
01:17:00
next 60 years in prison. Chances are, though, some parole officer will let him out. Poor kid,
01:17:09
right? Give him another chance. I mean, all he did was murder his own mother. As for Aya,
01:17:16
she moved on to bigger and better things and is still planning to go to law school.
01:17:23
Because all of this happened when Aya was just 14, she and her sister were put into foster care.
01:17:30
At some point, Aya aged out of the system. Her little sister was placed back in the care of
01:17:36
their father where she remains today. Yeah, I don't get to talk to her at all. Until I was 17 around that age I had to do court mandated supervised visits with my father And so he would sometimes bring my little sister And yeah there was like no safety risk but you know you can tell that she wasn being cared for I mean hygiene with
01:17:59
her was non-existent. She was, she had gained a lot of weight in the summer. She'd be wearing,
01:18:04
um, like winter rain boots, things like that. She wasn't being taken care of, but do I think
01:18:09
he was being abusive to her? No. But, um, so yeah, so he would bring her every now and then,
01:18:14
but he would be brainwashing her as well to hate me. So when he would get up to go to the bathroom or something,
01:18:22
she would turn to me and be like, my dad said that you're a liar and that I have to hate you, so I hate you.
01:18:27
Like things like that. And I'd sit there and be like, okay. So yeah, basically I haven't talked to her since I was like 17.
01:18:34
Last I heard, which was at the sentencing, he was living with my little sister in his friend's house.
01:18:39
So like he's not living a good life. He may not be living a good life right now, but Basel still has just a suspended medical license.
01:18:50
As far as we know, he could renew it at any time and resume his career as a physician.
01:18:59
Think about that next time you go in for a checkup. Let's hope that his reputation precedes him, though, in all of his future endeavors.
01:19:09
this entire time I have always heard well he's your brother he's your dad like they love you
01:19:15
they would never do this to you like why are you doing this to them once again why would I do this
01:19:19
to them if it wasn't true you know like they're they're my family I wouldn't make up lies to this
01:19:24
extent about anyone much less my own brother and my father if it wasn't true you know like I'm not
01:19:29
I'm not a child my brother's spending his life in jail I haven't had contact with my dad in years
01:19:34
That's not by choice. It's because that is what's best for me considering what they've put me through.
01:19:41
So it just I mean, everyone obviously is entitled to their own opinions, but no one has the right to sit here and tell me that, well, you don't know what you're talking about or you're making things up or your feelings are invalid because you didn't live with my family.
01:19:55
I grew up when I was raised by them like this is this is my family. Unless you have lived with them, you don't know what actually went on behind closed doors.
01:20:03
You only saw what we wanted you to see, and that's about it. So you have your opinion.
01:20:07
Yeah, you can voice it, but it's completely invalid if you're telling me that I'm wrong about what I went through.
01:20:14
Aya's entire family of five have been ripped to shreds. Muhammad and his father both seem to have blamed Nada for the initial dissolution of their family unit.
01:20:27
but how then I ask could they possibly have thought in their stupid little brains
01:20:35
that murdering her would solve the problem how fucking idiotic Muhammad Altantawi
01:20:43
may have been a miner when he killed his own mother but he knew exactly what he was doing It just that getting caught
01:20:56
wasn't part of the plan. Depending on when you hear this, you may or may not already know.
01:21:28
Episode 2 of Sword and Scale Television drops May 1st. It's really a fucked up story.
01:21:34
Stay safe. Hey Mike, Mark Lausch here from Clarkston, Michigan. I've been with you since season one, but unfortunately only became a member in 2023.
01:22:10
Anyway, I wanted to tell you how much I love the show. it's a must listen and I look forward to new episodes
01:22:18
I just wanted to tell you some people have a destiny have a job that they are good at
01:22:23
but they don't know it at the time and your management and production skills on sword and scale
01:22:32
is the job you were destined for there is no other podcast that comes close to you
01:22:38
I've listened to a lot of them and they're garbage you guys are top notch the best. And I want to thank you for that. I look forward to many more years of enjoyment,
01:22:49
and I hope you stay safe, and I just love what you guys do. Take care, my friend. Bye-bye.
01:23:13
Thank you. you