# 60: Dead By Christmas Morning: The Brutal Silencing of Sameena Imam

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 19 Dec 2023, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO5786778461.mp3

Today's episode is on Sameena Imam, who was enjoying a secret affair with her Costco colleague Roger, whilst he was plotting her death. She thought they were in love, but he just wanted to shut her up. Trigger Warning: Sensitive topics Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

[0:00] On Christmas Eve 2014, everything was merry and bright.
[0:04] Kids were hanging up their stockings, families were coming
[0:06] together. And for Samina Imam, this year
[0:09] was extra special. She was about to take the next
[0:12] step with her man. Finally, after two years of a
[0:15] secret affair, he was willing to leave his girlfriend and be with
[0:19] Samina forever. But Samina Imam would never get
[0:23] her happily ever after. In fact, she would be dead by
[0:27] Christmas morning. Today we're going to be talking
[0:29] about the cold and calculated murder of Samina Imam.
[0:36] Before we get into this episode, I just want to give my usual
[0:39] disclaimer that I mean absolutely no disrespect to
[0:42] anyone that I talk about in this video.
[0:44] All of the information in this video is publicly available.
[0:47] It's stuff that myself and my team have found online and just
[0:51] compiled into one big story. This video will of course cover
[0:55] some sensitive topics, so viewer discretion is advised.
[0:58] And while we make every effort that to Fact Check our sources
[1:02] and make sure that all of our information is correct, no
[1:04] action should be taken in reliance upon the information in
[1:08] this video. And I want to take this
[1:09] opportunity to remind you all that these are real people that
[1:13] we're talking about in this video.
[1:14] So please do keep everything kind and respectful in the
[1:18] comments. All opinions that are about to
[1:20] be stated in this video are mine and mine alone.
[1:23] And with all that being said, let's get into the case.
[1:26] So today's case takes place in Coventry in the Midlands of
[1:29] England in 2014, which is where 34 year old Samina Imam lived
[1:34] alone. She was a very intelligent
[1:36] woman, very well respected by everyone around her.
[1:39] She was the one in her family that everyone would go to for
[1:42] advice and for guidance. She was very bright, very
[1:46] bubbly, very optimistic, very lively.
[1:49] She drew people into her very easily.
[1:51] Samina lived a very normal, average life.
[1:54] She had a group of friends, she went out on weekends, she had a
[1:58] job at the local Costco. But underneath all of that,
[2:01] Samina had a big secret, one that she hadn't even told most
[2:06] of her friends and family. For the last two years, Samina
[2:10] had been having a secret affair with one of her Co workers from
[2:14] Costco, an older man named Roger Cooper who was 41 years old.
[2:19] And this relationship had to be kept top secret for a multitude
[2:23] of reasons, one being that workplace romances were almost
[2:27] entirely banned where they worked, especially among senior
[2:31] members of staff, which both Samina and Roger were.
[2:34] So if anyone found out about their relationship, they could
[2:37] both lose their jobs. And two, even worse, Roger
[2:41] actually already had another girlfriend, a long term
[2:44] girlfriend that he lived with. He had been with her for years.
[2:48] And now, well, he's spent the last two years 2 timing her with
[2:53] Samina. And Samina knew this.
[2:55] Samina knew that he had another partner that he was with, that
[2:58] he wasn't leaving thing for her. I mean, she always hoped that he
[3:02] would leave his other partner for her one day, but she was
[3:05] very aware of the situation. Whereas Roger's girlfriend back
[3:09] at home, her name was Susan. She was completely oblivious.
[3:13] She had no idea that her husband was cheating on her for two
[3:17] whole years at that point. I feel it's way more than just
[3:21] cheating on someone, isn't it? You're starting to develop an
[3:24] emotional connection, a bond with another person and then
[3:28] you're going back to your girlfriend at the end of the
[3:30] evening and and curling up with her in bed.
[3:32] That just makes me feel sick. Roger and Samina worked really
[3:36] really hard to hide this relationship from the whole
[3:39] entire world. They had a lot to lose if any of
[3:42] their Co workers saw them. They'd lose their jobs.
[3:45] If any of Roger's friends or Susan's friends or acquaintances
[3:49] saw Roger and Samina out public, then everything would backfire.
[3:54] They had to hide it from everyone.
[3:56] So whenever they would go out on dates, they would go like super
[3:59] far out of town or they to be fair, most of the time they
[4:03] would just spend it in Samina's house.
[4:05] I believe they were just always on edge trying to hide this from
[4:09] the world. And as they're a fair
[4:11] intensified, Roger started making all kinds of promises to
[4:15] Samina that he never kept. He had been telling Samina for
[4:19] months and months and months that he was going to leave his
[4:22] partner for her one day. He was just figuring out how to
[4:25] do it. He said that one day he would
[4:26] move out of that house and the two of them, him and Samina,
[4:29] would run away together and they would start their lives
[4:32] together. But it never happened.
[4:34] He was just always saying it and just never following through.
[4:37] He was a whole lot of talk and not a lot of action, in fact 0
[4:40] action. Samina would spend her whole
[4:42] work day with the man that felt like hers, the man that felt
[4:47] like her partner, only to watch him at the end of his shift,
[4:51] driving to his actual girlfriend that he lived with.
[4:54] Samina just always hoped that one of these promises, one of
[4:58] these times, that he told her he would leave.
[5:01] He actually would. But you know, but there was one
[5:04] thing that Roger was even keeping from Samina, and that
[5:08] was that he had another girlfriend.
[5:11] Three. There were three women.
[5:13] This man sounds exhausting. He had another work girlfriend
[5:17] as well. So it wasn't three women in
[5:19] three different areas of his life that he was trying to
[5:21] juggle, which sounds stressful enough.
[5:24] Two of them were Costco workers that knew each other and were
[5:27] going to see each other and he was trying to date them both at
[5:31] work and not let either of them them find out about each other
[5:34] and not let any of the other Co workers find out about either of
[5:38] these relationships. Even I'm exhausted just thinking
[5:40] about it. And this other workplace affair
[5:42] was even more questionable than the one with Samina because this
[5:46] other girl was actually his like what's the word?
[5:50] He was her higher up. So there was power dynamics at
[5:53] play. I think he was the manager and
[5:55] this other girl was below him. So, you know, it just kind of
[6:00] keeps getting worse. Not that Roger Cooper was ever a
[6:03] morally righteous man, as you can tell from the two
[6:06] simultaneous affairs that he is having alongside his legitimate
[6:10] relationship. But I think that power dynamic
[6:13] is quite a subtle warning sign in the beginning of this case
[6:17] that this man enjoys exercising his power over women.
[6:22] He likes feeling like he can do whatever the fuck he wants and
[6:25] everything's going to be OK. He can have as many women as he
[6:28] wants. He can upset anyone that he
[6:30] wants. He treated women like objects to
[6:33] just fuel his own desires, anything that he wanted, but
[6:36] anywhere. Towards the end of 2014, Samina
[6:39] was getting fed up with all these false promises.
[6:43] And so she turned to Roger and she gave him an ultimatum.
[6:46] She told him that he needed to leave his partner by Christmas
[6:50] Day, otherwise Samina wasn't having it anymore.
[6:54] She was going to leave him. She was going to end the affair
[6:56] and just move on. But Roger assured her that he
[6:59] was still trying to figure out a way to leave his girlfriend for
[7:02] her. In fact, he promised that by
[7:04] Christmas, everything would be sorted out and they could live
[7:08] their lives together in the new year.
[7:10] Completely fresh start. And this time, Samina really
[7:14] believed him. I mean, she'd believed him a lot
[7:17] of times, but her fear in him was wavering.
[7:21] But this time he really seemed like he meant it.
[7:23] I mean, she'd given him a deadline and he said yes, OK, I
[7:26] will meet your deadline. So Samina's elated, she thinks
[7:30] it's actually happening this time.
[7:32] He is actually going to leave his wife and not wife
[7:36] girlfriend. And he was going to be with her
[7:38] in time for, well in time for Christmas.
[7:40] In fact, she got so excited that it was finally happening that
[7:44] she went and booked a romantic couples stay over Christmas Eve.
[7:49] And Chris, Christmas Day at the Malmaison Hotel in Birmingham
[7:52] for the two of them, because she expected him to have been broken
[7:55] up with his girlfriend by that point, so they could run off
[7:58] into the sunset with each other and spend Christmas together as
[8:01] a couple, finally. So the countdown was on to her
[8:04] new life, to what she'd been dreaming of for the last two
[8:08] years. All she'd wanted was for this
[8:10] man to be hers and only hers. But in Roger's mind, things
[8:15] couldn't be any more different. Because he had felt compelled to
[8:20] lie to Samina, he never actually planned on leaving his
[8:24] girlfriend for her. He was just lying and lying.
[8:27] He would always give her these false promises just to keep her
[8:30] happy. But now he was in a bit of a
[8:33] sticky situation. Because this time it was
[8:35] different. This time there was a deadline
[8:37] on the end of it. He couldn't just keep making
[8:40] these promises and then not following through.
[8:43] Now, because of this ultimatum and because she'd already gone
[8:46] and booked a hotel stay for them, he had to to leave his
[8:50] girlfriend by Christmas Eve. He was expected to run off with
[8:53] Samina that same night, but he he didn't want to do that.
[8:57] In fact, he really enjoyed the situation that he was in.
[9:01] I mean, clearly, otherwise he wouldn't be in it.
[9:03] He liked having a girlfriend at home, you know, that felt like a
[9:07] wife that felt like your person. But then he liked having Samina
[9:12] on the side and then that other girl on the side as well.
[9:16] He enjoyed cheating. He enjoyed manipulating these
[9:20] women. He enjoyed playing them all.
[9:22] He wasn't actually interested in a life with Samina.
[9:26] That wasn't his aim when he was juggling all these women.
[9:29] His aim was just to fulfill his desires, whatever they were.
[9:34] But now Roger worried that if he didn't break things off with his
[9:38] girlfriend, which he wasn't going to do, he didn't want to
[9:41] do that. But if it got to that point, if
[9:43] it got to Christmas Eve and he hadn't left his girlfriend for
[9:47] Samina, maybe Samina would say something.
[9:50] Maybe Samina would tell Rogers girlfriend and then she would
[9:53] leave him anywhere. He realized that he was in way
[9:56] over his head with this and he had no idea how he was going to
[9:59] fix this situation that he had lied his way into.
[10:03] And that was when he started thinking that he just had to get
[10:07] rid of Samina Imam. She was the problem in his mind.
[10:12] She was the person standing in the way of his current lifestyle
[10:16] of keeping and lying to his girlfriend and cheating on his
[10:19] girlfriend and having a a complicit affair partner he had
[10:25] enjoyed the last two years. Because that's exactly what he'd
[10:28] managed to maintain. A girlfriend at home and a
[10:31] girlfriend at work that didn't care that he actually had a
[10:35] proper long term girlfriend at home.
[10:37] But now the mistress wasn't happy.
[10:39] He had to get rid of her. So Roger Cooper confided in his
[10:43] brother David about this terrible situation that he'd
[10:46] gotten himself into and that he felt that there was only one way
[10:50] out and that was to kill Samina Imam and his brother was totally
[10:56] on his wavelength. He agreed that that was their
[10:58] only option and in fact, it was. It was a good option.
[11:01] Which I always find it so crazy whenever these sick murderous
[11:06] people that get these urges or these desires or or feel like
[11:10] murderers is the only way to solve their problems.
[11:13] I always find it so crazy when they manage to find another
[11:16] person that also has that like sick murderous gene.
[11:20] Oh, well, I guess there were well, don't that explain it.
[11:22] What if it is a gene? I'm, I'm getting off track
[11:24] anyway. But like the Moors murderers,
[11:27] how can you just meet someone and fall in love with them or
[11:30] make friends with them and then confess that you want to start
[11:33] murdering people and they go, yeah, OK, cool, I'll join in.
[11:36] If anyone came to me saying, look, I think we should kill
[11:39] someone, even if it was like my family, my mum, someone I loved
[11:43] with all my whole entire heart. If someone came up to me and
[11:45] said that I would go, girl, I'm taking you to the doctor's
[11:48] because you're clearly fucking crazy.
[11:50] But no, Roger's brother totally backed him.
[11:53] They were both willing to commit murder, one of the worst crimes
[11:57] on this planet, all because Roger felt like he had no other
[12:02] way out of a sticky social situation.
[12:05] And I mean, there are so many ways out of this.
[12:08] Well, the main way out of this would be to just fucking own up,
[12:12] to stop being a coward and to admit that you have gotten
[12:16] yourself into this situation. But rather than do that, they
[12:19] would rather kill another human being.
[12:22] That will never make sense to me.
[12:24] But with that, they started planning on how they were going
[12:28] to become murderers. So this was all happening in
[12:31] like November, December of 2014. And so Costco, where both Semina
[12:37] and Roger worked, Costco was going to have its Christmas
[12:40] party in early December. And they thought that could be
[12:43] the perfect opportunity for something terrible to happen to
[12:48] Semina at the end of the night. You know, she's, she's leaving a
[12:51] party, she's drunk, it's dark. Anything can happen.
[12:55] And they were going to take advantage of that.
[12:57] So in the early hours of the morning on December 13th, after
[13:00] the party had finished, Roger texted Samina asking her to meet
[13:05] him at Premier Inn, saying that he had a surprise for her.
[13:08] But when she arrived and actually got into the lobby of
[13:11] the hotel, Roger completely stopped texting her.
[13:15] He ghosted her. She didn't know what hotel room
[13:18] he was in, so she couldn't go up there and go and meet him
[13:20] herself. She stayed sat down there for a
[13:22] while, but he never came down to meet her and so in the end, not
[13:26] being able to get a hold of him, she just went home.
[13:29] Little did she know that the whole time she was in there,
[13:33] Roger's brother David had been waiting out in the car park
[13:37] planning to abduct and kill her that night.
[13:41] But he missed his chance. The plan was that he was going
[13:44] to hide in a car just in the car park and as she arrived at the
[13:47] hotel he was going to jump out, drag her into the car and then
[13:52] drive off with her and and kill her somewhere.
[13:55] But what they didn't account for was Samina's taxi dropping her
[14:00] off right outside the front door of the hotel.
[14:03] So there was she was only outside for about 5 seconds.
[14:06] There were about 5 steps for her to walk and then she was inside.
[14:10] There was no opportunity for David to have been able to grab
[14:14] her without anyone seeing. I think they were banking on her
[14:17] walking to the Premier Inn so he would have had a bit more chance
[14:20] to grab her in the dark depths of the car park.
[14:25] No, she got dropped off right outside the front where all the
[14:27] lights are, where all the people are.
[14:30] So didn't work. The whole time the brothers had
[14:32] been texting in secret code as well because obviously they
[14:37] expected this plan to work. So if she was going to die at
[14:40] the end of the night, they didn't want to be talking about
[14:42] their plan so openly over text. So instead they were actually
[14:47] using Star Wars lingo to like communicate with each other
[14:52] Things like you are expected Veda and Death Star complete,
[14:56] which I'm sorry, that is hilarious.
[14:59] Just these two nerds trying to commit like one of the worst
[15:03] crimes you could ever commit, abduction and murder.
[15:06] But meanwhile they're like texting each other in Star Wars
[15:08] speak. Calling it to the Veda.
[15:10] It sounds like kids on a playground that went psychotic.
[15:14] But anyway, after the failed attempt to kill her, Roger just
[15:18] continued his relationship with Samina as normal.
[15:21] She was completely oblivious to what he'd tried to do.
[15:24] I mean, I can imagine she was probably a bit pissed off at him
[15:27] about the whole ghosting her in the hotel situation.
[15:30] It turns out that he wasn't even in the hotel at all.
[15:33] He just had just texted her from wherever he was saying come to
[15:37] this hotel because he expected the plan to work, because he
[15:41] expected her to be dead by the end of the night.
[15:43] He didn't think he was ever going to have to explain
[15:45] himself. But anyway, the two of them stay
[15:47] together, and in the sinister mind of Roger Cooper, time is
[15:53] running out to kill her. He knows that he wants to try
[15:56] again, but he can't find a good opportunity to get her alone, to
[16:01] get her out of the way where no one's going to know where she
[16:03] is. That is until Christmas Eve
[16:06] itself, the actual deadline day. It was right down to the wire.
[16:11] That was the last chance he had to make sure that his affair
[16:14] never came out to the world, but this time he was confident that
[16:18] it would be a success. He knew that he would have
[16:21] Samina completely alone, since they were going to the hotel
[16:24] alone anyway, so that was his perfect opportunity to do it.
[16:28] All he had to do was make sure that she didn't survive and then
[16:32] that night he could go back home to his girl girlfriend like
[16:35] nothing had ever happened. So that day, Christmas Eve 2014,
[16:39] Samina and Roger both leave work at Costco.
[16:43] Their final shift before they break up for Christmas finished
[16:46] at 4:00 PM. So the two of them go and get in
[16:48] their separate cars and drive away.
[16:50] They did this all the time. They never left in the same car.
[16:54] Obviously they can't make it obvious that they're together or
[16:57] they're going somewhere together.
[16:58] They don't want to be suspicious in front of their Co workers.
[17:01] So the two of them drive off in their own cars in different
[17:04] directions, only to meet up at a nearby Ms. It's like a
[17:08] supermarket here in the UK. They're the two of them briefly
[17:12] met up inside the shop. They had to kind of act like it
[17:15] was a chance encounter just in case anyone around them knew of
[17:19] Susan, You know, his actual girlfriend on new.
[17:22] I don't know. They just were always acting.
[17:25] Always, always. So they like, bump into each
[17:27] other at Ms. and they're, they're talking about their
[17:29] plans for the weekend. Samina buys a bottle of Bellini
[17:33] and some snacks Max, presumably for their romantic weekend away,
[17:37] and after that, the two of them hop back in their own cars and
[17:41] drive off to their own houses, presumably to like grab their
[17:44] bags and everything that they're going to take away on this
[17:47] romantic trip. Roger then picked Samina up from
[17:50] her place in his Audi, and the two of them began the journey to
[17:53] Birmingham. But before they could ride off
[17:55] into the sunset and live happily ever after with their new
[17:59] romantic life, Roger told Samina that they had to make a quick
[18:02] pit stop on the way to the hotel because he had some Christmas
[18:05] presents that he needed to drop off at his brother's house.
[18:08] And Samina was totally fine with that, you know?
[18:10] Well, actually, she was quite excited.
[18:12] This was the first time Roger was gonna introduce her to any
[18:16] of his family, so this made the whole thing feel even more real
[18:20] and even more special. Like this man that she's about
[18:23] to meet his brother could well be her brother-in-law one day.
[18:27] She was really excited to meet the brother who lived in
[18:30] Leicester, which is about an hour away from Birmingham.
[18:33] So it's quite a detour, but like I said, Samina didn't mind.
[18:37] So they drive this extra hour to Leicester and when they're on
[18:40] the way there, Samina gets a phone call from her sister and
[18:44] they're just chatting through their Christmas plans, what they
[18:47] were going to do on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day.
[18:49] And then her family had a tradition where every year on
[18:52] Boxing Day, December 26th, they would all meet up and they would
[18:56] have, you know, like food, drinks, just just family time at
[19:00] Christmas. And this was like a solid
[19:02] tradition. It was set in in stone.
[19:05] Barely anyone in the family ever missed the Boxing Day
[19:08] celebrations. So on the phone, they were just
[19:10] confirming that like, Oh yeah, you're going again this year,
[19:13] aren't you? Yeah.
[19:13] So her and her sister were very excitedly talking about the
[19:16] Boxing Day plans and everything. But then when Samina put the
[19:20] phone down, that was the last time that any of her family ever
[19:24] heard from her. It was just after 5:00 PM when
[19:27] Roger's car pulled up at his brother's house in Leicester.
[19:30] And 5:00 PM is not that late. But for December in the UK, it
[19:35] looks like night time. It looks like the middle of the
[19:38] night. Shit gets dark here at like, I
[19:39] walked out of my bedroom the other day from a nap at 3:30.
[19:43] Tell me why. It was pitch black outside.
[19:45] So yeah, they pull up at this house at 5:00 PM and it it looks
[19:49] like night time. It's cold.
[19:50] It's I mean, it's December, it's freezing, it's bitter.
[19:53] Outside, Samina and Roger get out of the car, walk up the
[19:57] drive to his brothers house. His brothers name was David
[20:00] Cooper. But as soon as the couple made
[20:03] it through that front door. Everything switched.
[20:06] I don't think the brother even introduced himself to Samina.
[20:08] The two of them just pounced on her like savages.
[20:12] They pinned her down to the ground and she really couldn't
[20:15] move because, well, she was tiny.
[20:18] Samina was 5 foot 2, which is about 157 centimeters.
[20:23] She was very petite and these two men were like giants.
[20:27] They were 6 foot 5 and 6 foot 7, which is like 195cm and 200
[20:32] centimeters. There was number competition
[20:35] with this. She was never going to be able
[20:37] to overpower them and save herself.
[20:39] And it was actually Roger, the man that Semina thought she
[20:43] knew, the man that she had come to love over the last two years.
[20:48] It was him that kept her held down while his brother took the
[20:52] lead in what they were about to do to her.
[20:55] David Cooper, the brother, had been online shopping in the days
[20:59] leading up to this and he had actually purchased a 200
[21:03] millilitre bottle of chloroform off of eBay.
[21:08] Which, side note, how the fuck is that legal?
[21:10] How can you just buy chloroform off of the surface web when it's
[21:14] most popular use is to knock people out?
[21:18] It's literally a weapon. It's a, it's a, it's a chemical
[21:22] weapon. But anyway, David had managed to
[21:24] just fucking buy it on eBay. So while Roger pinned Samina
[21:28] down, David got up and went to the kitchen.
[21:31] He poured the chloroform onto a tea towel and made his way back
[21:34] into the living room, where Roger had moved Samina to the
[21:37] sofa where it would be easier to completely straddle her and keep
[21:41] her down. David just walked straight in
[21:43] that room and smothered Samina's head with this tea towel
[21:47] completely. The chloroform would have
[21:49] knocked her out and the smothering, depending on how
[21:53] long he held it there, could have just suffocated her
[21:55] completely. Chloroform can kill people if
[21:58] the dose is large enough. Like it can cause respiratory
[22:02] problems, it can send you into cardiac arrest.
[22:05] But more often than not chloroform isn't actually used
[22:08] to kill the person, it's used to just knock them out until you
[22:13] can kill them another way. That's the most common way that
[22:16] I've seen it kind of used in in real life true crime cases is
[22:19] someone will use the chloroform and knockout the victim and then
[22:24] kill them another way. Samina was trying her best to
[22:26] fight back when David started smothering her with this tea
[22:30] towel. She was flailing her arms in the
[22:32] air trying to knock him off, trying to get the towel off.
[22:35] But like I said, she was just no match for the physical strength
[22:39] of these men. David literally grabbed her arms
[22:42] and sat on them so that she couldn't move.
[22:44] And then he said to her, just a couple of breaths as she fought
[22:48] against inhaling this chloroform because she must have known that
[22:53] if she inhales too much of this, it'll knock her out.
[22:56] And then she has no control over what they're going to do to her.
[23:00] I just can't imagine the fear and and the kind of thoughts
[23:04] that must have been going through Samina's head at this
[23:06] point in time. Could you imagine thinking you
[23:08] knew someone for the last two years and then all of a sudden
[23:12] like that they're trying to kill you?
[23:15] Them and their loved one are both trying to kill you.
[23:18] They're both stronger than you. I just can't imagine the
[23:21] horrifying thoughts that must have been swirling in her head.
[23:32] Now we don't know what actually killed Samina Imam.
[23:37] It could be anywhere from suffocation to like the
[23:41] chloroform poisoning or something causing respiratory
[23:45] issues. But what we do know is that a
[23:47] strange combination of metallic elements were found in Samina's
[23:52] bloodstream when she died, and this included tin, mercury and
[23:55] arsenic. Now I am no biologist.
[23:59] I don't know how naturally occurring these elements are
[24:03] within the the body. I know that you can have mercury
[24:05] in your blood, you know, on a normal day, especially if you
[24:08] eat shellfish or whatever seafood.
[24:10] But I'm guessing it was like abnormally high levels of these
[24:15] metallic elements in her blood. Otherwise they wouldn't be on,
[24:18] on reports and things. There's a lot of mystery
[24:20] surrounding what actually happened in that house as they
[24:23] were killing Samina. Like I said, we don't fully know
[24:27] her cause of death. We know things that happened to
[24:30] her, and we know what was in her blood when her dead body was
[24:33] found, and that's about it. The frustrating thing is that
[24:37] the men you'll see later on in the case, of course we're going
[24:40] to get to this point, but they never fully tell an exact story.
[24:45] And I think that's why we don't know because they won't admit it
[24:49] and the evidence isn't clear enough to tell us exactly what
[24:53] went down in what order. Like I said that these elements
[24:56] were found in her blood, but we have no idea when they got in
[25:00] there, how they got in there. But one thing we do know about
[25:03] these metallic elements is that she had either ingested or been
[25:07] administered through force a liquid containing these
[25:12] elements. I mean, maybe it was in the
[25:14] chloroform. If you're buying chloroform off
[25:16] eBay, do you know how pure it is?
[25:18] Can other things be in that? I don't know.
[25:21] So what I'm trying to say is it's still unclear what
[25:25] substances the men lied Samina with that night.
[25:30] I'm sure there was something. All we do know is that within
[25:33] minutes of arriving in that house, Samina Imam was dead.
[25:37] And by 6:25 PM, so less than an hour and a half after they
[25:41] arrived at that house, Roger Cooper was already driving back
[25:45] to Coventry, back to his girlfriend, who was totally
[25:49] oblivious that he was now a murderer.
[25:51] Roger left Samina's body with his brother to take care of
[25:55] while he just went back home and enjoyed a guilty Christmas as if
[26:00] nothing ever happened, as if Samina never even existed.
[26:03] But before he'd left his brother's house, Roger made sure
[26:07] to grab Samina's phone because he knew that he was going to
[26:10] have to create a false alibi from somewhere, and he decided
[26:14] he would do that through text messages.
[26:16] Now buckle him, because this is seriously one of the stupidest
[26:20] ways I have ever seen a criminal try to cover up their own
[26:24] crimes. It's this man is completely
[26:28] brain cellless. He used Samina's phone to text
[26:32] his phone simply saying I am fuming, I'm going to where I'm
[26:36] truly cared for and that was it. So this text suggests a very
[26:41] heated argument between Samina and Roger.
[26:44] The reason he did this was because Roger knew that he
[26:47] needed to come up with a reason as to why he and Samina wouldn't
[26:51] have checked into that romantic couples hotel stay on Christmas
[26:55] Eve. Because of course, police would
[26:57] figure that out very quickly. Once they realize that Samina's
[27:00] missing, they'll look into like her emails, her bank details,
[27:03] her plans, her calendar. They'll see that she was meant
[27:05] to be at that hotel. They'll realize that she wasn't.
[27:08] Now he needs to be able to explain that before they come
[27:11] and ask him. So if they'd had this like
[27:14] lover's tiff, this little argument where Samina was
[27:17] apparently fuming and going to where she is truly cared for,
[27:20] that explains why they would suddenly stop this romantic trip
[27:26] away. In fact, these 10 text or this
[27:28] one text, it was a solo text, a very short 1.
[27:32] It made it look as though it was Samina's idea to not go ahead
[27:36] with the trip. He's basically trying to make it
[27:38] look like the two of them had this big blow up argument.
[27:41] It was very sudden and then all of a sudden it ruins their
[27:44] Christmas plans, which is the stupidest thing.
[27:47] I really do not understand this. Why on earth would you make
[27:51] yourself a part of this? Why the hell would he actively
[27:56] link himself to Samina via this text on the day that she goes
[28:01] missing? People might not have even
[28:03] assumed that the hotel stay was for her and him.
[28:07] They might have thought it was just a random mystery lover.
[28:10] But through this text, he has made it clear that no, yeah,
[28:13] they were supposed to go away with each other, but they left
[28:17] on bad terms. Which doesn't that just add a
[28:19] motive? That means that you were angry.
[28:22] You had a reason to want to harm Samina on the day that she goes
[28:26] missing, and police wouldn't know any of that had you not
[28:30] sent that text yourself from her phone.
[28:33] It's the stupidest cover up. It's the least thought through
[28:37] cover up I have ever seen and I'm even having voice cracks.
[28:42] I've been doing this job for five years.
[28:43] I have never seen a criminal cover their own crime up so
[28:47] shoddily. I just don't get it.
[28:49] I just don't get why he would murder Samina to keep her quiet
[28:53] about their affair, only to then essentially confess to the
[28:58] affair over these alibi texts. This confirms that there was a
[29:04] strong relationship between them two.
[29:06] The text doesn't necessarily imply a romantic relationship,
[29:09] but as soon as police start looking into it, they're going
[29:12] to realize it was a romantic relationship.
[29:15] It's just so bizarre. Like there were so many other
[29:18] things that he could have done, you know, just thrown the phone
[29:20] away or like text her sister saying that she was busy or she
[29:26] was going away for a few days. Why the fuck would you text
[29:28] yourself as the killer? You are the murderer.
[29:31] Why are you involving anywhere? I'm just going to move on
[29:34] because I've genuinely like this has infected my brain for the
[29:38] past week or so. Ever since I learned that this
[29:41] is how we tried to cover it up. I've been telling everyone I
[29:43] know I've been like, I have literally just read about the
[29:46] most stupid murderer you're ever going to hear anyways.
[29:48] I'm going to I'm going to calm down and I'm going to move on
[29:51] from that point. I think it's just funny that
[29:53] like a lot of other parts of this crime do seem so
[29:56] calculated, like the ordering chloroform off of eBay and like
[30:01] we don't actually know how she died.
[30:02] She just randomly has all these metals inside of her.
[30:06] I think a lot of it was very well thought out.
[30:08] It was very calculated. Only for him to go and Boo Boo
[30:11] it up with the stupidest text alibi ever.
[30:15] The next morning, it's Christmas Day.
[30:17] Roger wakes up, and he actually sends Samina a text from his
[30:21] own. Now, he didn't respond to the
[30:24] fake argument text the night before, but he does text her the
[30:28] next morning on Christmas morning, just wishing her a
[30:30] Merry Christmas. I guess he's just trying to
[30:32] cover up the fact that he already knows that she's dead.
[30:35] He's texting her saying Merry Christmas, kind of implying that
[30:38] he thinks she's alive and that she's going to receive that text
[30:40] and she's going to text him back.
[30:41] But through the night, Roger's brother David had been disposing
[30:46] of Samina Imam's body, along with all of the evidence that
[30:49] could implicate the two of them. He'd rap wrapped her body in a
[30:53] bunch of cling film and I've never heard of that happening
[30:57] before. Cling film.
[30:58] Is that a thing in America? What do you call it in America?
[31:00] Saran wrap, is that what it's called?
[31:02] And I've never heard of that being used before.
[31:05] It's always like plastic bags or bin bags, but whatever.
[31:07] He gets out a roll of cling film, Saran wrap and wraps her
[31:12] up in it. He then put her body into one of
[31:14] his old army sleeping bags and zips her up in that.
[31:18] Now, David Cooper actually owned an allotment, which I told don't
[31:22] really know what that means for England.
[31:25] I try to look it up. A lot of people are like, oh,
[31:27] it's like a, it's like a vegetable patch.
[31:29] And I'm like, really in England, this this random guy just has a
[31:32] vegetable patch, an allotment, basically just a plot of land
[31:36] that you can do whatever you want on.
[31:38] I think so, yeah. Lucky for the Cooper brothers,
[31:40] David owned this allotment not very far from his home.
[31:43] So they planned immediately that they were going to bury the body
[31:47] on that allotment where no one was ever going to go digging.
[31:49] They thought that no one was ever going to find this body.
[31:51] Within two hours of the murder being committed, David had cling
[31:56] filmed her body, shoved her in a sleeping bag, drove her out to
[31:59] the allotment, dug a shallow grave and buried Samina.
[32:03] It was all over so quickly, within two hours.
[32:06] And like I said, both of those men were home to their families
[32:10] for Christmas that same night, acting like they didn't just
[32:13] commit a murder and hide A body. It's just horrifying how much
[32:17] none of this affected the men in any kind of way.
[32:20] He had just cling, filmed up this woman's dead body like she
[32:23] was a piece of meat. And then that same night he's
[32:25] going home to kiss and cuddle his girlfriend under the
[32:27] mistletoe. What?
[32:29] David Cooper, the one that had been doing the digging and the
[32:32] burying. He was home that night by 7 45
[32:35] PM, just in time for his own girlfriend to come round to his
[32:38] house. Both of the men were having a
[32:39] lovely romantic Christmas Eve that night.
[32:42] Meanwhile, Saminas body is beginning to rot under the
[32:46] ground and none of her family have any idea where she is or
[32:50] that she's even dead. They think they're going to see
[32:53] her in two days and they're going to exchange Christmas
[32:55] presents. They're going to have food and
[32:57] drinks and and hugs and everything's going to be merry
[33:01] and bright. They have no idea what these two
[33:03] men have just done to their loved one.
[33:06] Now I'm not sure at what point the men realized this, but they
[33:09] did very quickly realized that they needed to do something
[33:12] about Samina's car. I don't know where it was at
[33:15] this point in time. I know that Roger picked her up
[33:17] from her house. So maybe they went to her house
[33:20] and they got it from there. But they realized that they
[33:22] needed to make it look like she had driven herself off
[33:26] somewhere, as if she'd left her home, as if she'd kind of run
[33:29] away off of her own volition. So the two of them drove it out
[33:33] about 65 miles all the way to Luton, and they just parked it
[33:38] on some random, quiet residential road.
[33:41] And they just hoped that it had like blend in with the other
[33:43] cars on the road and that no one would really notice that it was
[33:47] abandoned and no one was coming to get it.
[33:49] But before they left it there, they made sure to wipe down
[33:52] everything. Everything they possibly could.
[33:54] The steering wheel, the handles, the gear stick, everything.
[33:57] They didn't want their fingerprints anywhere in that
[33:59] car. So when Boxing Day, December
[34:02] 26th rolled around and Samina of course didn't show up to her
[34:07] family celebrations, they were immediately worried.
[34:09] It was totally unlike her to just ghost on plans.
[34:13] She would always communicate, text, call, especially family
[34:17] plans like this. They were just very very close
[34:19] knit and they took their celebrations together seriously.
[34:22] It wasn't something to be taken lightly if someone skipped out
[34:25] and didn't tell them. So they knew that she wouldn't
[34:28] actually do that. She wouldn't have just ghosted
[34:31] them. That's how they immediately knew
[34:32] something had to be wrong. They were all calling her and
[34:35] texting her and getting no response.
[34:38] I believe they might have even gone to her house and of course
[34:41] she wasn't there either. And so at that point they called
[34:44] the police and properly reported, said Samina Imam
[34:47] missing. But initially the police didn't
[34:49] take it quite as seriously as her family were.
[34:52] Of course, they didn't know Samina the way that her family
[34:55] did. And they were trying to say,
[34:57] look, she is a grown woman who can make her own decisions and
[35:02] she might have just wanted to go out for the day.
[35:04] Police are often very reluctant to do any big, big searches for
[35:09] fully grown adults within the first few days of them going
[35:12] missing because it is a relatively common thing to
[35:16] happen that they will just come back and be like oh shit, sorry
[35:19] I was just away for a couple of days.
[35:20] Her family felt very frustrated by this because they knew that
[35:23] Samina wasn't like that. She wouldn't just abandoned
[35:26] everyone for a few days, especially over Christmas,
[35:29] without texting or calling. She wasn't even picking up any
[35:32] of their calls or returning their texts.
[35:34] They knew that something was wrong and police wanted to
[35:38] believe them, but they also have to be kind of on the side of
[35:41] logic sometimes. And so they were saying to
[35:44] family, look, give it a day or so, see if she comes back and if
[35:48] not, we will ramp up the searches.
[35:50] As the days went by, sure enough, Samina didn't contact
[35:53] anyone. She didn't show up back at home.
[35:56] She wasn't going to work. When it was time for everyone to
[35:59] go back to Costco after Christmas, she didn't show up
[36:02] for her first shift. And it was at this point that
[36:04] police did finally take this very seriously.
[36:07] Police went round to her apartment to see if anything was
[36:09] out of the ordinary. They managed to break in and her
[36:13] house itself seemed absolutely fine.
[36:15] There was nothing like missing, there were no notes left or
[36:19] clues. There was nothing nothing to be
[36:21] worried about inside. The only thing they noticed that
[36:24] was a bit interesting was that her car was gone.
[36:27] So the police started to campaign for information
[36:30] everywhere that they could on the news, on Crime Stoppers
[36:33] specifically. That used to be a huge thing in
[36:35] the UK where like active crimes would be told and reconstructed
[36:41] and missing posters would be put on this TV show that most people
[36:44] watched. And it was a really good way to
[36:46] get information out there and to ask for information from the
[36:50] public. It's a it's a real shame that
[36:52] that show doesn't still exist. And luckily, having this case on
[36:56] Crime Stoppers worked because on January 4th, 11 days after
[37:01] Samina had actually died, police got a breakthrough tip from just
[37:06] a random member of the public. Someone had spotted an abandoned
[37:09] BMW on a random Rd. in Luton. And well, to be fair, a lot of
[37:14] people had noticed this BMW that was just abandoned.
[37:17] But no one had thought too much of it.
[37:19] Until this case went on to Crime Stoppers.
[37:22] And suddenly everyone realized that wait, that BMW on the next
[37:25] street? The license plate is the exact
[37:27] same as this missing woman's. So the car was reported.
[37:30] Police went down to check it out and sure enough it was confirmed
[37:33] to be Saminas car. They had a quick search on the
[37:36] inside and nothing was there. And when I say nothing, I mean
[37:41] literally nothing. Nothing.
[37:44] Her handbag wasn't there. There was no like purse, no
[37:47] phone. There was none of her personal
[37:49] belongings really. And on top of that, after a
[37:51] quick forensic search was done, there were no fingerprints
[37:55] either, which did tell them a lot.
[37:57] That in itself told them that someone had purposefully wiped
[38:00] away the fingerprints. Because if Samina had just
[38:03] driven her car here by herself, her own fingerprints would still
[38:07] be on the steering wheel, would still be on the gear stick,
[38:09] would still be on the handle of the car door that she'd gotten
[38:11] in and out of. But because the there were no
[38:13] fingerprints at all, that meant that everything must have been
[38:17] wiped. But there was one thing about
[38:19] the way that her car was left that really stood out to police
[38:22] when they thought about it. And that was that the driver's
[38:24] seat had been pulled way back. And like I said earlier, Samina
[38:29] was a very petite little lady. She was 5 foot two.
[38:33] There is no damn way her little legs would have been able to
[38:36] reach the pedals from all the way back there.
[38:39] When Samina drove her car on a on an average day, that chair
[38:43] very close to the steering wheel.
[38:44] And I can relate. I I never actually got my
[38:46] driver's license, but trust me, I was like this with the
[38:48] steering wheel. So the fact that that car seat
[38:51] had been pushed all the way back suggested that the last person
[38:54] to drive this car must have been someone very tall or at least
[38:58] way taller than Samina. And that was pretty much
[39:02] confirmation to the police that something awful must have
[39:05] happened to Samina, that someone else had driven her car and
[39:10] ditched it in the middle of nowhere and wiped it of
[39:13] fingerprints. Sir Polices next course of
[39:16] action. They wanted to figure out
[39:17] Saminas movements from Christmas Eve from the last time that she
[39:21] was seen at Costco when she finished her shift.
[39:24] They needed to figure out what her plans were for Christmas
[39:27] Eve, for Christmas Day. At this point in time, they did
[39:30] already know about the hotel stay that she never showed up
[39:33] for, but they hadn't looked into it too much because she'd never
[39:37] showed up for it. So it wasn't like the hotel
[39:39] staff were going to have much to give them in the way of the
[39:42] investigation. But now it was seeming very
[39:44] interesting now, especially because they believe that a man
[39:49] was the last one to drive her car.
[39:51] I mean, it makes sense. Both of those men were 6 foot
[39:54] 700 or something. So yeah, there's not many women
[39:58] that are around that height that could have driven Samina's car
[40:01] here. So now they wanted to know who
[40:04] Samina was planning on staying there with and why they never
[40:08] showed up. Because right now, the the
[40:10] mystery romantic couples holiday man would be their prime suspect
[40:15] in Samina's murder. At this point in time, they were
[40:19] kind of treating it like a murder.
[40:20] I don't know if it had officially switched from a
[40:23] missing person's investigation to a murdering.
[40:26] Inquiry just yet, but after like 11 days, there's always that
[40:31] thought in police's minds that you're more than likely going to
[40:35] find a body and not a living person.
[40:37] So like I said, they wanted to track Samina's movements,
[40:40] especially on Christmas Eve because she finished her shift
[40:43] at Costco but then never made it to her next destination, which
[40:47] was the hotel. So something must have happened
[40:49] on Christmas Eve. Police get in touch with
[40:51] Samina's phone network company to see if they had any
[40:55] information, you know, like coordinates or seeing what cell
[40:59] towers her phone was bumping off of or if they had any, just
[41:03] straight up texts, any text conversations that they could
[41:06] send the police that would be more than helpful.
[41:09] And this is when police find out about that text that Samina had
[41:14] supposedly sent to Roger on Christmas Eve saying that she
[41:17] was fuming and that she's going somewhere where she is truly
[41:20] cared for. This is the first time police
[41:22] are seeing this text. They worked out pretty quickly
[41:25] who who Roger Cooper was, that he was her Co worker at Costco,
[41:31] but that's all they knew. They didn't know that there was
[41:34] a secret affair. Well, I mean this text certainly
[41:37] hinted to something way deeper than just a Co worker
[41:41] relationship. This text hinted at an actual
[41:44] very personal emotional argument and from piercing all of this
[41:48] together when this text was sent.
[41:51] And then she didn't show up for the hotel thing.
[41:55] Police were now starting to think that they might have found
[41:57] Mystery Romantic Hotel stay, ma'am.
[42:00] So Roger was called into the police station for an interview,
[42:03] and he initially told them that he hadn't seen or heard from
[42:07] Samina since they left Costco for like, they finished their
[42:11] shifts at the same time at 4:00 PM on Christmas Eve.
[42:14] He hadn't seen or heard from us since.
[42:16] But right off the bat, police didn't believe him.
[42:19] They knew that he was trying to cover something up here.
[42:21] And so they confronted him with some basic bits that they knew.
[42:26] Like they knew that Samina was supposed to check into a hotel
[42:29] that night, but she never did. And they also confronted him and
[42:32] said, well, we know that she actually texts you on Christmas
[42:35] Eve. So your shift in Costco is not
[42:37] the last time you ever heard or saw from her.
[42:40] You got a text from her a few hours later.
[42:42] And with that, Roger Cooper's story completely changed.
[42:46] He admitted to police that yes, he was the mystery romantic
[42:52] couple hotels stay man. He was the one that was supposed
[42:56] to be staying with her that night.
[42:57] But he said that the reason that never actually happened was
[43:01] because they got into a huge argument on the way there and
[43:04] Samina actually made him pull over and let her out of the car.
[43:07] She just gathered up all her bags and stormed off.
[43:10] But he swore that from that point on, he actually hadn't
[43:13] seen or heard from her since. He said that he got that like
[43:17] angry text from her in the evening, but he chose not to
[43:20] respond because he he just didn't want to fuel it anymore.
[43:23] He hoped that if they both slept on it, they might be able to,
[43:27] you know, repair things easier in the morning.
[43:29] So he said that's why he never responded to that text the night
[43:32] before. But that's why he did text us
[43:34] saying Merry Christmas the next morning because he, you know, he
[43:38] wanted to kind of re establish a connection.
[43:40] So that's his story now. I mean, his story has already
[43:43] changed in the blink of an eye. At first, he hadn't seen her
[43:47] since they left work. And next all of a sudden he's
[43:49] having an affair with her and and they're cancelling a hotel
[43:52] trip and having an argument in a car park and he's letting her
[43:54] out of the car. It changed so much.
[43:57] And I am no police officer, but I'm telling you if I was and you
[44:01] changed your story in front of me that quick, I would put some
[44:04] cuffs on you right then and there.
[44:05] So police confronted him on this.
[44:07] They were like, you walked into this police station today and
[44:09] just straight up lied to us. And Roger apologized.
[44:13] He said that it wasn't his intention to give a fake story
[44:17] necessarily. He just knew how suspicious his
[44:21] real story quote, UN quote, real story actually was.
[44:25] You know, the whole, oh, we had a massive argument and then I
[44:28] just kind of abandoned her in a car park because she wanted to
[44:31] get out of my car. He was like, I know that doesn't
[44:34] look good. Of course, I didn't want to tell
[44:36] the police that immediately. He just didn't want to admit
[44:39] that he was the last person to see her and they'd had an
[44:41] argument. It gives him motive.
[44:43] It gives circumstantial evidence.
[44:45] Although he did insist to the police that he never harmed
[44:49] Samina. He insisted that he dropped her
[44:52] off in that car park and he'd not seen or heard from her
[44:55] since. He said that he thought this
[44:56] argument would just blow over within a matter of a few days.
[45:00] But now he was sat in the police station and he broke down in
[45:04] tears when he read the last text that Samina supposedly ever sent
[45:09] to him. And he was just saying that he
[45:11] never expected that to be the last time that he spoke to the
[45:15] woman that he'd been in love with for two years.
[45:19] Is is being in love with maybe a bit too much been having an
[45:22] affair with, let's just call it what it is, the woman that he
[45:25] had been sleeping with for the last two years.
[45:28] He never expected this argument to be how it ended basically.
[45:31] So leaving this interview with Roger, he looks so incredibly
[45:36] suspicious because he's already lied.
[45:39] He's already lied a big lie as well.
[45:41] He covered a lot of fucking stuff up and plus even this like
[45:45] fake story that he gave to police because spoiler alert,
[45:48] obviously was fake. I feel like you already know
[45:51] this. I already told you what actually
[45:52] happened. There was no argument.
[45:55] He never dropped her off in a car park.
[45:56] She never gathered up all her bags and left in a Strop.
[45:59] Of course that didn't happen. He murdered her instead is
[46:02] actually what happened. Don't know if you remember that
[46:04] but this is again another instance of Roger Cooper giving
[46:08] himself the stupidest cover up known to man.
[46:12] Because even in this fake story that he has told police, he is
[46:15] still the last person to have seen Samina and they still had
[46:19] an argument. Which again gives motive.
[46:22] He is angry with her. He might have a reason to want
[46:26] to hurt her over this. Police were pretty damn sure
[46:37] that they had their guy, that Roger Cooper was their murderer,
[46:40] but they needed more concrete evidence if they were going to,
[46:43] they were going to be able to arrest him.
[46:45] So they went back to Samina's phone network company.
[46:48] And this time they asked for coordinates of like, locations
[46:51] that her phone had been at, mainly on Christmas Eve, but
[46:54] generally just over the Christmas period.
[46:56] And when the company got back to them, they said, yeah, OK, so it
[46:59] looks like Samina's phone went from Coventry to Leicester and
[47:04] then back to Coventry on Christmas Eve.
[47:06] Now, this had police scratching their heads because Samina
[47:10] didn't know anyone in Leicester. They asked all her friends and
[47:14] family, they said no. Samina has no business being in
[47:18] Leicester, she doesn't know anyone there.
[47:20] Why on earth would she go and visit Leicester on Christmas
[47:23] Eve? But after this, police very
[47:24] quickly learned that Roger's phone also went from Coventry to
[47:29] Leicester back to Coventry on Christmas Eve.
[47:32] Now it's all piercing together. They must have been in the car
[47:35] together. So this proved that the two of
[47:37] them were together for hours on Christmas Eve, going from
[47:41] Coventry to Leicester and back again.
[47:43] They weren't in some random car park after an argument that
[47:47] didn't show on their phone coordinates.
[47:50] So that already disproved Roger's second fix.
[47:54] Sorry to the police. So now they have.
[47:56] Now they've caught him in two different lies.
[47:58] Police knew that they could not trust Roger Cooper.
[48:01] And so from this point on, they started investigating him behind
[48:04] his back. Up until this point, they'd
[48:06] been, like, involving him in interviews and questionings
[48:09] because I guess asking the murderer directly is the best
[48:13] way to get information. But when they're lying to you
[48:16] and trying to deceive you, it's probably better to go some other
[48:19] methods. You know?
[48:20] They very quickly worked out what Roger's connection to
[48:23] Leicester was, his own brother, David Cooper.
[48:27] And so they got researching into him as well.
[48:30] And that was when they learned that David Cooper owned an
[48:33] allotment in Leicester, just a few minutes away from his home.
[48:37] He owned just a blank plot of land.
[48:41] And if that isn't one of the biggest alarm bells to ever
[48:44] alarm bell, you're looking for a missing lady that hasn't been
[48:48] heard from in over 2 weeks. She is presumed dead at this
[48:52] point. And now you find out that one of
[48:54] the top suspects has just a plot of land that is unused.
[48:58] Of course police wanted to search that shit immediately.
[49:01] So they went and got a search warrant.
[49:03] And when it finally came through and they could send people to
[49:06] this allotment to go and search, they sent the whole 9 yards.
[49:10] They sent the whole entire police force of the the UK, the
[49:14] United Kingdom. They sent forensics teams,
[49:16] sniffer dogs, evidence photographers, archaeology
[49:20] teams, diggers. I think that's what archaeology
[49:24] teams are. But seriously, they had so many
[49:26] professionals at the scene because they were so damn sure
[49:30] that they were going to find Samina Imam's body on this plot
[49:33] of land. And of course, they were
[49:35] correct. After quite a bit of digging,
[49:38] they eventually hit the material of that army sleeping bag that
[49:41] she was buried in and they were able to recover Samina Imam's
[49:46] plastic wrapped corpse almost three weeks after she was
[49:51] murdered. On January 7th, 2015, both of
[49:54] the Cooper brothers were arrested on suspicion of
[49:56] Samina's murder and both of their houses were searched as
[49:59] part of it. As I'm sure you expected,
[50:01] nothing was actually found in Roger's home because I mean,
[50:04] none of this happened at his home.
[50:06] His home was safely in Coventry with his girlfriend, who again,
[50:09] let me reiterate, has no idea that he's a murderer.
[50:12] I think the only thing obviously that he took home with him was
[50:15] Samina's phone and that my friends, I have no idea where
[50:19] that ended up. He probably just ditched it.
[50:21] I mean, it's, it's probably in landfill.
[50:23] But the search of David's house was a different story.
[50:26] Of course, that being where the murder took place.
[50:29] Inside his fridge was actually the bottle of Bellini and snacks
[50:34] that Samina had bought from the Ms. after work on Christmas Eve.
[50:38] He had put all her snacks in his fridge.
[50:41] And I know that's like one of the last things that you want to
[50:45] get heated about when you're talking about a murder case
[50:47] where he's literally stolen this woman's life from her.
[50:51] But I think there's a certain level of cheek to a murderer who
[50:54] can kill someone And then, I don't know, like, take their
[50:58] snacks, that's what. But of course, that proves that
[51:01] Samina had been at that property since her belongings were there.
[51:06] And, and right now, this doesn't necessarily link to Samina's
[51:10] murder directly, but police found something else during the
[51:13] search of David Cooper's house that I just have to tell you
[51:16] about. They found a sign on his shed in
[51:19] the back garden, you know, like those jokey little slogan signs
[51:23] that are like, don't talk to me before I've had my morning
[51:26] coffee or like, you know, you know, just random stupid little
[51:30] like family signs that like your auntie has up in her kitchen.
[51:33] Well, David had one in his shed that said don't wind me up.
[51:37] I'm running out of places to hide the bodies.
[51:40] And like, if you if you saw that in anyone else's home, you would
[51:44] just look at it, have a bit of a chuckle, think it's just a dark
[51:47] joke. But now this man is actually
[51:50] arrested for committing a cold calculated murder and he has a
[51:55] sign up in his home about hiding bodies and he has, he has hidden
[52:00] a body. That's just one of those things
[52:02] that isn't that creepy until it is like seeing that sign in
[52:07] someone's house is not that freaky.
[52:08] It's just a dark joke until that person does actually hide A body
[52:12] and you're like, shit, the sign was there the whole time.
[52:15] So at this point, police want to interview David Cooper as well.
[52:19] And let me tell you, his first interview with the police was
[52:23] the biggest load of Sabrina Carpenter nonsense I have ever
[52:27] heard. He told police on Christmas Eve
[52:29] he had just been chilling at home alone and then somewhere
[52:33] between 5:00 PM and 6:30 PM he gets a knock on the door, which
[52:38] already very vague window of time.
[52:40] I'm immediately not trusting someone that leaves such a big
[52:44] vague window of time for no particular reason.
[52:47] Anyways, he gets this knock on the door and he said that he
[52:49] didn't want to answer it straight away because he doesn't
[52:52] like people. Bear in mind that he has said
[52:55] that to the police when he's being accused of murder.
[52:59] I don't know. Like, I know it's not a crime to
[53:01] be unlikable, but Jesus Christ, give yourself a chance.
[53:05] So eventually he does get up and answer the door because he
[53:08] thought it could have been his brother.
[53:10] He said that his brother had just been at his house, but then
[53:13] he just left. So he was thinking, oh shit,
[53:16] maybe Roger's come back for something.
[53:18] Bear in mind, I just want you to bear in mind as I'm telling this
[53:21] story, it's all a lie. I mean, we know that.
[53:24] We know that now because the police did an investigation.
[53:28] So he goes and answers the door thinking it was going to be his
[53:30] brother. But when he opens it, it's
[53:33] Samina, Samina Imam just standing there alone.
[53:37] David said that he was very confused opening the door and
[53:40] just seeing this woman there. And he said that he didn't know
[53:44] who she was. He knew that this was his
[53:46] brother's Co worker that he had been sleeping with, but he'd
[53:51] never really properly met Samina so he had no idea why she was at
[53:55] his house right now. But anyway, he he let her into
[53:58] the house because I mean, this is the girl that his brother's
[54:02] having an affair with. And this was one thing that
[54:04] David Cooper was quite adamant with police about.
[54:07] He was saying that his brother wasn't actually having like a
[54:10] full-fledged affair. He was very adamant that the two
[54:13] of them were just sleeping together, that it was just like
[54:15] hookups, that he wasn't like full on 2 timing his girlfriend
[54:19] with another girlfriend. He was trying to make out to
[54:22] police that Samina was not that serious to his brother, which
[54:26] like OK, fair enough. But this man was like adamant
[54:29] about it's like, why do you actually how do you know that
[54:32] much about like your brothers sex life and is like affairs and
[54:36] stuff? I don't know.
[54:37] Anyway, he said that Samina didn't even know his brother's
[54:41] address because obviously his brother had a girlfriend at home
[54:45] so he would never let Samina go to his house.
[54:47] But this is like this is another crazy thing about his story.
[54:51] How does she know your address? So she doesn't know her own
[54:55] boyfriend or hookups address. How does she know his brothers
[54:58] an hour away in Leicester? And why how and why is she just
[55:01] suddenly turned up? Just plot holes, Plot holes
[55:04] everywhere. Ellen and Neil's poke in all
[55:06] these plot holes. So David says that Samina
[55:08] arrives at his door looking for Roger because she doesn't know
[55:12] his address. So she's come to his brother's
[55:14] house to try and find him. David said that he got the
[55:17] feeling that Samina was mad at Roger and he didn't want to set
[55:23] her off on him. He didn't want to let her know
[55:25] where he was. He decided that he was just
[55:28] going to stall Samina and try to calm her down and just make sure
[55:33] that she doesn't, you know, have a go at his brother or
[55:35] something. I don't know.
[55:36] She was apparently demanding to know where Roger was, saying
[55:39] that we've made plans and this is really important and like,
[55:42] you need to you need to get a hold of him for me now.
[55:44] So David eventually said like, OK, calm down.
[55:47] I will call my brother and find out where he is and then, you
[55:50] know, we can go from there. But David said that at this
[55:52] point he was a bit nervous because Samina was getting more
[55:57] and more irate and angry and loud and he said that his walls
[56:01] of his house were paper thin and he didn't want to concern the
[56:06] neighbors. And as Samina is shouting more
[56:09] and more, she's getting more and more like flustered and
[56:11] panicked. David starts thinking, shit, I
[56:15] need to do something about this before she causes a scene with
[56:18] all of my neighbors. Now at this point, when David's
[56:21] telling this story to the police, he tells them he goes
[56:23] off on a little bit of a tangent saying that he has a lot of
[56:26] interesting things in his house, things that other people might
[56:29] not find that interesting, but he finds very interesting.
[56:32] One of which was a military ammo box that he kept in his kitchen
[56:37] that had a little pot of chloroform inside it.
[56:42] Because don't we all just keep one of those lying around in our
[56:44] houses, hey? And that was when he said he got
[56:46] the idea to chloroform Samina, to kind of knock her out and
[56:51] shut her up for a while while he decided what to do while he got
[56:55] in contact with Roger and let him know the situation.
[56:58] He just thought the best course of action here was to silence
[57:02] Samina for a while. David said that he'd seen it on
[57:06] TV loads of times, so he kind of knew how to do it.
[57:09] You just pour the chloroform on a cloth or something and hold it
[57:12] to their mouth and nose for a few seconds, and then they just
[57:15] kind of peacefully pass out for a while.
[57:18] So that's what he did. This is David Cooper's exact
[57:22] words to the police. He said, I got the chloroform.
[57:25] I poured it over a tea towel and I kind of put it on her face,
[57:28] sat on her lap. Her arms went up and I grabbed
[57:31] her arms and I forced them down. And I was like, just a couple of
[57:34] breaths, and then she didn't wake up.
[57:37] He insisted with the police that he never intended on killing
[57:41] her. He just wanted to shut her up
[57:43] for a few minutes so that he could think so that he could
[57:45] deal with this situation. But Samina was dead.
[57:49] So what police had now was David Cooper kind of admitting to
[57:55] accidentally murdering Samina, even though they could still
[57:59] tell that a lot of the details of this story weren't true.
[58:04] I imagine this is a very strange situation for police to be in.
[58:07] And they seem to be in it in quite a few of the cases that we
[58:10] cover where some of them will kind of admit to something, but
[58:13] they'll tell like a lie of a story behind it.
[58:16] So it's like, OK, we have a a confession, but we can tell that
[58:20] it's come out of a bunch of lies.
[58:22] So like, what is true and how did it actually happen?
[58:25] But anyway, back-to-back to David's story, because he did
[58:28] actually tell them what happened after he'd accidentally killed
[58:32] her. He said that very quickly, he
[58:34] realized that something had gone majorly wrong.
[58:36] He realized that she wasn't just knocked out from chloroform.
[58:39] And so he felt for her pulse and it was gone.
[58:42] She wasn't breathing. So now he was sitting on top of
[58:46] a dead woman with all his weight on her, holding her down.
[58:49] The chloroform was beginning to burn his hand and he started
[58:54] panicking. He had just become a murderer.
[58:56] He quickly realized that no one actually knew where she was at
[58:59] this point in time. She had just come looking for
[59:02] Roger. And so he thought that maybe he
[59:05] could get away with this. If he didn't tell anyone.
[59:09] She can't tell anyone, no one would know that the two of them
[59:13] had been together that night. So he decided he was just going
[59:16] to try and cover it up. And I have to just side note
[59:19] again, I'm sorry that there's a lot of side notes throughout
[59:22] David's account, but he's fucking crazy and I'm going to
[59:26] point out each one. At this point I'm just
[59:28] questioning why David Cooper is so loyal to his brother.
[59:33] Like why the fuck are you willing to murder and hide A
[59:35] body and do all of this stuff because your brother made a
[59:39] mistake and you know 2 * 2 women for two years?
[59:44] Wow, Angel numbers. Sorry but this is Roger's sticky
[59:47] situation. This is Roger ruining his own
[59:49] life. David has nothing to do with any
[59:51] of this, so why is he willing to commit murder for his brother?
[59:56] I mean even think back to the first failed plan where they
[59:59] were going to, you know, lure Samina to the hotel and then
[1:00:03] kidnap her and drag her away in the car and kill her.
[1:00:06] It was David in the car again that time.
[1:00:08] Roger is never actually getting his own hands.
[1:00:11] Sounds dirty. It's always David doing his
[1:00:13] dirty work and I wonder why. I really wonder what Roger has
[1:00:16] over David. But David did say to the police
[1:00:19] that he wasn't actually the one that buried Samina's body
[1:00:22] himself in the allotment. Like yes the allotment was his,
[1:00:25] but it was actually his friend Ben that came and picked up
[1:00:30] Samina's body, no questions asked and took it to the
[1:00:33] allotment and buried it. What the fuck?
[1:00:36] Ben doesn't exist. Or if he does exist, he is not a
[1:00:40] part of this story. Maybe David has a friend called
[1:00:43] Ben, but that never happened. He never called a guy called Ben
[1:00:46] who came and did it for him. David was the one that buried
[1:00:49] Samina's body. I guess he was just trying to
[1:00:51] get out of another little element of the crime.
[1:00:54] But he said that while this Ben was burying the body, that was
[1:00:58] when he himself drove Samina's car to Luton and and abandoned
[1:01:04] it. After police had like fully
[1:01:05] analyzed David's story and Roger's story and all of the
[1:01:10] physical evidence, they realized that most of what these two men
[1:01:13] were telling them was complete and utter bullshit.
[1:01:16] Literally none of it was adding up.
[1:01:18] Like the two men's stories didn't add up with each other,
[1:01:21] which is another part of this crime.
[1:01:23] That's just so stupid. I feel like these two never
[1:01:26] actually had a conversation and like came up with a story
[1:01:30] together. They they never planned for what
[1:01:32] would happen if they got caught because then they get caught and
[1:01:34] they both end up telling two different stories.
[1:01:37] Yeah. Neither of their stories matched
[1:01:38] each other. Neither of them matched the
[1:01:40] physical evidence. Police just genuinely don't
[1:01:44] believe a lot of the things that these men said in their
[1:01:46] interviews. So in August 2015, the Cooper
[1:01:49] brothers were put on trial for the murder of Samina Imam.
[1:01:52] And at first both of them pled not guilty, which good luck with
[1:01:57] that. But at this point in time, David
[1:01:59] did actually admit that he was the one that buried Samina's
[1:02:01] body. He dropped this whole like Ben
[1:02:04] story. And if he does actually have a
[1:02:06] friend called Ben, I feel sorry for that guy.
[1:02:08] And I guess just think about it logically.
[1:02:11] She was buried on his allotment wrapped up in his army sleeping
[1:02:16] bag. Like who fucking else would it
[1:02:18] be anywhere? Eventually, at the end of the
[1:02:20] trial, Roger and David Cooper were both found guilty of the
[1:02:24] murder of Samina Imam, and they were both sentenced to a minimum
[1:02:27] of 30 years in prison. The detective who led this
[1:02:30] investigation said that it was the most callous and calculated
[1:02:33] crime she had ever witnessed in her whole career.
[1:02:36] And that's what's so disturbing about this case to me is how
[1:02:40] calculated and planned, how much time and effort went into
[1:02:45] murdering this innocent, unsuspecting woman who was just
[1:02:49] trying to make things official with her boyfriend.
[1:02:52] Roger had been promising Samina this Christmas fairy tale where
[1:02:56] they could just run off into the sunset and be together forever.
[1:02:59] But the whole time he was promising her that to her face.
[1:03:02] He had been planning her murder behind her back and she had no
[1:03:06] idea. That is terrifying to me that
[1:03:09] someone could be so good to your face and you could trust them
[1:03:12] and believe them and and love them.
[1:03:14] Dare I say she might have loved him?
[1:03:16] But that whole time he knew full well that Samina wasn't going to
[1:03:21] live to see the new year. He knew that he was going to
[1:03:24] murder her. You just can't comprehend
[1:03:27] something like that. Someone saying I love you to
[1:03:29] your face and planning your murder when they go home that
[1:03:32] night, that is just sick and twisted on another level.
[1:03:36] And I'm actually going to leave this video there for you to
[1:03:38] think about over the Christmas period.
[1:03:40] I'm very sorry about that. Thank you so much for listening
[1:03:46] to usual disclaimer. At this point, I just want to
[1:03:48] say that if you've been affected by any of the topics we
[1:03:51] discussed today, please check the description where we've left
[1:03:54] some helpful resources. If you want to hear more cases
[1:03:57] like this one, make sure to follow Usual Disclaimer on your
[1:04:00] podcast app so that you get notifications when we post new
[1:04:03] episodes. And if you really enjoyed, I'd
[1:04:06] love it if you could leave a rating and a review too.
[1:04:09] Usual Disclaimer with Eleanor Neil is an Audio Boom Studios
[1:04:13] production. See you next time.

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.