# 82. Killer Santa’s Christmas Day Massacre

An episode of [Outlore with Eleanor Neale](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1682504024), 26 Dec 2024, 35 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO7888251622.mp3

Today's episode is on the christmas day massacre - a killing spree committed by Aziz Yazdanpanah while dressed as santa claus. This case is also known as the santa slaying and the grapevine massacre. Trigger Warning: suicide Resources: https://linktr.ee/usualdisclaimer Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

## Transcript

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[0:30] The Santa slaying was a massacre that took place on Christmas
[0:33] morning of 2011. The gunman dressed head to toe
[0:37] in a Santa Claus costume and set out to murder six members of the
[0:42] same family. Today we're going to be talking
[0:47] about the Grapevine massacre. That's kind of the official name
[0:51] of this crime, but because of well, I've already told you the
[0:55] the killer was dressed as Santa. Because of that, this case has
[0:58] been given a lot of Christmassy nicknames.
[1:00] I do just want to give my usual disclaimer that I mean
[1:03] absolutely no disrespect to anyone that I talk about in this
[1:06] video. This video is for educational
[1:08] purposes and everything that I'm about to say is just.
[1:10] Information that I have found on the Internet and I'm compiling
[1:14] into one video quickly. Before we get into the case, I
[1:16] do have one content warning. I'm sorry if I've missed any
[1:19] others, but we will be talking about a case of suicide in this
[1:24] case, so I'm sorry if I haven't missed any others.
[1:27] That's the only one I picked up on.
[1:29] But yeah, if that's something that you don't want to hear
[1:31] about right now, please click out the video, look after
[1:34] yourself. Merry Christmas.
[1:36] Hopefully I'll get to see you again some other time with a
[1:38] different case that's a bit more suitable for you.
[1:40] But with all that being said, let's get into the case.
[1:42] So today's case takes place on on Christmas morning of 2011 in
[1:47] Grapevine in Texas. Just after 11 AM, police
[1:51] responders received a phone call.
[1:53] So, you know, 911 received a phone call.
[1:56] And at first it just seemed silent.
[1:58] The operator was saying hello, hello, Is anyone there?
[2:01] Can I help you? They heard a little bit of like
[2:04] muffled noise and then towards the end they thought they heard
[2:07] a whisper. And then the line cut off after
[2:10] like 20 seconds. This whole call was only about
[2:12] 20 seconds long. And then the line went dead.
[2:15] And this operator comes off the phone and they're like, that was
[2:18] weird. That is a concerning phone call
[2:21] to receive, isn't it, as a 911 operator, just a load of muffled
[2:24] noise and then the line goes dead.
[2:26] No one says anything. They thought they heard a
[2:28] whisper. There's a person there trying to
[2:31] communicate. And so this operator thinks,
[2:34] shit, we need to, we need to check on this person, make sure
[2:36] they're OK. So they managed to get up the
[2:38] look location of where this call was made from.
[2:40] It was just like a residential apartment building, I think, in
[2:44] Grapevine in Texas. And so this operator gets in
[2:47] touch with the police, like actual responders and says,
[2:51] look, I've had this really like, concerning call.
[2:55] I just want you to go down to this address and make sure that
[2:57] this person is OK. Can you perform a welfare check?
[2:59] So police go down to the address, they knock on the door
[3:03] and no one comes to open it. And so they're knocking again.
[3:06] They're shouting, you know, it's the police, can you let us in?
[3:09] No one's coming. And they put that ear to the
[3:11] door and there's no movement inside either.
[3:14] They can't hear anyone, like hiding or anything.
[3:16] And because police had been sent there on a welfare check, I
[3:19] don't know exactly what the rules are in Texas, but I know
[3:21] that here in the UK, if police are sent on a welfare check,
[3:24] they're not allowed to leave the location that they've been sent
[3:27] to until they have seen and spoken to the person that the
[3:31] welfare check has been called on and assessed that that person is
[3:35] OK. You know, like here in the UK,
[3:36] they will not leave until they've seen and spoken to the
[3:39] person that they need to make sure is all right.
[3:42] And I think that's probably the same thing that they knew they
[3:45] needed to get into that apartment to go and make sure
[3:49] that the residents were safe, but the only thing that they
[3:51] could do was kick the door down. So they did it.
[3:55] They, they kicked this door down, they ran inside the
[3:58] apartment and they found the most horrifying scene inside the
[4:03] house, surrounded by presents and torn up wrapping paper with
[4:08] the dead bodies of seven people. They'd all been shot to death
[4:13] immediately from walking into this room.
[4:16] It seemed as though Christmas morning had started as normal
[4:19] for this family. I mean, they'd all come and sat
[4:22] down in the living room and been opening presents.
[4:24] Presents were like half unwrapped at this point.
[4:26] They were midway through opening their presents, but someone for
[4:30] some reason had brutally massacred them, all seven
[4:35] people. This was huge.
[4:38] And this was a very like small neighborhood as well.
[4:41] I think Grapevine as a city is quite big.
[4:44] But this like little neighborhood was quite a like
[4:47] close knit friendly one where they lived.
[4:50] This kind of thing did not happen.
[4:52] Murders did not happen. Never mind 7 persons shooting,
[4:56] massacres on Christmas Day of all days.
[4:59] So the first thought is, Oh, my God, this family have been
[5:02] murdered. Who?
[5:03] Who could have done this and why?
[5:05] Why would they want to do this? But as police are kind of
[5:08] getting a sense of the crime scene, they're noticing that
[5:10] there's no signs of forced entry into the home at all.
[5:14] There's no smashed windows. I mean, they had to kick the
[5:17] door down themselves to be able to get in.
[5:19] The door was locked. So it didn't seem as though
[5:22] anyone had broken in to murder this whole family.
[5:26] It didn't seem as though anyone had come or gone at all.
[5:29] And this was confirmed when police noticed two guns laying
[5:34] on the floor between between the deceased and it seemed that two
[5:39] of them were holding the guns or had been holding the guns when
[5:43] they died. So two people holding the guns
[5:46] were the two older men in the family.
[5:49] One of them was dressed head to toe in a Santa costume.
[5:52] So crime scene investigations were launched there at the
[5:55] house. Meanwhile, police back at the
[5:57] station were getting to work trying to identify who their
[6:00] victims were. So they in the the location, the
[6:03] address in there, like police database system.
[6:07] I don't know, I don't know how they do it, but they've got that
[6:09] way where they can put in an address and they'll be able to
[6:11] find out who owns it. And they did.
[6:13] It belonged to a 55 year old woman named Nazrin Yazdampana.
[6:17] And when the bodies were actually removed from the house
[6:20] and taken to a morgue for identification, Nazrin was found
[6:23] to have been one of the deceased and the rest of them were all
[6:27] her family. They, I mean, this had been
[6:30] police's theory to to be fair, given the circumstances that
[6:33] they'd all been found murdered in the living room on Christmas
[6:37] morning. They were all together.
[6:39] Christmas is a time that we do spend with our families.
[6:41] So the immediate theory was that this was a whole family that had
[6:45] been massacred. But the identifications just
[6:48] proved that the man that was dressed as Santa was identified
[6:51] as Nazrin's husband, 56 year old Aziz Yazdampana, and two of the
[6:56] other victims were their two children.
[6:58] Together they had a girl and a boy named Nona and Ali.
[7:02] Nona was 19 and Ali was 15. He was the youngest of the
[7:06] victims that day. And the other three victims were
[7:09] Nazrin's side of the family. So her sister Zoree, who was 58,
[7:14] and her husband Hussain, who was 59.
[7:16] And then there was their 22 year old daughter named Sara.
[7:20] So it was all Nazrin's family and her sister's side of the
[7:24] family. All of them had been shot to
[7:27] death, some of them multiple times.
[7:28] We'll get into that more in a second.
[7:30] But they had no all their injuries on them.
[7:33] So it was immediately clear to police that this had just been a
[7:36] straight up massacre. This wasn't like a prolonged
[7:39] like physical assault. There was there didn't seem to
[7:42] be any altercation there at all. There was not much of a struggle
[7:45] in the house. They someone had literally just
[7:47] walked in and just shot them all.
[7:49] All of the kids and their Auntie Zorre had all been shot in the
[7:53] head multiple times. Zorre's husband, Hussein, had
[7:57] been shot the most out of everyone in the family, and he'd
[8:00] been shot in like, quite a few different places, which led
[8:04] police to theorize that he was either trying to run away from
[8:07] the attacker or maybe try to protect his family.
[8:10] But basically, he was moving as he was being shot multiple times
[8:14] by his attacker. They know this because he had
[8:17] like, one in his chest, one in his shoulder, one in his back,
[8:20] as if he was like turning away from them.
[8:23] And they just kept shooting and hitting him wherever.
[8:26] But something really interesting that they found in the autopsy
[8:29] was that these gunshot wounds on Hussein and and only on Hussein
[8:33] had been done with two different guns.
[8:36] All the other victims had only been shot with one particular
[8:39] type of gun. No matter how many gunshot
[8:41] wounds they had, they were all done by the same gun.
[8:43] Hussein had been shot more than anyone else and with two
[8:48] different guns. I find this personally really
[8:51] interesting. It's as if the killer shot him a
[8:53] few times, decided that was it, put the gun down and then
[8:56] changed his mind and and went to go and pick up another one and
[9:00] carried on. I I wonder what the thought
[9:03] process was there, unless Hussein hadn't died from the
[9:06] first few gunshots potentially and then the killer went back
[9:09] over with the other gun in their hand and just finished it off.
[9:12] But one thing that was kind of throwing police off at this
[9:15] point in time, I know it was very early on in the
[9:17] investigation, but one thing that seemed quite odd was that
[9:21] those two guns that they found, they found the two murder
[9:24] weapons just laying on the floor in the living room.
[9:26] And like I said, they were in the men's hands.
[9:29] One of them was in Hussein's hand and the other one was in
[9:32] Aziz's hand as he was dressed as Santa.
[9:35] There was a Santa with a gun on the floor.
[9:36] Oh, I forgot to say that Nazrin and Aziz Santa and his wife both
[9:41] only sustained 1 gunshot wound to the head each.
[9:44] They had the least amount of injuries out of everyone.
[9:47] So news broke that exact same day, so like all families were
[9:52] waking up in the area, switching on the news, switching on the
[9:55] radio and hearing about this, this poor family that had been
[9:59] completely massacred on Christmas morning.
[10:02] And people in the area were so shocked because not only is this
[10:06] a horrifically brutal crime, but this had happened in such a safe
[10:10] place. Like I said, that neighborhood
[10:12] was very tight knit and they they really didn't have much
[10:16] crime there at all, not even like burglaries, home invasions,
[10:19] robberies, theft. Like they were very few and far
[10:22] between. To have a seven person massacre
[10:25] was unheard of. And neighbors were also
[10:28] terrified because, well, there's a shooter on the loose.
[10:31] There is a murderer at large on Christmas Day.
[10:36] Who knows like where they could go next, what family they could
[10:40] massacre next. People were locking their doors.
[10:42] People weren't going out. Police quietly worked on this
[10:45] case all the way through Christmas Day, which I find
[10:48] really mad by the way, but like every aspect of this case is so
[10:53] insane. Imagine getting that call as a
[10:55] policeman who is having to work Christmas Day.
[10:58] You're a bit annoyed that you've been put on shift on Christmas
[11:01] morning. You get this call to go to this
[11:03] this house. So you get there and you find
[11:06] this 7 dead bodies and then they have to go back to the police
[11:10] station and get to work trying to solve the murder of this
[11:13] whole family on Christmas Day, knowing that like their wife and
[11:17] kids are at home unwrapping presents without their.
[11:20] I'm sorry, I'm not trying to like spin it as if like police
[11:23] are victims in this, of course, this case is about this family,
[11:26] but I also just find that aspect of it also so heartbreaking.
[11:30] I imagine it's really quite traumatizing to to work on a
[11:33] case like this to walk into that on, you know, Anyway, police
[11:37] worked on this case all the way through Christmas Day and into
[11:40] the early hours of Boxing Day. And finally, on the morning of
[11:43] the 26th of December, they announced to the public that
[11:47] they weren't actually looking for a shooter.
[11:49] They weren't looking for a gunman.
[11:50] From searches of the crime scene and evidence analysis, police
[11:54] believed they had already identified their killer, but he
[11:58] was no longer a danger. So they'd taken this 911 call as
[12:01] part of their investigation because they wanted to know what
[12:04] what had actually happened on that 911 call that made them
[12:07] suspicious enough to send police out in the first place.
[12:09] They wanted to know especially what that whisper said at the
[12:12] end. They thought they'd heard a
[12:13] whisper. So they took this call, slowed
[12:16] it down, did all these like audio enhancing techniques, and
[12:20] they heard something. They actually determined that
[12:22] there were two different voices in this phone call.
[12:25] What sounded like muffled noise was actually a person.
[12:28] It was someone like more so in the background.
[12:30] This was a lot quieter, a lot more faint.
[12:32] But this person seemed to be saying help, help me.
[12:35] And then the whisper that came just after that was the caller
[12:40] saying I'm shooting people. And then they hung up the phone.
[12:44] So police had the shooters own voice in this in this call, but
[12:49] because it was so like heavily enhanced and slowed, they really
[12:54] couldn't make out anything characteristic about this voice
[12:57] other than the fact that it was an older man.
[13:00] I mean, they could just tell from like the the basiness and
[13:03] the deplore, you know, you know, man voice.
[13:06] He had man voice, which was interesting because remember
[13:10] which two members of the family were holding guns when their
[13:13] bodies were found, the two men, Hussein and Aziz.
[13:17] So next police start doing some ballistic tests, like actual,
[13:21] like gun tests, looking at the, the actual bullets and the, and
[13:25] the wound and the directory of everything.
[13:27] They do gunshot residue tests on all of the victims, on all the
[13:32] victims hands mostly, but like on all of the victims, because
[13:36] they were all gonna have some level of gunshot residue on
[13:38] them. It comes off when a gun fires
[13:41] and it'll literally go on like everyone in the room pretty
[13:43] much. But the closer you are to the
[13:45] gun, the more gunshot residue you get on you.
[13:49] So they're thinking the killer is going to be absolutely
[13:51] covered. Their hands are going to be
[13:52] covered, whereas all the victims are going to have significantly
[13:56] less. And the body that was found to
[13:58] have the most gunshot residue all over them was Aziz.
[14:03] Aziz, he has Dampana, the the Santa of the group.
[14:06] He had it all over his hands, all down his Santa costume.
[14:10] But his saying, on the other hand, didn't seem to have that
[14:14] much on him, not enough to be a shooter anywhere.
[14:17] He seemed to have like a a victim amount of gunshot residue
[14:20] on them, a very similar amount to all the women.
[14:23] And this is when things started making sense to police.
[14:27] Because of course, by this point, they'd collected both
[14:30] guns from the crime scene, taking them for testing,
[14:32] believing that they were the murder weapons.
[14:34] But one of them, the one that Hussein was holding, seemed to
[14:39] have no prints on it at all. It looked like it had been
[14:43] wiped. And this doesn't really happen.
[14:47] Like, there's not many chances where you could actually use a
[14:50] gun with your hand and not leave prints on it.
[14:53] Like even if you put your sleeve over your hand, you know?
[14:56] The only other way that this could have happened is if he was
[14:59] wearing gloves, and he wasn't wearing gloves when they found
[15:01] him. So it had definitely been wiped.
[15:04] So now it's looking as if Hussein was framed.
[15:08] Maybe someone else had used that gun, wiped their prints off,
[15:12] then killed Hussein and laid the gun in his hands to make him
[15:16] look as though he was the killer.
[15:18] The gun that Hussein was holding was a nine millimetre pistol and
[15:22] police managed to like run the serial number on the system and
[15:25] they found that it was registered to Aziz Yazdanpana.
[15:29] He joined it for almost a decade.
[15:31] So why was it found white in Hussein's hands?
[15:35] Does this mean that Aziz had tried to frame his own
[15:39] brother-in-law for the massacre of their whole family?
[15:43] That seems like the only explanation.
[15:45] Someone must have been alive after Hussein was already
[15:48] killed. Who would have been able to then
[15:50] wipe that gun and place it in his hands?
[15:52] Maybe that was when Aziz took his own life, shot himself, and
[15:57] then that's why he too was found with a gun in his hand.
[16:00] That's why they were both found with them.
[16:01] So now police think they know what's going on here, that this
[16:04] man has massacred his whole family on Christmas.
[16:06] But why? What on earth was his motive
[16:10] here? What was going on in that family
[16:12] to spark this? So police start doing some
[16:15] research of the Yasdan Pana family in general, but
[16:18] specifically more so Aziz. They found that he used to be a
[16:21] real estate agent, but had actually been unemployed for
[16:24] over a decade before this case. He seemed to have done a real
[16:28] character arc in the last like 10 years before that when he was
[16:33] a real estate agent and when him and Nazrin had first gotten
[16:36] married, he seemed like a very nice, normal, cool guy.
[16:40] You know, they had their daughter, then they had their
[16:43] son. They were just a very happy
[16:45] family, seemingly. Nazrin was a stay at home
[16:47] mother. That's just kind of how their
[16:49] families were. They were very old fashioned,
[16:52] very traditional. They'd been raised that way,
[16:54] Nazrin and Aziz, in very traditional old fashioned
[16:57] households. And so that was how their
[16:59] household was going to be. But they were both, you know,
[17:02] consensual in that it was like that's how they both wanted to
[17:06] run their ship. And so she was a stay at home
[17:08] mother. She cooked, cleaned, looked
[17:11] after the kids while Aziz went out to work as a real estate
[17:13] agent. But after a few years of this,
[17:16] the family got into some really bad financial hardship,
[17:20] actually. And it was all Aziz's fault.
[17:22] He had filed A fraudulent tax report.
[17:25] He got done for fraud and he was found guilty and ordered not
[17:30] only to pay a fine, but to pay all of it back that he'd owed.
[17:33] So the fine was $1000, which it was a bit of a wound at the best
[17:38] of times, but then he was ordered to pay back $30,000 in
[17:42] installments. These regular installments were
[17:45] taking up a lot of the family's wage and they couldn't afford
[17:49] more than the bare necessities. At this point in time.
[17:52] They were only just affording like food, but they couldn't do
[17:55] anything else because their dad was paying back all this money.
[17:58] It was quite a miserable existence.
[18:00] None of them were happy. They were struggling.
[18:03] And so Nasrin went to her husband, and she said that she
[18:06] was thinking about getting a job.
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[20:51] Now, as soon as Aziz heard this, he hit the roof.
[20:54] He was offended that his wife said that she wanted to go and
[20:59] get a job because he was supposed to be the man of the
[21:00] house. He was supposed to be the
[21:01] breadwinner, the money earner. He was the one that had the job.
[21:05] She was the one that stayed home.
[21:06] But this, this must have been a kick to his ego because he's now
[21:11] realizing that he's not doing a good enough job.
[21:13] He's an inadequate dad. An inadequate husband and now
[21:19] his wife wants to do the the man jobs.
[21:22] That's how it is in his eyes anywhere and he's offended.
[21:25] He says no, you're not getting a job.
[21:27] So the family go on struggling for a little while until they
[21:30] literally can't anymore. And Nazrin just had to go out
[21:33] and get jobs. Like whether her husband was
[21:36] happy with it or not, they needed money to live.
[21:39] They were really, really struggling.
[21:40] They, they were almost not eating meals at this point.
[21:43] So Nasrin goes out and gets two different jobs at two different
[21:47] spas. So in the Yazdanpana household
[21:50] at this point in time, there is a lot of tension.
[21:52] There's a lot of resentment because that's another way that
[21:55] this family went about things. They, they weren't vocal, they
[21:59] didn't argue, they didn't communicate things.
[22:03] They, especially the kids, actually, this is how the kids
[22:07] and his wife were with Aziz. But if Aziz had a problem, he
[22:10] could voice it. He could be vocal about it, he
[22:12] could argue, but they were never allowed to express that to him.
[22:15] And so there was a lot of just resentment towards Aziz in the
[22:20] household. Don't know if he realized, don't
[22:22] know if he could sense it, but the kids didn't like him and his
[22:25] wife's starting to not like him. So there's a lot of tension.
[22:27] And that tension only gets worse now that Nazrin's got two jobs
[22:31] because the roles have kind of switched.
[22:34] He feels emasculated because he's not the one providing.
[22:37] He's now a house husband. He is taking care of the kids
[22:40] and cleaning the house and cooking the meals.
[22:42] And he hates it. He absolutely hates it that his
[22:44] wife is out being the breadwinner.
[22:46] Things went on like this for a little while, but Nazrin's two
[22:49] jobs were not just not enough. And eventually the family had to
[22:53] file for bankruptcy. And at this point, the tension
[22:56] got even worse. Because the worse this situation
[23:00] got, the worse their financial situation got.
[23:03] The more they all blame disease, obviously because it is his
[23:06] fault, but the more they all hated him for having put them
[23:11] through this. Like they're they're having to
[23:14] to starve because he didn't want to pay his taxes like 10 years
[23:18] ago. They're all so mad at him.
[23:21] But on the inside they can never really like vocalize this.
[23:25] And every so often, the older of their two daughters, Nona, would
[23:29] let something slip to her school friends.
[23:32] So she wasn't much of a talker. I mean, there's a big thing
[23:36] about, like, pride in families like this where you can't shame
[23:39] the family. You can't bitch about your
[23:41] family. You can't, you know, don't be
[23:42] going out and telling our business and our drama.
[23:45] But no, no, would let a couple of things slip every now and
[23:47] again to her school friends. I don't know exactly what she
[23:50] would say. I really couldn't find any
[23:51] examples. But her friends just remember
[23:54] hearing it and being like, that shouldn't be happening.
[23:58] Like, they would tell her, like, my dad isn't like that with me.
[24:01] Like, like, is everything OK? Like, your dad shouldn't be like
[24:05] that with you. I think he was just a very
[24:07] angry, controlling man. I don't know if it ever passed
[24:12] into physical abuse. So yeah, Nona would like let
[24:15] these little things slip to her school friends and they'd be
[24:17] like, I don't think that's, I don't think that's right.
[24:19] I don't think that should be happening.
[24:21] And then Nona would get like almost defensive of her dad, not
[24:25] overly defensive, but she'd be like, no, guys, it's it's fine.
[24:28] Like she would just always say it's fine, don't worry.
[24:31] You know, that kind of like calming.
[24:33] She never like really defended him and said like, no, my dad's
[24:36] great. But like, she was like, she
[24:39] defended the situation. She was like, no, guys, you're
[24:41] overreacting kind of thing. So actually because of this, we,
[24:45] we really don't know truly how bad things were in that
[24:48] household because she lets things slip every now and again.
[24:51] But then she kind of like backpedals on it.
[24:53] And we, we don't know what's, we don't know what's true.
[24:56] Eventually, after years and years and years of tension and
[25:01] strict rules and poverty, Nazrin finally turned to her husband,
[25:06] Aziz, and said, I can't do this anymore.
[25:09] I want a divorce. She took their two kids, Nona
[25:12] and Ali, and they went and got a smaller apartment only about two
[25:16] miles away. It was still in Grapevine, but
[25:18] they got a smaller apartment together, and they were just
[25:21] going to start life over again without Aziz.
[25:24] They knew that they could survive and even thrive without
[25:28] him. So that's their plan.
[25:30] They're just going to go off and live life by themselves.
[25:32] But Aziz can't handle that. He had nothing outside of this
[25:38] family. He was nothing outside of this
[25:41] family. He was financially dependent on
[25:43] Nazrin. He was emotionally dependent on
[25:45] her for like ego reasons, you know what I mean?
[25:48] Like putting her down and stuff was doing something for him.
[25:52] And other than that, he had no prospects.
[25:55] He had nothing going for him in life.
[25:57] He he was nothing without Nazrin and he knew that.
[26:02] He knew that his life was nothing without her.
[26:05] His life was pretty much over the second she left him because
[26:09] she was his life and he treated her terribly.
[26:12] So she she went out to live her own.
[26:14] So when Nazrin and the kids left, Aziz proceeded to do
[26:18] absolutely nothing. Neighbors saw him just like
[26:20] pottering about his house for a while.
[26:22] He didn't really leave at all. Actually, they saw him gardening
[26:26] quite a bit. He seemed to have picked up
[26:28] gardening in his divorcee era. The neighbors actually theorized
[26:32] that he was probably going to try and put the house on the
[26:33] market, you know, try and sell the house because if he could
[26:37] sell this house and then downsize, get a smaller one for
[26:39] himself, he could then pocket the difference, you know, and he
[26:42] desperately needed money. Months and months went by.
[26:45] And I don't know what was happening in this section of the
[26:47] case. I don't know if Aziz was
[26:49] managing to see or speak to the kids at all.
[26:52] But we do know that it was still very, very turbulent based on
[26:55] some things that Nona said to her friends at school.
[26:58] She she said something along the lines of it's getting harder and
[27:01] harder or it's becoming more and more difficult.
[27:03] So her friends knew that even though her and her mom and her
[27:06] brother had moved out of that situation, the family dynamic
[27:12] was still not good at all. Like there was still a lot of
[27:15] tension there somehow. Her friends did try and ask her
[27:17] what she meant, but as always, she didn't really elaborate on
[27:20] that, just kind of move past it. That summer went by.
[27:23] Nona graduated high school, started at Community College,
[27:27] and things were looking up. Things were looking up for the
[27:29] family. This like smaller version of the
[27:31] family. Now everyone was moving on with
[27:33] their lives beyond Aziz. And then Christmas 2011 rolls
[27:38] round and Nazrin and her two kids decide to throw a Christmas
[27:42] Eve party for all of their family.
[27:44] You know, they've had a really shit year, honestly.
[27:47] And they needed this. They wanted time with their
[27:50] family around the Christmas period.
[27:52] So they invited everyone over to their new apartment.
[27:55] And when I say everyone, I mean everyone.
[27:57] This was a big extended family party.
[27:59] It was aunts, uncles, cousins, aunties.
[28:03] I've literally said that twice. There was that many aunties.
[28:06] And I don't know how, but it's believed that Aziz somehow found
[28:10] out that this party was going on without him and he was fuming.
[28:14] This was his breaking point. This was when he decided to go
[28:18] ahead with what he was about to go ahead with.
[28:20] So the next day on Christmas morning, just before 11 AM, Aziz
[28:25] rocks up at Nazrin's apartment, her new apartment.
[28:27] And he is dressed head to toe like Santa.
[28:30] And he's going, hi, I'm here to surprise the kids.
[28:32] Merry Christmas. Today, acting like this was some
[28:35] like really big, nice, fatherly happy surprise that he was
[28:40] there. But remember, they all don't
[28:42] like him and they he's been awful to them.
[28:44] So Nazrin's like really like she was not happy that he was there.
[28:50] She did not want him to be there.
[28:52] But also at the same time, it was Christmas and she was
[28:56] putting her own feelings aside to make things better for her
[29:00] kids. And so she decided to just let
[29:03] Aziz in that day. So he came in and he came to
[29:06] celebrate Christmas with that side of the family.
[29:09] Nazrin's sister, her husband and their daughter were all already
[29:13] there at the house. And actually Sarah, Nazrin's
[29:16] niece, texts her friends. I think she was in a group chat
[29:19] or like she was just texting her friends.
[29:21] She texts her friends just as Aziz arrived saying, so we're
[29:24] all here and my uncle is here too, dressed as Santa.
[29:28] It had quite a clear, like sarcastic tone to it.
[29:30] And you can tell from the next text because she followed up
[29:33] about 15 minutes later saying, and now he wants to be all
[29:36] fatherly and win Father of the year.
[29:38] Sarah is 22, by the way, the woman that's sending these
[29:40] texts, she is a fully grown woman.
[29:42] She can see through what Aziz is doing right now.
[29:45] She can sense that his intentions are not pure.
[29:49] They're not to make his kids Christmas a good one.
[29:51] She can tell that something's going on here.
[29:54] And she was right not to trust him because 5 minutes after
[29:58] Sarah sent that last text to her friend, police received that 911
[30:02] call after the shooting had already taken place within 5
[30:06] minutes. No one knows what happened in
[30:09] that 5 minute space that triggered Aziz to start this.
[30:12] Whether there'd been an argument or something was said, we don't
[30:16] know. But things must have really
[30:19] switched in that 5 minute space because for her to be saying oh,
[30:22] and now he's trying to be father of the year, he must have still
[30:26] been acting really, really nice 5 minutes before he turned on
[30:31] his whole family and shot six people to death.
[30:35] Following this case, police went and spoke to a lot of people
[30:38] from Aziz's life. I mean, in the last few years of
[30:41] his life, he'd really like secluded himself from everyone
[30:44] else. His whole life was his family.
[30:46] But other people that he'd known here and there, police went and
[30:48] spoke to them and they were all so shocked to hear this because
[30:52] it seemed the Aziz, there was two different azizes.
[30:56] There was the horrible one at home that was emotionally
[30:59] abusive to his family, very controlling, very lazy, didn't
[31:03] want to work, didn't want to support the family.
[31:05] But then there was the other Aziz that went out into the
[31:07] world and was confident, intelligent, funny, witty.
[31:11] You know, he had this front that he would put on for everyone
[31:14] else. And whenever they heard that he
[31:17] had committed something like this, they were shocked to their
[31:20] 'cause he wasn't a violent man. Well, they, they, this was what
[31:24] they thought, that he wasn't a violent man.
[31:26] He wasn't even an angry man. A lot of them.
[31:29] So the only thing that a lot of them were aware of was that he
[31:33] was financially dependent on his wife Nazrin, but that their
[31:37] brains never went to murder from there.
[31:40] You know what I mean? Like financial dependence.
[31:43] Just that that can, that doesn't connect.
[31:45] That doesn't connect. Not connecting for me.
[31:47] But yeah, that was kind of the only red flag that they had for
[31:51] Aziz. So it's believed that the main
[31:53] most for this massacre was jealousy.
[31:55] He was jealous of Nazrin and the kids for moving on, and he was
[32:00] jealous that he'd been pretty much exiled from the family.
[32:04] They were having this massive Christmas party without him.
[32:07] They had invited, welcomed everyone but him, and honestly,
[32:12] I think he just didn't like the fact that Nasrin and the kids
[32:15] were moving on and being happy without him while he was just
[32:18] struggling. He'd only gotten worse since
[32:21] they'd left and he didn't want to see them happy without him.
[32:23] But one thing that really plagues my brain about this
[32:27] case, ever since I started researching this one I have
[32:30] been. This just really gets me and I
[32:33] don't know why is the fact that he tried to frame Hussain, wiped
[32:39] the gun down, put it in his hand, only then to kill himself
[32:43] in the same room and die with the gun in his hand.
[32:47] So he was the only one. Like it's obvious that he was
[32:51] the only one that could have framed Hussain like that.
[32:54] I don't know why he bothered. I don't know why he bothered to
[32:56] wipe the gun down and try and frame him if he knew that he was
[32:59] going to kill himself. Or maybe he didn't know he was
[33:01] going to kill himself. Maybe that wasn't part of the
[33:03] plan. To be fair, this is a theory
[33:05] that I read was that he was going to try and pin it on
[33:08] Hussein and maybe try and run away and get away with it
[33:10] forever. But maybe he killed them all,
[33:13] staged this, you know, the gun in Hussein's hand, and then
[33:17] stepped back and realized what he'd done, that he had just
[33:21] murdered his whole family. The only only people that he
[33:25] cares about, even though he has a funny way of showing it.
[33:28] These were the only people that mattered in his life, and he had
[33:30] just gotten rid of all of them, and now he was a murderer that
[33:34] was probably going to get the worst sentence they could
[33:37] possibly hand to him. Maybe it was a combination of I
[33:41] don't like what I've just done and I don't want to deal with
[33:44] the consequences of what I've just done.
[33:45] I don't want to go to prison, can't be asked with that.
[33:48] And so maybe the easiest option then was to just kill himself.
[33:51] But I just find it quite interesting that he bothered to
[33:54] stage the shooting beforehand. He must have thought he was
[33:57] going to try and get away with it, surely, Unless he was just
[34:00] that dumb and he thought that. I don't know, maybe that it I
[34:04] don't know. I don't know again, but that is
[34:07] all I have for this case, a really awful one.
[34:11] I know and especially these kind of these cases where there's not
[34:15] like a a resolution at the end, like someone gets prison time or
[34:19] something like that. They always feel quite
[34:21] unfinished. So I'm sorry to leave it like
[34:23] that. Although we do know, we do know
[34:26] what happened the the crime is fully solved.
[34:28] All right, Merry Christmas. Bye, bye.
[34:34] Thank you so much for listening to usual disclaimer.
[34:37] At this point, I just want to say that if you've been affected
[34:40] by any of the topics we discussed today, please check
[34:43] the description where we've left some helpful resources.
[34:46] If you want to hear more cases like this one, make sure to
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[34:54] And if you really enjoyed, I'd love it if you could leave a
[34:57] rating and a review too. Usual disclaimer with Eleanor
[35:01] Neil. Is an Audio Boom Studios
[35:03] production. See you next time.

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