The Man Who Wasn't There

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Speaker 5 It's the thing that most people would fear to be home, asleep in your bed, and have intruders come in and do the unthinkable.

Speaker 4 I felt like a hand being placed on my mouth.

Speaker 4 I started telling them, please don't kill me, please don't kill me.

Speaker 2 An attack in the night.

Speaker 7 I was like, really freaking out. I was like, what's going on? What's going on?

Speaker 4 A mother murdered.

Speaker 5 Looked like two ghosts had just committed the ultimate crime.

Speaker 2 He lived to tell police a harrowing story.

Speaker 4 Was it true?

Speaker 5 He's the only one who survived. He's practically unharmed.

Speaker 4 They're treating you like a suspect or a witness? They are treating me like a suspect.

Speaker 3 Now, an undercover plan to solve the mystery.

Speaker 8 Are you stepping out of the car right now?

Speaker 2 Who was the real mastermind?

Speaker 5 We all stopped breathing for about 10 seconds.

Speaker 7 I want it to be wrong. I really want it to be wrong.

Speaker 4 The American dream. So many of us want it.

Speaker 4 The loving family.

Speaker 4 The honest job, the home you can afford, the idea that you can start over here,

Speaker 4 and in this new country, that better life will be yours. This is a story about that dream, about a family that worked for it, won it, and then what happened to them.

Speaker 4 Now an emergency?

Speaker 4 This wasn't part of anyone's dream.

Speaker 8 Someone just robbed our house. They rock in.

Speaker 6 They tighten me and my mom up.

Speaker 4 How could it happen in this safe gated community? In this home they'd worked so hard to have.

Speaker 8 Is everybody okay? I don't know. They just beat me up.
I don't know where my mom is.

Speaker 4 And who deserved it less than this woman?

Speaker 4 My mom brought the heart to the family. Ryan Gurges was the baby of the family, spoiled rotten by his mother, Ariette.
We couldn't function without my mom.

Speaker 4 My mom was like the chef in the household, counselor. The full service mom.
Oh, yeah, she did it all. Yeah, she was really, really nice, sweet lady.

Speaker 4 She was one of those mothers who showed her love through food. Her cakes were legendary, making every birthday that much more special.
says her older son, Richard.

Speaker 7 She made this really good upside-down pineapple cake. It was phenomenal.
I always remember cake and ice cream at the birthdays.

Speaker 4 Growing up, Richard was inseparable from his mom. Was she like the other moms that your friends had?

Speaker 7 No, I think she was a bit more on the conservative side.

Speaker 4 Conservative because of where she came from. Harriet Gurgis was born in Egypt.
and then came to the U.S. when she was 29 years old.
Her family settled in Northern California.

Speaker 4 Harriet led a comfortable, all-American life.

Speaker 4 But cultural ties are strong. And in 1980, Ariette was called back to Egypt to meet a nice young man named Magdi.

Speaker 7 When my mom went out there and ended up meeting him, she like, I mean, she really liked him.

Speaker 4 Years later, she would reminisce about how their romance blossomed.

Speaker 7 In Egypt, you really can't just go out like on dates and stuff.

Speaker 7 So they went together to the movie theater, and then when it got real dark, my dad dad reached over and gave her like a kiss in the cheek.

Speaker 4 Which was a very big deal. Yeah, for her it was.

Speaker 7 Yeah, I think that almost sealed the deal.

Speaker 4 It wasn't the American way of falling in love, but Ariette seemed happy. She and Magdy married just two weeks later in Egypt and moved together to California.
In 1981, Richard was born.

Speaker 4 Five years later, came Ryan. Richard was delighted to have a brother to play with and to watch over.

Speaker 4 So you were his protector, big brother?

Speaker 7 Yeah, I always kind of had to keep an eye on him.

Speaker 4 I love my brother with all my heart. How'd you and your brother get along? Like

Speaker 4 best friends. I always looked up to him.

Speaker 4 Their dad was the classic hard-working immigrant. Magdy earned his license to become a respiratory therapist, then put in endless hours to keep a roof over his family's head.

Speaker 4 and clothes on their backs.

Speaker 7 He came from a really poor country, so for him, it was like to come here, he was like working real hard to try to build things up and try to establish a life.

Speaker 4 Magdy emphasized education, teaching both his sons math at an early age. He strove and saved to help them all prosper.
And they felt he would do anything to keep his family safe.

Speaker 4 He didn't want your family to get pushed around. Not at all.
Not at all. It took many years of hard work, saving, and investing.

Speaker 4 but Magdie finally put together enough money to buy this home in a gated community in the city of Westminster, a quiet town in Orange County, California.

Speaker 4 The Gurgis family was well on its way to living out the dream Magdie and Ariette had worked so hard to build.

Speaker 4 But then, on September 29, 2004, All of it came crashing down.

Speaker 4 Ryan Gurgis, then 17, was out with friends and stayed out later than he was supposed to. When did you get home? Like 1 to 1.30 that night.
I slid the back door open and I went upstairs.

Speaker 4 His dad was not at home. His brother at work.
His mom asleep. I remember I was fixing up my iPod dock and I fell asleep to music that night.
Next thing I know, I hear

Speaker 4 a door open

Speaker 4 and first instinct was that maybe it was my brother his older brother Richard his best friend and protector coming home or so he thought but it wasn't Richard kind of look back and then that's when

Speaker 4 I felt like a hand being placed on my mouth

Speaker 4 and it was a hand with some type of cotton glove can you see who this is I noticed it was a black male that was heavy set. I was yelling for my brother and my mom to help me.

Speaker 4 And I was really scared. Ryan says he fought the intruder.

Speaker 4 I bit down on the hand and I rolled off the bed and then I popped up and I was shoved into like the wall and he's telling me like to like shut up and calm down.

Speaker 4 The man put duct tape over Ryan's mouth and started taping his hands and feet together.

Speaker 4 And right after that, a second suspect comes inside and he starts making threats to me like, don't get your moms killed, don't get your moms killed. Don't get your mom killed.

Speaker 4 That had to be terrifying to hear. Yeah, yeah, I was really terrified.
What did you think was going on? I didn't know what was going on. I thought maybe it was like a robbery or something.

Speaker 4 A terrifying situation was about to get much worse. Through the hallway, I saw my mom yelling, take anything you want, take anything you want.

Speaker 4 And then after that, I just noticed that the guy was taking my mom away, like towards her bedroom.

Speaker 4 Ryan's attacker dragged him into the closet, but then noticed the duct tape was slipping around Ryan's hands. I heard him taking like some shoestring off of one of my shoes.

Speaker 4 Using the shoelace, the man tied Ryan's hands behind his back.

Speaker 4 Through the closet door, Ryan pleaded with his attacker. I started telling him, please don't kill me, please don't kill me.
And I started praying.

Speaker 4 And during that time, he was like, I know your circumstances. I know what you're going through.
I'm not going to kill you. I know your circumstances.

Speaker 4 Strange as those words sounded, Ryan found them somehow comforting. And then after that, like, I started feeling a little bit of a sense of relief.

Speaker 4 But then, Ryan heard a sound that would come to haunt him. I heard like a cutting of a sheet, so I thought he was like cutting my sheets up.
I didn't know what was going on.

Speaker 4 And what was going on was worse than anything he could have imagined.

Speaker 4 They're like, don't make me have to kill you. I will kill you.
A panicked call to 911 and another to his brother.

Speaker 7 I was like, really freaking out. I was like, what's going on? What's going on?

Speaker 4 What really happened inside that house?

Speaker 7 Oh, my God.

Speaker 8 Oh, my God.

Speaker 4 Ryan Gurges had just been through a terrifying ordeal. Two men breaking into his home in a gated community in the middle of the night.
Both black guys and they're really huge to me.

Speaker 4 And like their whole persona just was like gangsters and like thugs. You'd never seen them before.
Never, ever.

Speaker 4 They tied him up, threw him in a closet, but not before he saw one of the men drag his mother into her bedroom. He says he thought he heard the men walk out, thought he heard a car drive away.

Speaker 4 But for a few more moments, Ryan sat in that dark closet, heart thumping, afraid, he says, to come out.

Speaker 4 It was now or never.

Speaker 4 Ryan says he managed to untie himself and grabbed his cell phone. I went down the hallway.
I looked to the right really quickly. I noticed that the door was like in like a closed position.

Speaker 4 To your mother's bedroom. To To my mother's bedroom.
Why didn't you check on her?

Speaker 4 I wanted to get out of the house as fast as possible and then come back with help. You had to be thinking that's my mom in there.
I got to go see how she is.

Speaker 4 The whole time I was like, I need to get out of this house and come back with someone because I already got overpowered by myself.

Speaker 4 He ran outside the house and called 911.

Speaker 4 What happened?

Speaker 8 Two black knives just dropped in my house and they just started dumbing out of me. They're like, don't make me have to kill you.
Don't make me have to kill you. Don't make me have to kill you.

Speaker 8 I will kill you. Don't get your moms killed.

Speaker 4 Ryan called his dad Magdi. He was shocked and asked two things, if Ryan was okay

Speaker 4 and where Ariette was. And Ryan didn't know.

Speaker 4 Ryan also called his older brother Richard, who was working the night shift at the Queen Mary Hotel. What did Richard say when you called him? He questioned if I was all right.

Speaker 4 He questioned, where's mom?

Speaker 4 He also questioned, who do you think it is? Someone you know, Ryan. Why would Richard think that you might know the people who had broken into the house?

Speaker 4 Well, he felt like I was the one that got tied up and things like that, and they came into my room. So he just was like questioning, like, Ryan, is it something having to do with you?

Speaker 4 Like, what's going on? Did they have a personal vendetta on you or anything? As you'll see, that's a question that would come up again. After Ryan's call, Richard left work and drove to the house.

Speaker 4 But the police tape was already up and they wouldn't let him through.

Speaker 7 I was like, really freaking out. I was like, what's going on? What's going on? And, you know, and I was asking them, I was like, where's my mom at? Where's my mom at?

Speaker 4 Police took Richard and Ryan to the station. The boys were surprised to find themselves split up and sitting in separate interview rooms.
Ryan's hands were bagged to preserve any evidence.

Speaker 4 But before detectives could ask too many questions, Richard asked one of his own.

Speaker 8 Before we go on, please. I just remind you, please.

Speaker 8 So we have a murder investigation. Oh, no, she's not.
No, she's not. I didn't hear that.
I didn't hear that.

Speaker 4 Ryan says he didn't know what was happening right then, but he could tell it was bad.

Speaker 8 Oh, my God.

Speaker 8 Oh, my God.

Speaker 4 I just hear like a scream. And I'm like, what just happened? It sounds like Richard, my brother, and he is screaming to the top of his lungs.

Speaker 8 No, she's not. She's not.

Speaker 4 You can't see Richard. You can just hear him.
I could just hear him in another room and he's going hysterical. I never heard him scream like that in my whole life.

Speaker 9 Oh my God.

Speaker 8 Doesn't my little brother know?

Speaker 4 Police soon told Ryan the same awful news. That their mother Ariette had been murdered.

Speaker 4 Now the cops started asking questions. And that wasn't all they did.
Police took your fingerprints? Police took my fingerprints, cotton swabs, DNA, you name it, they did it.

Speaker 4 They treating you like a suspect or a witness? They are treating me like a suspect at this point.

Speaker 8 Did you have a chance to check on your mom before you ran the house?

Speaker 7 Nah. I didn't want him chase after me or anything, so I just ran out of the house.

Speaker 4 Is it stairs before your mom's room?

Speaker 7 I have to pass by my mom's room.

Speaker 8 You had to pass by your mom's room before you get downstairs? Yeah.

Speaker 8 I didn't even look.

Speaker 7 I didn't even look.

Speaker 8 I just ran and fasted back out.

Speaker 4 Richard was facing questions that were slightly different, but just as skeptical.

Speaker 8 What I'm asking is, why would someone pick your house and break in? I don't know, man. I wish I knew.

Speaker 8 I don't know.

Speaker 4 Cops take your fingerprints? Yeah. And your DNA? Yeah.
Did you think to yourself, they're looking at me as a suspect?

Speaker 7 Yeah, it was scary. I've never been in that situation with the police.

Speaker 4 but the detective's focus seemed to linger on his brother ryan this wouldn't be like directed against him that you know of

Speaker 4 i mean i don't know dude

Speaker 7 i don't know first reaction i had when you called me was i was like man was it one of your friends that's gonna break in or something that was your first reaction my first reaction was that as police continued their questioning one question stood out above all why would these two

Speaker 4 thugs come into your house,

Speaker 4 basically not hurt you, and then really brutally kill your mother and leave behind a witness? Yeah.

Speaker 4 This investigation was about to take a turn that no one expected.

Speaker 5 Looked like two ghosts had just walked in and committed the ultimate crime.

Speaker 4 DNA and CSI.

Speaker 4 What will the evidence reveal?

Speaker 4 Ryan Gurgis was attacked in his own home and, hours later, given the worst news imaginable. While he had managed to escape, his mom Ariette had not.
She was dead.

Speaker 4 All of which begged a pressing question. Why would they kill her her and leave me?

Speaker 4 Police and even his own brother were asking the same thing. How many murders you get in Westminster? Not that many, really.
Sonia Baeste was a deputy DA in Orange County, California.

Speaker 4 The Ariette Gurgis case landed on her desk.

Speaker 5 It's a nightmare. It's the thing that most people would fear to be home, the sanctity of your home.
asleep in your bed and have intruders come in and do the unthinkable.

Speaker 4 Police found Ariette's body near her bed. She'd been stabbed multiple times.
That odd tearing sound Ryan said he heard?

Speaker 4 Investigators believed it was the sound of the knife ripping through the mattress as Ariette's killers slit her throat. Was that knife found at the scene?

Speaker 9 It was not.

Speaker 4 James Wilson was a patrol officer at the time of the murder. Wilson says the details of the crime scene pointed to something other than a home invasion robbery.

Speaker 4 In part because nothing appeared to have been stolen. This was not a burglary in which she was sort of collateral damaged.

Speaker 9 Definitely not.

Speaker 4 Cash was in plain sight. Jewelry, too.
Even Ryan's iPod and new dock, all untouched.

Speaker 9 The house wasn't even rummaged through as if they were looking for something.

Speaker 4 What's more, this was a gated community. The killers would have needed a gate code to get in.

Speaker 5 This starts getting more interesting as to who could have done it.

Speaker 4 Crime scene investigators collected mounds of evidence and, surprisingly, with all that blood, not a single trace of unknown DNA.

Speaker 4 All the DNA results matched the people who lived in the house. Ariette, Magdie, Richard, and Ryan, the witness who, for some reason, was left alive.

Speaker 4 Two guys came into the house, beat up Ryan, tie him up, and then kill Ariette in a brutal, hands-on way and leave no trace?

Speaker 5 That's what it looked like. Looked like two ghosts had just walked in and committed the ultimate crime.

Speaker 4 It seemed improbable, and it encouraged detectives to look closely at Ryan. He claimed to be a victim, but was he really?

Speaker 4 Police learned the friend he was with the night of the murder had offered Ryan a knife for protection, just hours before Ryan's mother was brutally killed with a knife, a knife that had not been found.

Speaker 4 They also learned Ryan smoked marijuana and not just at the occasional party. He smoked every day, and he wasn't just smoking.

Speaker 8 I was helping out someone like

Speaker 8 selling

Speaker 4 like narcotics on the

Speaker 4 marijuana.

Speaker 4 Police found small amounts of marijuana in Ryan's room, along with a bong, baggies, and tinfoil. And there was more, like the description Ryan had given detectives about the two suspects.

Speaker 4 Both male blacks.

Speaker 9 They were large. He said that they acted like they were from a gang.
But that was something that we still didn't know 100% sure

Speaker 9 if that was true or not.

Speaker 4 Claiming two black men committed the murder seemed almost too convenient. And more troubling, if Ryan had been beaten by by gang members much bigger than he was, why didn't he look like it?

Speaker 4 There's no question that if Ryan had been in a serious duking-it-out fight with a couple of guys, that he would have ended up much more battered than he was.

Speaker 9 If those guys wanted to hurt him worse than they did, definitely so. Yes.

Speaker 4 And remember, Ryan had told police that one suspect said, I know your circumstances. I'm not going to kill you.

Speaker 4 Was that true? And if so, what did it mean?

Speaker 4 And then there was the issue of Ryan claiming to have left the house before he so much as took a peek into his mother's bedroom. Did that strike anybody as odd?

Speaker 9 I think so. As a detective, you have to consider why somebody would do that.

Speaker 4 Soon, detectives found out Ryan had more dark secrets than they'd realized.

Speaker 5 He's the only one who survived. He's practically unharmed.

Speaker 4 New questions for Ryan and a new clue. Had he received a warning before the attack?

Speaker 8 Popped up like,

Speaker 7 better watch her back. I know where you live.

Speaker 4 The investigators looking into the savage murder of Ariet Gurgis naturally took a hard look at the only other person known to be in the house when she died. Her 17-year-old son, Ryan.

Speaker 5 He's the only one who survived. He's practically unharmed.

Speaker 5 He was selling the small amount of drugs. We had to pursue that.

Speaker 8 A couple more things, Ryan, give me first.

Speaker 4 Police still had a lot of questions about Ryan's story, but they hadn't yet found any evidence to suggest he killed his mom. For now, at least.
They had to take him at his word.

Speaker 9 Until you can find a reason not to believe that person, you kind of have to go with what they have to say unless they start lying to you.

Speaker 4 As far as you knew, Ryan was not lying.

Speaker 9 As far as I knew, yes.

Speaker 4 But the investigation was just starting, and police could not discount another possibility that Ariette was killed because of Ryan.

Speaker 4 Detectives learned that a year before the murder, Ryan had confronted another kid at school who hadn't paid him for some weed. Later, that kid's friends jumped Ryan.

Speaker 4 Doesn't seem like the kind of thing that would spark a homicide,

Speaker 4 but I'm guessing you've seen homicides that were sparked by a lot less.

Speaker 9 It is typical for especially gang-related homicides to be something just as small as that.

Speaker 4 Remember, Ryan described his assailants as sounding like gang members. And then there was this bombshell.
A message Ryan received on his AOL instant messenger just weeks before the murder.

Speaker 8 About a week ago, you said?

Speaker 4 He brought it to detectives' attention

Speaker 4 during his interview.

Speaker 8 And then popped up like, you better watch your back.

Speaker 7 I know where you live.

Speaker 8 This, this, this. And it's like, I've never even seen this person.

Speaker 7 That's why I didn't really like pay attention to it.

Speaker 8 You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 Ryan told police he had chalked it up to a prank.

Speaker 4 Now it seemed like key evidence. Except,

Speaker 4 Ryan had not saved the message. No way to tell now who had sent it.
Any idea who was from?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 AOL able to help you with any of that?

Speaker 4 No.

Speaker 4 A frustrating dead end. But by now, police were looking at other possibilities.

Speaker 4 They dug deeper into the American dream the Gurgis family seemed to be living and interviewed the man of the house, Magdie.

Speaker 8 How did you feel about your wife? Sir, I'm very devastated. We lived together for 24 years.

Speaker 8 She's the mother of my kids.

Speaker 5 He really didn't have any vices.

Speaker 5 He didn't spend any money on any hobbies of any sort. So he was a guy who went to work and went home.

Speaker 4 But their father wasn't just a hard worker, said his sons. He was more like a workaholic.

Speaker 7 I think my mom felt neglected. He wasn't affectionate towards her.
It was like all he would do was just work.

Speaker 4 I played sports like all my life and he never ever came to watch any sports that I played.

Speaker 7 A lot of the childhood, a lot of me growing up, I can remember a lot about my mom, but I don't remember a lot about my dad. It's not because I don't want to, it's because he just wasn't there.

Speaker 7 He would come, go to sleep, get up, go back to work, come, go to sleep, get up, go to work.

Speaker 4 That was because, for Magdie, they said, the American dream was all about the green. It was work, work, work.
Money, money, money. Money, exactly.

Speaker 4 After a rare outing to the beach one day, Ryan says he and his father dropped by McDonald's. I asked him if I could borrow a dollar so I could grab a 99-cent burger.

Speaker 4 And not only did he ask for that dollar back, he also asked for the tax money on it. What kind of father asks his 13-year-old son to reimburse him for a $1 hamburger?

Speaker 4 My father, he was always trying to

Speaker 4 hustle someone for

Speaker 4 some type of money.

Speaker 4 It didn't take prosecutor Sonia Baeste long long to learn about Magdi's obsession. This is the United States.

Speaker 4 Everybody goes to work, everybody tries to make money, everybody tries to provide for themselves or their family. He's different?

Speaker 5 Yes, he's very different. He's in a category of very few people

Speaker 5 who have an unhealthy relationship with money. It drives everything that they do.

Speaker 4 We're not talking about

Speaker 4 penurious or thrifty. No.
We're talking about squeezing every dollar until it bleeds.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 4 His sons describe Magdy as not only obsessed with work and money, but also a strict disciplinarian. Did you love him? Yeah, I did love him.
Were you scared of him?

Speaker 4 Yeah, from when I was a kid, I felt like there was like a thin line and I didn't want to cross anything.

Speaker 4 The brothers say they saw what could happen when they crossed that line. One night when Ryan was 14 and came home past curfew, they say Magdie simply lost it.

Speaker 4 He threw me on the floor and he started kicking me and my brother had to pull him off of me. Your brother kind of shielded you a little bit, didn't he? He did.
He did.

Speaker 4 Sounds like you were closer to your brother than you were to your father. Very much so.

Speaker 4 Ryan rebelled, staying out late, smoking weed. Richard was more dutiful, but he too felt his father's wrath.

Speaker 7 A punch, a kick, you kind of name it, depending. I would find that the sooner I would cry, the sooner that it would stop.

Speaker 4 It's a tough lesson to learn from your dad.

Speaker 7 Yeah, he was a very harsh person, which has made it more fortunate that I had my mom in my life, because she was like the complete opposite.

Speaker 4 As tough as he was on his sons, they say Magdie was just as tough on his wife.

Speaker 4 Ryan and Richard say they never saw their father hit their mother, but they say they heard the yelling and they did see the bruises. We never ever called 911.

Speaker 4 It was just like we had that sense of fear that we didn't want to

Speaker 4 cross the line. You were more afraid of what your dad would do to you if you did call 911 than what might happen to your mom if you didn't.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 So the boys stayed quiet, but a storm was brewing.

Speaker 4 In the end, Ariette would give investigators their best lead.

Speaker 7 I really felt like my mom was like empowered.

Speaker 4 A transformation and a confrontation.

Speaker 7 There's no going back.

Speaker 4 And so the life you had before was never going to be the same.

Speaker 4 As investigators worked the murder of Ariette Gurgis, they heard disturbing information from her sons.

Speaker 4 Most disturbing by far was what happened seven months before the murder in February 2004 on the eve of Magdie and Ariette's 24th wedding anniversary.

Speaker 5 So she starts talking to Magdie. Can we go out to dinner?

Speaker 5 That's what starts this fight.

Speaker 4 Doesn't sound like it was a very long fight. No.

Speaker 5 He punches her in the face.

Speaker 4 Richard remembers arriving home that evening and seeing his mom.

Speaker 7 She looked very subdued. Her face was swollen.
Her nose was still like bleeding. So I went upstairs and I confronted my dad.

Speaker 4 What was his response?

Speaker 7 He told me to stay out of it.

Speaker 4 But Richard, in nursing school at the time, worried his mom could have a concussion or worse, he rushed her to the emergency room.

Speaker 4 They had kept their family secret for so long, but that was about to change the nurse asked her like what happened and your mom said my mom told her that you know he punched me in the face that started the whole cascade police went to the gurgis home and arrested magdie that was really scary that was scary not thrilling it was terrifying not not the moment you've been waiting for No, no, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 7 There was no point of return. Somehow I knew immediately after that that it was like there's no going back.
There's no going back.

Speaker 4 And so the life you had before was never going to be the same.

Speaker 4 A court issued a protective order, and Magdi moved out of the house he'd worked so hard for to an apartment complex he and his brother owned nearby.

Speaker 4 After more than two decades of marriage, it seemed Magdie and Ariette were headed for divorce. It was a thought that seemed to terrify Ariette.

Speaker 7 I think she was scared and had a lot of cold feet.

Speaker 4 About striking out on her own in the world. Exactly.
Harriette was totally dependent on Magdie. She'd never written a personal check, didn't even know their mortgage was paid off.

Speaker 7 She would express to me, like, you know, I wish all this would just not be here, or I wish, you know, everything could go back to the way it was.

Speaker 4 Magdie, too, seemed frightened, and perhaps... chastened.
He was definitely trying to get back with my mother. Did it seem like your mom was

Speaker 4 wavering at all? Yeah, there was a limbo period where my mom was

Speaker 4 considering taking him back.

Speaker 4 Richard, who had stepped up during his father's absence as the man of the house, overheard a strange conversation between his parents.

Speaker 7 He was like, oh, you know, I love you.

Speaker 4 Had you ever heard your dad say, I love you to your mom?

Speaker 4 I can't really recall that.

Speaker 4 Until that conversation when he needed something from her.

Speaker 4 Yeah.

Speaker 4 What did Magdie need? It turned out he was more worried about himself than anyone else. A domestic violence conviction might cost him his respiratory therapist license, which would cut off his income.

Speaker 4 And Magdy knew a divorce would force him to split his hard-earned money with Ariette. He had his back on the wall.
Yeah.

Speaker 4 So Magdy came up with a plan, a letter, in which Ariette would say she wasn't sure what happened, that her injuries could have resulted from a fall.

Speaker 4 Magdie and Ariette weren't speaking at the time, so Magdie convinced Richard, the dutiful older son, to transcribe the letter and persuade Ariette to sign it, thus getting her husband off the hook.

Speaker 4 Do you feel bad at all trying to get your mom to change her story of something that you knew she was telling the truth about?

Speaker 7 Yeah, back then I kind of felt like

Speaker 7 I was just trying to help.

Speaker 4 And maybe the price of saving your family is

Speaker 4 convincing your mom to lie about something that you know is true.

Speaker 7 He really just manipulated me.

Speaker 4 He knew his mother had mixed feelings about the breakup of her marriage. Richard told himself he was doing the right thing.

Speaker 7 I was trying to support my mom. At the same time, I still felt that he was my dad, so I felt really pulled.

Speaker 4 Harriet agreed to sign the letter. Magdie, no doubt, breathed a sigh of relief.
But then came his preliminary hearing, in which Ariette did something quite unexpected.

Speaker 4 She took the witness stand and she told the truth.

Speaker 7 She felt that enough was enough. So she went and she really laid everything out.

Speaker 4 Not just about the night Magdie gave her a black eye and bloodied her nose, but about abuse Ariette described as stretching over two decades. Did your dad feel betrayed?

Speaker 7 My dad was like, I can't believe what she said up there.

Speaker 4 Ariette Gurgis had finally stood up for herself.

Speaker 4 It might have been the manifestation of her own American dream. Ariette hired a divorce attorney and began planning a new life.

Speaker 7 I really felt like my mom was like empowered. She just wanted to be happy, you know, that she felt like there was happiness like coming.

Speaker 4 Instead, the next month, she was murdered. And to investigators who heard Ariette's story, it now seemed obvious her husband Magdie was the prime suspect.

Speaker 5 Everything pointed at Magdie.

Speaker 4 Except for the fact that phone records proved that Magdy was at his own apartment when Ryan called him that night. And according to the only witness, two black men committed the murder.

Speaker 4 And there was still the question of why that witness, Ryan, was left alive.

Speaker 4 And just a few days after his mother was killed, the rebellious son, Ryan, received another anonymous message on his computer. How did you like your gift? LOL, LOL.

Speaker 4 How did you like your gift? Yeah.

Speaker 4 An aha moment for police. A new look at that old interrogation of Ryan.

Speaker 8 Do you say you bit this guy? Yeah. He had to take off the glove to put on the

Speaker 8 tape.

Speaker 4 Could it lead to the break they'd need?

Speaker 4 Investigators were zeroing in on Magdie Gurgis as the prime suspect in the murder of his wife, Ariette. The two had been going through a domestic violence case and were divorcing.

Speaker 5 You know, he's an obvious suspect, but that doesn't mean he did it.

Speaker 4 No matter how noxious he may have been during the marriage, maybe he's not the guy that you're looking for?

Speaker 5 Sure.

Speaker 5 You have to explore every possibility.

Speaker 4 Especially after the couple's son, Ryan, received a taunting message on his computer days after the murder. How did you like your gift, LOL, LOL?

Speaker 4 It didn't make any sense to me.

Speaker 4 Police looked into it, but just as with the threat Ryan received weeks before the murder, they weren't able to track down the sender of those messages.

Speaker 4 In hindsight, you wish some more work had been done on that? Yes. Older brother Richard also came under scrutiny.

Speaker 4 Richard had sort of stuck up for, maybe even covered for his father during the domestic violence investigation. Did you guys think he might be doing that again?

Speaker 9 Initially, they believed it was a possibility, yes.

Speaker 4 Soon after the murder, the brothers left Westminster and moved to Northern California. And they did so without telling Magde.
As police continued to dig, Richard and Ryan say they worried.

Speaker 4 Whoever killed their mom was still at large and knew Ryan was a witness to the crime. I have recollections.
I have nightmares. I also give chills.
I don't like to be at home by myself.

Speaker 4 I have trouble sleeping. I mean, the list goes on.

Speaker 4 Ryan and Richard say they had a growing suspicion their father was responsible for their mother's murder. They said they were too scared to confront him.

Speaker 4 But in the months that followed, the investigation seemed to stall.

Speaker 4 Seems like you had a lot of leads that kind of

Speaker 4 hadn't gone anywhere.

Speaker 5 We had a lot of paths that we went down.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 4 Remember, there was no physical evidence linking Magdie Magdie to the murder. Ryan said it was two black men who'd broken into the house and killed his mom.

Speaker 4 Police had never found those men or any trace they ever existed.

Speaker 4 And those threatening messages to Ryan,

Speaker 4 still no idea who sent them either. Was there a point where you thought maybe this won't ever be solved?

Speaker 5 It's hard to think that way when you desperately want to solve it.

Speaker 5 But yes.

Speaker 4 And so the years rolled by.

Speaker 12 Richard became a critical care nurse.

Speaker 4 Ryan, the self-admitted stoner, says he stopped smoking. He was working toward a bachelor's degree in business and had started his own events and entertainment company.

Speaker 4 Magdy would have been proud of his boys if he knew how far they'd come. But Richard and Ryan say they never once got a call from him in all those years, and they made no effort to contact him.

Speaker 4 The brothers did call the Westminster Police Department again and again, urging detectives to investigate their father. And each time, they heard the same response.

Speaker 7 You know, we're still looking into it, but we don't have any new leads. There's nothing depressing.

Speaker 4 It was.

Speaker 4 They made endless calls, enlisting family and friends to write America's Most Wanted. And they raised a $55,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspects.
All of it led to nothing.

Speaker 4 How many other cases did you do in those years?

Speaker 5 A lot of murders.

Speaker 4 But something about this one stuck with you.

Speaker 5 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Was there something about Ariadne that made you not want to quit?

Speaker 5 You don't ever want to quit on any case, but I think that

Speaker 5 the fact that she came so close

Speaker 5 to being an independent woman, to standing up for herself, to being the kind of mother that she wanted to be to those boys and she did everything right and

Speaker 4 she died on our watch it was terrible feeling terrible feeling it was 2010 nearly six years after the murder when richard made another of his many phone calls to the westminster pd

Speaker 4 this time it was james wilson who answered

Speaker 4 he'd been a patrol officer at the time of the murder but in the intervening years had worked his way up to detective I really didn't have very good answers for him.

Speaker 9 What's going on with my mom's case? What are you guys doing on my mom's case? And I know there's nothing really going on in his mom's case, so I just started looking into it.

Speaker 4 Out of guilt?

Speaker 9 I think an obligation, really. You know, this is one of the reasons that you become a police officer is to help people like that.

Speaker 4 And as Detective Wilson poured through the mountain of evidence on the case, he came across that interview detectives had with Ryan right after the murder.

Speaker 4 Reading through the transcripts, he saw a key detail that no one had noticed.

Speaker 8 You say you bit this guy? Yeah,

Speaker 8 on the hand. Was it on the hand or through a glove or? I think it was through a glove, but he had to take off the glove to put on the

Speaker 8 tape.

Speaker 4 Ryan was telling detectives the intruder took his gloves off before handling the duct tape. and also the shoelace used to tie him up.

Speaker 9 You don't have to be detective to think, well, maybe that might have some DNA on it.

Speaker 4 Detective Wilson checked to see if the shoelace had ever been tested. It had not.

Speaker 4 So he sent it off to the county crime lab. And sure enough, one afternoon, eight years after Ariette's murder, Detective Wilson's phone rang.

Speaker 9 Crime lab did call me and told me that they got a hit.

Speaker 4 And no one could have predicted the name police were given.

Speaker 9 It had to be our suspect. Wasn't even in our computer.

Speaker 4 A whole new suspect. Who was this guy? Did you know where he was?

Speaker 5 I knew exactly where he was.

Speaker 13 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 13 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

Speaker 13 Set in my home state of Maine and the greater New England area, it's my goal to dig through the archives to bring the stories of the people at the heart of these cases to light.

Speaker 13 Listen to Dark Down East, wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 14 Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 4 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 14 And basically, it's conversations.

Speaker 14 I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 14 Fox.

Speaker 14 There are new episodes out every Thursday. So subscribe, please, and listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 12 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 12 Zen is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 17 Plus, Zin offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 12 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zin. Check out zinn.com/slash find to find Zen at a store near you.

Speaker 12 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

Speaker 4 It was 2012, eight years after the murder of Ariette Gurges, when Detective Wilson got his first solid break. Home invaders had tied up Ariette's son, Ryan, with a shoelace.

Speaker 4 The detectives submitted the shoelace to the crime lab, hoping for a long-shot DNA hit.

Speaker 4 And now, the results were in.

Speaker 9 It had to be our suspect, or at least one of our suspects.

Speaker 4 And the name the crime lab gives you for the DNA hit is Anthony Bridget. Was that name in any of the case files?

Speaker 9 No.

Speaker 4 Not someone who had been talked to at any stage in this investigation.

Speaker 9 It wasn't even in our computer, our in-house computers, there's ever been a person that's been contacted by it, police.

Speaker 4 And yet the DNA proved Anthony Bridgett was the attacker who had tied up Ryan. Detective Wilson entered Bridget's information into a computer.
So who is he?

Speaker 9 He's a member of the Trace 57 Crips.

Speaker 4 The Cripps, one of the most notorious and violent gangs in the U.S.

Speaker 4 And Mr. Bridget, street name Little Shotgun, was by any standard a professional criminal.

Speaker 5 I mean he had numerous violent conduct, including prior conviction for manslaughter, so this was no

Speaker 5 novice.

Speaker 4 Long violent rap sheet.

Speaker 5 Absolutely.

Speaker 4 Bridget also had a drug conviction. And remember, Ryan Gurges admitted he sometimes dealt weed.

Speaker 4 Could Ryan and Anthony Bridget have known each other? Is that why Richard immediately wondered if Ryan was the target of the attack?

Speaker 4 Police considered that theory and dismissed it. In fact, for police, Anthony Bridget and his gang affiliation confirmed Ryan's story.

Speaker 4 For one, Bridget matched Ryan's account that the man who tied him up seemed like a gang member.

Speaker 8 It looked like he was one of those guys that just came out of the pen and stuff and just like wanted revenge on someone.

Speaker 4 And two, Bridget's prior booking photos matched the sketch Ryan had given police. And so investigators developed a different theory about Bridget's involvement.

Speaker 5 He had the resume that you would expect

Speaker 5 the intruders who came to Kell Area to have.

Speaker 4 The kind of guy you'd hire to commit murder.

Speaker 5 That's right.

Speaker 4 And they suspected the person who hired him was Magdie Gurgis.

Speaker 4 But of course, there was no proof of any of that. I'm guessing one of the things you did pretty early on was subpoena Magdi's bank records.
Oh, yes.

Speaker 4 Looking for that big chunk of money that he took out a few days before his wife was killed.

Speaker 5 You could hope, but.

Speaker 5 But it wasn't there. It wasn't there.

Speaker 4 Well, maybe he's innocent.

Speaker 5 Maybe he's just careful.

Speaker 4 Careful? Perhaps.

Speaker 4 But in what universe would Magdie Gurgis and Anthony Bridget's paths cross? One way to find out, they could ask Anthony Bridget.

Speaker 4 Did you know where he was?

Speaker 5 I knew exactly where he was.

Speaker 4 He was in Soledad State Prison. Prosecutor Baeste and Detective Wilson decided to pay him an unannounced visit.
And there you are in a little room. Yes.
A little table like this one between you.

Speaker 4 And you say.

Speaker 4 I want to talk to you and he's a little surprised right he's a little surprised yes but anthony bridgett was hard to rattle he's been involved in gang-related homicides in the past um

Speaker 4 pretty experienced at uh the prison system so saying to him

Speaker 4 hey the guy that hired you magdie gurgis just rolled over on you that's not gonna work right this is not a virgin exactly but they did get something You said to him, I have your DNA in a murder scene.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 5 And he said, where?

Speaker 4 He said, where, not, I haven't committed any murder. Did you ask him whether he knew Magdi? No.

Speaker 5 We never got that far.

Speaker 4 Here's what Bridget didn't know.

Speaker 4 The prosecutor and the detective didn't really care what he said.

Speaker 4 Their target was Magdi Gurgis, and all they wanted was to prove a connection between him and Anthony Bridget.

Speaker 4 That's why, before they left Orange County, they'd set up a wiretap on Magdi's phone. He was back living in the house where his wife was murdered.
He even had a new girlfriend.

Speaker 4 And now, investigators listened to see if Bridget would tip off Magdie.

Speaker 5 I was hoping that at least my visit would inspire him in some way.

Speaker 4 Didn't happen.

Speaker 5 No, it didn't.

Speaker 4 So, game over?

Speaker 8 Are you stepping out of the car right now?

Speaker 4 No,

Speaker 4 it was just starting.

Speaker 4 A return to the scene of the crime.

Speaker 4 A dramatic confrontation at Magdie's house.

Speaker 18 Check it out, man. My homie locked up in the pen right now.

Speaker 4 Who were these men and

Speaker 4 what did they want?

Speaker 4 January 30th, 2013,

Speaker 4 the home where Ariet Gurgis had met her awful death was suddenly once again the scene of an unexpected confrontation.

Speaker 4 Two men showed up on Magdie Gurgis' lawn.

Speaker 18 Let me holler at you for a few ticks.

Speaker 18 Let me holler at you for a second.

Speaker 4 And it was all caught on camera.

Speaker 18 Check it out, man. My homie locked up up in the pen right now.
Police approached him about him killing your wife or you in this house.

Speaker 4 Interesting, because prosecutors Sonia Baeste and Detective James Wilson had just returned from visiting Cripps gang member Anthony Bridget in prison.

Speaker 4 They suspected Magdi had hired Bridget and another as-yet-unknown man to kill Ariette.

Speaker 4 And now, apparently, Here were a pair of gangsters on Magdy's property. The more talkative of the two called himself D Money.

Speaker 4 And money is what he wanted from Magdy.

Speaker 18 You know what I'm saying? We don't care about what the thing is. We want to get paid for it.
We're not going to say sh ⁇ .

Speaker 4 You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 Good question.

Speaker 4 And who better to answer it than D Money himself?

Speaker 4 You're a born actor.

Speaker 19 I believe I am.

Speaker 4 He's not a gangster. He's an officer from the Long Beach Police Department who was working undercover, which is why why we're concealing his identity.
You a little nervous going in? Not at all. No.

Speaker 4 The role he played at Magdy's home that day was part of a war game Sonia and Detective Wilson had set in motion even before they met Anthony Bridget. Tell me about this scheme.

Speaker 5 You call it a scheme, I call it a plan.

Speaker 4 By any name. It was an attempt to trap Magdie.

Speaker 5 The only way Anthony Bridget or somebody like him commits a crime like this is some kind of gain, financial primarily.

Speaker 5 So you develop that kind of individual and you come up with a way in which they were able to contact Magdie and demand more money.

Speaker 18 Let me holler at you for a few ticks.

Speaker 4 In other words, these two undercover officers, posing as gang members, would approach Magdy and hit him up for some hush money.

Speaker 4 Since investigators knew that money was Magdy's particular obsession, they hoped they were about to strike a nerve. But they had to be careful.

Speaker 4 If the killers were working for Magdy, it wasn't clear if he knew them directly or hired them through a middleman.

Speaker 4 So you couldn't have these guys claim that they were the actual guys in the house. Correct.
Because possibly he knew them.

Speaker 5 Possibly he knew them.

Speaker 4 So you have them pose

Speaker 4 as friends of the guy in the house. Yes.
And he's now in jail.

Speaker 5 In prison. Which is, we knew that was true because Anthony Bridget was in prison.

Speaker 4 And so his friends are, what, trying to leverage that knowledge into some extra money for them. Correct.

Speaker 4 Operations like this are especially tricky. There's usually only one shot to get it right.
If the phony gangsters threatened Magdy, the sting wouldn't hold up in court and Magdy could walk free.

Speaker 4 And at the same time,

Speaker 4 one thing had to be crystal clear.

Speaker 5 You want to make sure that everybody knows that we're talking about the crime that occurred about his wife being murdered in that particular house. That couldn't be left ambiguous.

Speaker 4 A risky plan and no guarantees it would work. True that a lot of DAs might not go for an operation like that.
Yes. Sonia wanted to win.

Speaker 9 She wasn't scared to fail.

Speaker 4 Did you think you were going to fail?

Speaker 9 I was very nervous, to say the least.

Speaker 4 It had taken nine years to get to this moment. A team of cops watched and videotaped as the undercovers approached Magdy.

Speaker 8 Are you stepping out of the car right now?

Speaker 4 Everyone was on edge

Speaker 4 except for the man cast in the role of D-Money.

Speaker 4 You had to be going over in your mind, like, you know, if he says this, if he does this, I'm going to...

Speaker 19 No, things come out spontaneously.

Speaker 4 Really? You have to be quick.

Speaker 19 He say A, I say B. He say C, I say D.
You have to have something up there, and there's nothing you can rehearse, nothing you can write down. Either you can do it or you can't.

Speaker 4 Still, there was cause for worry. While these officers looked the part, they had never done anything like this before.
Were you worried at all about sort of their acting ability?

Speaker 9 I was concerned.

Speaker 4 Too late now.

Speaker 4 It was on.

Speaker 4 A surprise snafu.

Speaker 9 His cell phone dials the number of the undercover and they told me he didn't answer the phone.

Speaker 4 An undercover officer misses the call and that was just the beginning.

Speaker 5 I think we all stopped breathing for about 10 seconds.

Speaker 4 Magdie Gurgis didn't know it, but he was the target of a sting operation. He had just arrived home.
The undercover officers approached, and the camera was rolling.

Speaker 18 Check it out, man. My homie locked up in the pen right now.
Police approached him about him killing your wife or you in this house. You know what I'm saying? We don't care about what the thing is.

Speaker 18 We want to get paid for it. We're not going to say s ⁇ .
You know what I mean?

Speaker 4 What's his reaction when you make it clear that you know about his wife's murder?

Speaker 15 He appeared to be shocked.

Speaker 19 You can tell it was something that he wasn't prepared for and he never thought was going to happen.

Speaker 18 We want five racks, 5,000. You know what I'm saying? We ain't going to say.

Speaker 18 We ain't going to go to the police. We ain't going to say nothing else.

Speaker 18 You understand what I'm saying? All right. Give me a call, man.
Take my number.

Speaker 18 That's me. Call me tomorrow about 10 o'clock.
Don't worry. I'm D.
Money. Just give me a call tomorrow about 10 o'clock.
5,000. Get me up tomorrow.

Speaker 4 Almost as soon as it began, it was over. Magdie left standing there with D Money's phone number with instructions to call the next day.
And in terms of Oscar-winning performances,

Speaker 9 they did a pretty good job. I think so.

Speaker 4 They did a great job. Now, police waited and wondered, what would Magdie do? If he doesn't call, this all is for nothing.

Speaker 19 It's a done deal. Case is over.

Speaker 4 More than eight years after the murder, here was the make-or-break moment.

Speaker 9 He was either going to ignore them,

Speaker 9 he was going to contact them, or he was going to call the police and say guess what

Speaker 4 i think the guys involved in my wife's murder just came to the house which is what an innocent person would have done yes but he didn't call the police he did not and he didn't ignore them very true the next day the surveillance team tracked magdie driving and just at that time

Speaker 9 his cell phone dials the number of the undercover.

Speaker 9 And I'm notified immediately by the wire room.

Speaker 20 And

Speaker 9 they told me he didn't answer the phone.

Speaker 4 The undercover officer missed Magdi's call.

Speaker 9 So I had to call the undercover.

Speaker 4 I'm like, the target of the investigation is trying to reach you.

Speaker 9 He was in a bad area for reception, so he had to move.

Speaker 4 That's like a nightmare.

Speaker 4 So we were hoping he called back. The undercover, as usual, was confident.
Why were you so convinced he'd call back?

Speaker 19 Because if he called the first time, to me, in this type of deal, when you call the first time, you know, you're over the nervousness and they're going to call back.

Speaker 4 And Magdy did call back. The surveillance team caught him on camera.
This time from a place that doesn't get a lot of traffic in the 21st century.

Speaker 5 We know he's at a payphone. That got really interesting for me right there.

Speaker 19 I'm sitting in the car and the cell phone went off. He let it ring a few times and answered the phone, you know.

Speaker 10 This D Money, what's going on? You stopped by yesterday. Yeah, I came by yesterday, man.

Speaker 21 Yeah, what's the problem,

Speaker 10 What's that?

Speaker 8 What is uh what's up?

Speaker 10 The problem is, my boy's locked down in the field, like I told you yesterday. We know what's going on.
You know, my boy, you know, took care of a little business, you know.

Speaker 10 So, we, you know, we just trying to get paid just to keep it hush. You know what I mean? I told you you got

Speaker 10 paid everything.

Speaker 19 And once he told me, hey, I thought I paid you guys everything home run.

Speaker 5 You know, it's one of those feelings where you've known this all along, and then you actually hear it from him.

Speaker 5 And so I think it was

Speaker 5 an overwhelming feeling of confirmation.

Speaker 4 And then, just as quickly, it all threatened to blow up in their faces. Listen carefully.

Speaker 10 What?

Speaker 10 Who was a middleman?

Speaker 4 Middleman? The undercover had no idea. Magdy had just asked a question that none of the investigators could answer.

Speaker 4 When Magdi says, tell me who the middleman is, so I know I can trust you, that was something the undercover officers, I think, weren't ready for.

Speaker 5 Now, I think we all stopped breathing for about 10 seconds.

Speaker 4 Investigators had considered the possibility that Magdy might have hired the killers through some third party. And now this conversation seemed like confirmation that he had.

Speaker 4 But who was it?

Speaker 4 It seems to me that the middleman for this

Speaker 4 would have to be somebody

Speaker 4 that might be really trusted. Somebody he knew well.

Speaker 7 He would have had to trust this person, yes.

Speaker 4 Somebody who would stick up for him.

Speaker 4 Yes.

Speaker 4 Any thoughts on who that might be? I do.

Speaker 4 I do.

Speaker 4 There was no way to tell the undercover that. So D.
Money just stayed in character.

Speaker 10 I don't, you know, everybody knows who the middleman was, the middleman was. I ain't worried about that.
People talking,

Speaker 10 people,

Speaker 10 because I got the information that I got, player, I can go to police, but I'm not.

Speaker 10 I'm just trying to get my money so I can go.

Speaker 4 So the conversation about hush money continued. Magdie, true to form, haggled over the price.

Speaker 10 $5,000 ain't that much, man. You know.

Speaker 21 I trust handed.

Speaker 21 My daddy has stopped

Speaker 21 the whole

Speaker 5 It just goes to show the true character of this man. I mean, here's a guy who will negotiate with thugs 10 years later because he feels like he already paid.

Speaker 5 I mean, it's just, that's what I mean. He's not in the normal range of thrifty.

Speaker 10 What's that?

Speaker 21 1,500, I have one meal.

Speaker 4 Police probably had enough to arrest Magdie right then and there,

Speaker 4 but they waited.

Speaker 4 Now you want to do the actual exchange of money.

Speaker 19 Got to get the money.

Speaker 4 That meant a second meeting. But would Magdy even show up? And if he did, would he come with a plan of his own?

Speaker 4 Nerve-wracking and nail-biting. One more hidden camera moment.

Speaker 10 Sounds, did you bring me a check?

Speaker 15 Lucky.

Speaker 14 Hey, everybody, it's Rob Lowe here.

Speaker 4 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

Speaker 14 And basically, it's conversations I've had that really make you feel like you're pulling up a chair at an intimate dinner between myself and people that I admire, like Aaron Sorkin or Tiffany Haddish, Demi Moore, Chris Pratt, Michael J.

Speaker 14 Fox.

Speaker 14 There are new episodes out every Thursday. So subscribe, please, and

Speaker 4 wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 12 If you're a smoker or dipper ready to make a change, you really only need one good reason. But with Zen nicotine pouches, you'll discover many good reasons.

Speaker 12 Zinn is America's number one nicotine pouch brand.

Speaker 17 Plus, Zinn offers a robust rewards program.

Speaker 12 There are lots of options when it comes to nicotine satisfaction, but there's only one Zen. Check out Zinn.com/slash find to find Zin at a store near you.

Speaker 12 Warning, this product contains nicotine. Nicotine is an addictive chemical.

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Speaker 4 Magdie Gurges had just been caught on tape, apparently admitting to hiring thugs to kill his wife. I told you you got button you got paid everything.

Speaker 4 He seemed willing to pay even more to keep things quiet and made a date to do it.

Speaker 10 What's that?

Speaker 21 1,500 I have on me.

Speaker 4 The next day, officers secretly trailed Magdy leaving his home, driving on the freeway, and pulling into this Home Depot parking lot, the meeting point chosen by Magdy. Everybody's out of sight.

Speaker 19 Everybody's out of sight, plain clothes, unmarked vehicles, and except the two of us.

Speaker 4 I'm no police officer, but this is starting to sound like fun. Uh-huh.

Speaker 19 Yeah, it's definitely fun. It's a rush.
It's

Speaker 19 I'll do it all over again.

Speaker 4 Prosecutor Sonia Baeste was nearby watching it all unfold. Tell me what that was like.

Speaker 5 Nerve-wracking.

Speaker 5 It's

Speaker 5 exhilarating.

Speaker 4 Could you see Magdi?

Speaker 5 Not at first.

Speaker 4 But soon enough, he came into view. The undercovers approached his car.

Speaker 10 What's up, Mag?

Speaker 10 What's going on? What's up? Did you bring me a check?

Speaker 15 Lucky.

Speaker 10 Cash.

Speaker 10 It's 15. Yes.

Speaker 19 So I took the envelope, basically snatched it from him, and counted the money right there and put it in the envelope.

Speaker 4 It was what, $1,500, $100?

Speaker 19 $15 and $100 bills.

Speaker 10 $15?

Speaker 10 Shit. Gonna be over.
You don't see us no more, man. All right,

Speaker 10 is everything good? Yes.

Speaker 4 So this was not some sort of frightened little mouse who was doing what he was told by you guys. This was a guy who was...
poised and kind of in control of the situation.

Speaker 19 Oh yeah, I'm gonna get it done and this is gonna be it.

Speaker 4 And it'll be over.

Speaker 4 But before it was, the undercover dropped one more line

Speaker 4 to see if Magdie would bite.

Speaker 10 What the f did your wife do so motherfucking bad to you to make you want to kill her ass? See if Jesus.

Speaker 4 He didn't take the bait.

Speaker 19 He almost did.

Speaker 4 Magdie probably thought he was home free. But as he drove away, officers swarmed in.

Speaker 4 You arrest him, and you guys are all feeling like Wyatt Earp.

Speaker 9 We're feeling pretty good, yes.

Speaker 4 Very good, actually.

Speaker 4 Ryan Gurgis, of course, had no idea any of this was happening. He had moved back to Southern California and was completely unprepared for the call he received from Detective Wilson.

Speaker 4 You come to the station, the cops bring you in, and they say, Your father has been arrested,

Speaker 4 and I couldn't have been more happier.

Speaker 4 I really felt like

Speaker 4 my dreams and my prayers have been answered.

Speaker 4 Richard, once their dad's loyal and trusted confidant, was not as thrilled.

Speaker 7 I was happy that the arrest was made, but then on the other end of it,

Speaker 7 I mean, I was sad in a way too, because even though I knew in my heart he had something to do with it.

Speaker 7 It's still your dad. It's still my dad.

Speaker 4 And I always had...

Speaker 7 Some deeply wedged fantasy that maybe one day the cops would arrest someone else completely and end up actually telling us like you know what your dad ended up not having anything to do with it you wanted to be wrong I wanted to be wrong on that I really wanted to be wrong have a seat or letter for me Magdie sure

Speaker 6 Detective Wilson

Speaker 4 detective Wilson brought Magdy to the station and sat him down in the interview room His tactic was an old one in small rooms like this.

Speaker 4 Play dumb and see where Magdie took him.

Speaker 6 Two days ago,

Speaker 6 on

Speaker 6 Wednesday,

Speaker 6 around the 12th theory,

Speaker 6 I was coming from Costco.

Speaker 6 I find two guys approaching me. I never saw them in my life.

Speaker 6 They are black guys. This is the true.

Speaker 4 But his account differed in key ways from what Detective Wilson already had on tape.

Speaker 6 I stand when they told me,

Speaker 6 your lady gets killed in this house and you have to pay us five grand. Otherwise we're going to hurt you and hurt your kids.

Speaker 4 That's lie number one.

Speaker 4 There are no threats on the tape.

Speaker 6 Well, how did you get to be with them today? Yeah,

Speaker 6 they throw telephone numbers on the lawn.

Speaker 6 Like on a piece of paper or a small piece of paper. They threw it on the lawn and the lawn.

Speaker 18 Hit me up tomorrow.

Speaker 4 Lie number two. The tape clearly shows Magdie taking the number.

Speaker 4 Then Detective Wilson asked Magdie the million-dollar question.

Speaker 6 Why didn't you call us? You had a phone number about my kids and myself.

Speaker 6 Are you scared of the police? Is that why? I mean, I I don't know. It's not the scare, but

Speaker 6 my wife problem is not solved yet.

Speaker 6 And the concept of the husband as a suspect.

Speaker 4 Those tears had no effect on Wilson,

Speaker 4 who now had Magdie on tape

Speaker 4 paying hush money.

Speaker 6 And we know you paid them.

Speaker 20 Okay.

Speaker 8 Yes.

Speaker 4 Wilson bored in.

Speaker 6 I'm here to find out one thing. What kind of person are you? Because right now, we don't know.
Is Magdie the type of guy that's a hard, cold, calculated murderer that paid someone to kill his wife?

Speaker 6 What kind of person are you? I'm just

Speaker 6 innocent person, just simple person, believe me.

Speaker 4 Okay. Magdie pleaded for sympathy.

Speaker 4 Detective Wilson. And this is a marriage.
Was not sympathetic.

Speaker 6 I lost my wife. No.
But it's your fault. You hired somebody.
I did not hire anybody.

Speaker 6 We recorded it. Oh, they recorded their conversations with these guys.
I'm not lying. I'm not lying.
No, I need that lawyer. Let me tell you what they said.
Talk like that.

Speaker 6 No, you guys are going to trap me on stuff.

Speaker 4 No, no. Magdy had said the magic word, lawyer.

Speaker 4 He was done talking. There would be no confession.

Speaker 4 You didn't expect that he was going to admit it.

Speaker 9 No, the lies were good enough for me.

Speaker 4 Good enough to make the case. But Wilson thought he'd try one more time to crack Magdy.
This time, by making him face his own son.

Speaker 4 Ryan wasn't so sure at first I called my brother as I normally do as a younger one and I told him what do you think he was like do you feel like you want to talk to him I was like yeah I want some questions answered

Speaker 4 so he walked into that little room and saw his father

Speaker 4 for the first time in more than eight years

Speaker 6 what's wrong with you

Speaker 8 You forgot that?

Speaker 6 You know him I look to Sam.

Speaker 6 And Ryan had a lot to say you had a choice not to hurt me and richard you had a choice not to hurt your wife why did you do that i didn't test anybody what are you talking about you didn't hurt us look at me right now i'm looking at you i'm looking at you

Speaker 16 i can't believe you man

Speaker 6 my son i don't believe don't call me your son i don't want to hear that you're a horrible person for what you do

Speaker 6 i just want to let you know that you're a horrible person

Speaker 6 anything yes you you did. I did not.

Speaker 4 Was it hard to tell your dad that you thought he was involved in your mom's murder? Yeah, it was definitely very, very hard. It's hard for you to talk about it now.
Yes, it is.

Speaker 4 It is.

Speaker 4 And the person I had nightmares over was right in front of me, and I was scared.

Speaker 4 And soon, Ryan would face his father again,

Speaker 4 this time in court.

Speaker 11 The killing of Ariet Gergis was because she interrupted a robbery or a drug transaction between Ryan and these two suspects.

Speaker 4 A father-son showdown, but exactly who's on trial?

Speaker 11 The evidence suggests that he was involved with people that were dealing hardcore drugs.

Speaker 4 March 2014. Magde Gurges had been sitting in jail for about a year after an undercover sting led to his arrest for the murder of his wife Ariette.

Speaker 4 It was a case prosecutor Sonia Baeste couldn't wait to try.

Speaker 4 Nearly a decade in the making. And as it turned out, it would be her last.
Sonia had been promoted to management.

Speaker 5 It's my swan song, yeah.

Speaker 4 So you wanted to go out with a win.

Speaker 5 Prosecutors don't like to lose.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I've noticed that.

Speaker 4 Despite what you've seen, the case still wasn't a slam dunk. There was no proof Magdie knew the alleged killer, Anthony Bridget.
No evidence he'd paid Bridget any money.

Speaker 4 And while detectives had their suspicions about the involvement of a middleman, they still couldn't prove it. And, as you'll see, even that undercover tape could be seen through a different lens.

Speaker 4 On the eve of the trial, Richard and Ryan got ready for the big day.

Speaker 4 Their suits were pressed. They reviewed their prior statements, and they weighed the consequences of what this moment meant.
I'm happy that we will get closure, but then it's just sad.

Speaker 7 It's like we lost our mom, and then in the same light, it's like we lost our dad, too.

Speaker 4 Their only surviving parent, the one they lived in fear of for years, would be the one they had to face in court.

Speaker 20 Part of me is scared of him, but also part of me wants to stand up and let my voice be heard after all these years.

Speaker 20 I want to be strong.

Speaker 4 And so the brothers walked into court together that first day of opening statements, standing strong, united in their quest for justice for their mom.

Speaker 5 Magde Gurges conspired to have his wife murdered.

Speaker 5 She was an inconvenient woman to him.

Speaker 5 And people are disposable to this defendant.

Speaker 4 Our cameras were not allowed to record witness testimony inside the courtroom, where Sonia Baeste stacked up her evidence against Magdi.

Speaker 4 She showed the jury how, in the months leading up to the murder, Magdie slowly drained his joint accounts with Ariette, leaving her with almost nothing.

Speaker 4 And Sonia said, the crime scene evidence showed this wasn't just just some random murder.

Speaker 5 It was about silencing somebody who defied him.

Speaker 4 But then, on the witness stand, Richard, who had once helped his father persuade Ariette to back off her story, now defied Magdie just as Ariette had done.

Speaker 4 Richard testified about the abuse his mom had suffered at his father's hands. He testified about coming home and finding his mother battered and bruised.

Speaker 4 Richard recounted the story to the jury, but it seemed he was really speaking to his father, who caught up with Richard after court.

Speaker 7 It was really a good experience for me just to be able to actually finally face him face to face and be able to look him in the eyes and actually like, you know, be able to confront him for what he's done.

Speaker 4 But Magdy faced an even tougher confrontation from the words of his now dead wife.

Speaker 4 Ariat's testimony from the preliminary hearing in the domestic violence case had been saved, and now the prosecution read read it into the court record.

Speaker 4 How important was Ariot's testimony from the previous case?

Speaker 5 It was huge. It was as if for

Speaker 5 an afternoon, she just came back to life and took the stand.

Speaker 4 Ryan would need to channel that same strength of his mother's for what came next.

Speaker 4 He took the stand. with Magdie just feet away, a father's eyes bored into his son.
I I really felt like if he had me one-on-one, he would beat me down.

Speaker 4 He just wanted

Speaker 4 anything

Speaker 4 to get me to shut up.

Speaker 4 This time, Ryan refused to keep quiet, telling the jury and his father about that terrible September night when two men broke into his home, beat him up, and repeatedly stabbed his mother in the next room.

Speaker 4 Then Ryan faced cross-examination, and defense attorney Rudy Lowenstein had already told the jury that he planned to put Ryan on trial.

Speaker 11 The killing of Ariette Gerges was because she interrupted a robbery or a drug transaction or a collection of a debt of some kind between Ryan and these two suspects.

Speaker 4 The defense argument. Ariette's murder was tied directly to Ryan's criminal activity.

Speaker 11 I think that that the evidence suggests that he was involved with people that were dealing hardcore drugs.

Speaker 4 Ryan admitted that he smoked and sold weed, but Lowenstein told the jury Ryan was doing much more than that.

Speaker 4 He pointed to the drug paraphernalia police found in Ryan's room, tinfoil, and what Lowenstein said was a pipe with white residue.

Speaker 4 which he said was consistent with heroin and methamphetamine use, evidence that police had failed to test.

Speaker 4 The defense said it showed Ryan's drug dealing was bigger than he'd let on.

Speaker 4 Then the defense directed jurors to those threats Ryan had received on his computer just weeks before the murder.

Speaker 4 You better watch your back. I know where you live.

Speaker 4 And the taunting message that came after the murder. How did you like your gift? L-O-L, L-O-L.

Speaker 11 Did anybody follow up? Not really. No.
They just said, oh, well, we know who did it. Magdie did did it.
They focused on Magdie. They never left Magdie.

Speaker 4 Could the threats be the reason Ryan's friend offered him a knife?

Speaker 11 The fact that he was offered a knife for his protection by his drug-dealing friend just

Speaker 11 minutes or at the latest hours before the murder of his mother by someone using a knife suggests to me that there was some reason for him to be afraid for his own safety in his own home.

Speaker 4 The defense also attacked Ryan's credibility. Remember what Ryan told us, that one of the intruders said, I know your circumstances.
I know what you're going through. I'm not going to kill you.

Speaker 4 It turns out Ryan did not tell that to the 911 operator. Why?

Speaker 4 The defense argued because those words were never spoken and said Ryan made them up later. to deflect suspicion from himself and his drug connections.

Speaker 4 One thing was irrefutable and hard to explain, the defense told the jury. Ryan did not check on Ariette before he fled the house.

Speaker 11 How does a young man whose mother has come to save him not look in and check to see whether or not he could save his mother before running out of the house? What does that say about his character?

Speaker 4 After two days of brutal cross-examination, Ryan says he felt dejected and betrayed.

Speaker 7 I feel like I'm getting backstabbed by my own father that he's claiming that his son is such a trouble.

Speaker 19 Do you take my number?

Speaker 4 Of course, the defense also had a huge problem.

Speaker 4 Those videotapes of Magdy taking the phone number from the undercover.

Speaker 18 Get me up tomorrow.

Speaker 4 Calling them the next day.

Speaker 8 I said you gotta pay his immediate.

Speaker 4 And then showing up with $1,500.

Speaker 4 All of it made Magdi look very, very guilty.

Speaker 7 I would like him to get up there on the stand and try to explain what he meant when he said, I already paid everything off.

Speaker 4 It turns out the defense did have an explanation and documents too, which might prove Magdi's innocence.

Speaker 4 Would that undercover tape convict him or clear him? A defense surprise.

Speaker 11 He's playing along with them in order to be able to apprehend them.

Speaker 4 And the verdict. Would that be a surprise too? This is it.

Speaker 5 I didn't want to let those boys down.

Speaker 4 In spite of the damning testimony against Magdy by his own sons, Defense Attorney Rudy Lowenstein tried to show jurors Magdy did everything to provide a better life for them and his wife Ariette.

Speaker 11 His life was dedicated to his family and to making the American dream work for him. He was an immigrant who came with nothing and made something of himself.

Speaker 4 Magdy had his flaws and he had done some bad things, the defense said, but he did not have Ariette killed.

Speaker 4 But then, what to make of those undercover tapes and Magdy's apparent admission? I told you you gotta be a divided tapes. Would Magdy take the stand to explain what he meant on those tapes? No.

Speaker 4 Apparently he felt he'd done enough talking.

Speaker 4 Instead, the defense attorney showed the jury evidence which he said proved Magdie was not guilty. Magdy had written down the serial numbers of the 15 $100 bills he had given the undercover officers.

Speaker 4 And he tried to write down the license plate number of their vehicle. Which, said the defense, cast that undercover video in a whole new light.

Speaker 11 He's playing along with them in order to be able to apprehend them.

Speaker 4 And so when he says to them, just tell me the name of the middleman so I know I can trust you, he's bluffing. He doesn't really know the name of the middleman.

Speaker 4 He's just trying to get that information out of them. Absolutely.
Lowenstein said the only thing Magdy was guilty of was trying to play detective.

Speaker 11 Remember, he's been a suspect for 10 years. The police have never left their vision of him as being the suspect.
And because of that, he's got to essentially solve the case on his own.

Speaker 4 What would the jury think? On the day of closing arguments, Richard and Ryan walked to court together. They had brought something for prosecutor Sonia Baeste, a religious tile belonging to Ariette.

Speaker 7 Sonia wanted me to bring like an item like from our mom and stuff to have right there that she could hold on to.

Speaker 4 They learned the evidence-driven prosecutor had a superstitious side. She wanted to have something of Ariette's to touch during her last closing argument to channel Ariette's spirit and courage.

Speaker 5 She took the witness stand in a preliminary hearing and faced evil

Speaker 5 and for the first time in her life

Speaker 5 stood up to him.

Speaker 5 She knew exactly

Speaker 5 what he would do to her for it.

Speaker 11 He's done some bad things in his life, but he didn't

Speaker 4 hire

Speaker 11 anybody

Speaker 4 to murder Harriet Gerges.

Speaker 11 He's innocent.

Speaker 4 There was nothing left to do now but wait.

Speaker 4 After nearly a decade, these final moments were perhaps the most excruciating. I mean, this has been my

Speaker 4 just wondering when the verdict's going to come in.

Speaker 9 I mean, it's going to be like any moment.

Speaker 4 Sonia, already at her new job, waited for the phone to ring. She had played the waiting game numerous times.
It wasn't any easier this last time.

Speaker 5 I didn't want to let those boys down.

Speaker 4 So,

Speaker 5 yes, I was probably a little bit more nervous than usual.

Speaker 4 It was definitely agonizing. Every time we heard a ring or a buzzer, it really like got us like, okay, did they get a verdict?

Speaker 4 After two days, they finally heard it. Three buzzes.

Speaker 4 The jury had reached a verdict. Were you worried there was going to be a not guilty verdict? The only thing that had worried me was

Speaker 4 all it takes is one person to not see things the way that everyone else sees it. You'd never know what a jury is going to do.
You'd never know what a jury is going to do.

Speaker 8 All right, counsel, membering the jury up.

Speaker 4 And when they filed back into the crowded courtroom, Ryan didn't look at his dad. Instead, he held on to his brother.
I was just embracing the moment that

Speaker 4 this is it. This is all writing on this.

Speaker 5 We, the jury, in the above entitled action, find the defendant, Magdefi Skurgis, guilty of the crime of felony, conspiracy to commit a murder.

Speaker 4 Oh, it hit us. It's what we've been waiting for for nine and a half years.

Speaker 4 In the gallery, the brothers cried. And as the hearing continued, Richard's sobs grew louder and louder until he couldn't contain himself any longer.

Speaker 7 I couldn't hold myself back. I was trying not to

Speaker 7 say anything, but it just was pouring on.

Speaker 4 I told him in Arabic, I was like, why, dad, why, why, why, dad, why?

Speaker 7 Like, I just, I still can't fathom the reason of why he would do such a thing, why he would throw away our family, why he would throw everything away.

Speaker 4 What was Magdy trying to tell his son? We'll never know. Magdy's thoughts at his sentencing were somewhat clearer.

Speaker 23 I'm not a bad father. Maybe I'm strict,

Speaker 4 but

Speaker 4 I love them.

Speaker 7 They are my kids.

Speaker 4 Magdy Gurgis was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Speaker 4 If Magdy had not taken the bait, if he'd gotten the phone number from your two undercover officers and thrown it away and just said, I don't know who you are, I don't know what you're talking about.

Speaker 4 And if you call me again, I'm going to call the police. Would he be in custody today? Probably not.

Speaker 4 So he ended up giving you your whole case.

Speaker 5 His greed gave me my whole case.

Speaker 4 Magde Gurgis had worked tirelessly to build the dream and then, by his own hand, destroyed it.

Speaker 4 Well, perhaps not all of it. These two brothers may have lost both their parents, but they still had each other.
That's my little broke.

Speaker 4 Hitman Anthony Bridget was convicted in 2018 and sentenced to life in prison. The second intruder has never been identified.

Speaker 4 And despite investigators' suspicions, neither has the mysterious middleman. You never found out who that was.

Speaker 5 Not yet.

Speaker 4 Been 10 years.

Speaker 5 That's true. Took me nine to get Magde.

Speaker 5 You have to be patient in this line of work.

Speaker 4 There's still a reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the remaining suspects. Richard and Ryan hope someone will come forward.

Speaker 4 In the meantime, they are keeping their heads down and working hard, just as their father always taught them to do.

Speaker 4 But they will do some things differently. You picture yourself as a dad someday? I do.

Speaker 4 What kind of dad are you going to be? I'm going to be the opposite of my father. I'm going to be there

Speaker 4 when my kids need me.

Speaker 4 And that's the beauty of the American dream there's always a new beginning no matter where you came from

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