Shajia Ayobi

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Speaker 7 Shajia Ayobi came to America seeking a new life.

Speaker 11 She grew up in a fairly conservative community in Afghanistan. In the United States, she had choices.

Speaker 7 America was also where she met and married Ghulam, a fellow refugee serving his adopted country.

Speaker 13 His primary duty was to train the American soldiers to Afghan culture.

Speaker 2 You could see that my uncle was truly in love with Shajia.

Speaker 7 Together, they had four children.

Speaker 13 They had a beautiful life, happy life.

Speaker 7 But their happiness would be cut short by a deadly carjacking.

Speaker 7 Someone stopped my home!

Speaker 7 People in the community were scared.

Speaker 3 It made the news.

Speaker 7 The search for the killers would leave the investigators wondering: was the shooting simply a random crime?

Speaker 7 Was it a matter of national security?

Speaker 1 We had a surprise visit from the FBI.

Speaker 15 Is this some act of terrorism?

Speaker 7 Or was there a terrible secret lurking inside Shajia's marriage?

Speaker 17 In my country, he would be killed.

Speaker 1 He would be hung, beheaded, he'd be killed.

Speaker 17 Here, I watch the police.

Speaker 18 Police won't do anything.

Speaker 7 Sacramento, California, December 18th, 2011. An hour and a half northeast of San Francisco.
California's capital is a quiet, comfortable city of almost 500,000.

Speaker 19 Very lovely community, green, lush, affordable. It's just all around a good all-American city.

Speaker 11 It has a nice hometown charm to it that not a lot of other cities in California have.

Speaker 7 But Sacramento's hometown charms would be shattered a little after midnight when the police received a hysterical 911 call from 45-year-old Shajia Ayobe.

Speaker 7 Someone shot my husband.

Speaker 1 Shajia Ayobi reported that she had been a victim of carjacking and her husband, who was in the car at the time, had been shot.

Speaker 7 Shajia said they were driving home when the two carjackers attacked.

Speaker 1 Two perpetrators pop up.

Speaker 20 One's got a gun, and they order her to pull over.

Speaker 3 These two people in the back seat demanded her husband's wallet. When he refused or struggled, they shot him.

Speaker 21 While you were on the freeway,

Speaker 21 they got off.

Speaker 7 After shooting her husband, the carjackers had apparently panicked and they ran.

Speaker 15 According to Miss Ayobi, the assailants flee the car on foot.

Speaker 1 She was able to continue driving and get her phone out and call 911.

Speaker 20 Are you still driving?

Speaker 14 No. Take a deep breath and pull over to the right shoulder.

Speaker 21 What exit are you here?

Speaker 7 Shajia took the exit, and officers arrived on the scene moments later.

Speaker 22 They were trying to get descriptions and more information, but the female happens very

Speaker 22 hysterical now.

Speaker 7 Shajia's hysteria was understandable because when the police arrived, they found her husband, 53-year-old Gulam Iobi, sprawled in the passenger seat of the couple's minivan, covered in blood.

Speaker 19 Gulam was shot three times in the head.

Speaker 7 However, while Ghulam's condition was dire, he wasn't dead.

Speaker 1 Mr. Ayyobi still had some signs of life, so he was transported to the hospital.

Speaker 7 And even as the doctors raced to save him, the search for Gulam's shooters would send the investigators deep into a world of international intrigue, attract the attention of national security agencies, and have the authorities wondering: was there more to the shooting than a simple carjacking?

Speaker 7 Born in 1966, Shajia was just 13 years old when the Soviet Union invaded her homeland of Afghanistan.

Speaker 19 She was from a war-torn country as a young girl.

Speaker 1 She witnessed atrocities and the trauma of seeing different people in her family be murdered.

Speaker 7 To escape the violence, Shajia's family arranged for the 17-year-old to immigrate to California in 1984. They also arranged for the teenager to marry an Afghan man already living in the States.

Speaker 11 So a lot of choice was taken away from this woman. Most of her decisions were made for her.

Speaker 7 Which didn't necessarily sit well with Shajia.

Speaker 13 She's very independent and she didn't not want to be attached to anyone or rely on anyone or have to answer to anyone. She wanted to do what she wished to do.

Speaker 7 However, Shajia didn't dare defy her family.

Speaker 3 They had a very close, tight-knit family, and they were very traditional in some ways.

Speaker 7 And once married and settled in California, Shajia did fall in love with her new home.

Speaker 1 And she wanted to be American.

Speaker 7 And she embraced her new home by doing something that would have been unthinkable back in Afghanistan. Shajia ended her arranged marriage by filing for divorce.

Speaker 11 In the United States, she had choices.

Speaker 7 Free from her arranged marriage, Shajia blossomed in America. She got a job to support herself and even took some college courses.

Speaker 13 She was such a strong personality and she

Speaker 11 was a go-getter.

Speaker 7 She didn't turn her back on her homeland, though. Instead, she got to know other members of the Bay Area's close-knit Afghan community.

Speaker 2 My mom was really good close friends with her.

Speaker 13 She became really good friends with my sister and I.

Speaker 7 And it was through those new connections in the Afghan community that Shajia would meet a fellow refugee named Ghulam Ayobi.

Speaker 7 Eight years older than Shajia, Ghulam was in his early 20s when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan.

Speaker 13 He'd finished high school and college there.

Speaker 7 After the invasion, he ended up on the front lines as a rebel fighting the Soviets and as a soldier in the civil war that followed their pullout in 1989.

Speaker 7 But as the Taliban's grip tightened, Ghulam eventually fled.

Speaker 23 He left because our situation was not safe in Afghanistan.

Speaker 7 Emigrating to Germany, Ghulam spent the next next several years helping the rest of his extended family escape Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 He would work single-handedly, of course, and send money to us.

Speaker 7 With Ghulam's help, his sister and her children settled in California, where she got to know Shijia.

Speaker 2 My mom thought that she'd be a good match with my uncle.

Speaker 7 And in 1993, when Ghulam came to the States to visit his sister, she arranged a meeting.

Speaker 23 My mom kind introduced them, hoping that those two could, you know, meet up and get married.

Speaker 7 And based on Ghulam's reaction, it looked like that introduction just might work as his sister planned.

Speaker 2 He would just rave about Shajia, how beautiful she is, and how much he loves her.

Speaker 7 Shajia seemed just as head over heels, too.

Speaker 2 Looked like it was a match made in heaven.

Speaker 23 I thought they were the happiest couple.

Speaker 7 Before Gulam went back to Germany, they were formally engaged.

Speaker 23 They had actually what we call it nikal. It's a religious ceremony that we had to do before the men and women get together.

Speaker 7 And a few months later, Shajia followed her fiancé abroad.

Speaker 23 They got married in Germany.

Speaker 7 The couple spent the next 12 years in Germany and had four children together.

Speaker 1 Gulam was very traditional, so that caused her to kind of be the stay-home mom.

Speaker 13 He wanted Shajia to be really committed to the children, making sure that they were happy.

Speaker 7 Meanwhile, Ghulam focused on providing for the family.

Speaker 23 My uncle was working. They had a really, really great life in Germany.
But Shetia always wanted to come back to U.S.

Speaker 7 And in 2005, Shajia got her wish. After more than a decade of marriage, the family moved back to the States and eventually settled in the San Francisco area.

Speaker 23 They lived in the East Bay for a while, closer to my mom.

Speaker 7 Living in East Bay, Shajia continued to stay home with the kids, while Gulam worked long hours to support the family.

Speaker 1 He ran a succession of businesses. He ran a hot dog cart.
They had a pizza parlor business in the Bay Area.

Speaker 7 But then a military contractor approached Goulam and offered the former soldier a job as a cultural advisor for the U.S. Army.

Speaker 13 They recruited him to train American soldiers, get them prepared for, you know, being deployed to Afghanistan and serving there.

Speaker 7 Gulam took the job out of duty to his family.

Speaker 13 My uncle tried to do whatever he could to provide for the family.

Speaker 7 And out of pride in his newly adopted home.

Speaker 1 He was a person who respected what this country had to offer.

Speaker 7 However, Goulam's new job did require a sacrifice.

Speaker 13 He was stationed in Louisiana, but I know he traveled outside of Louisiana to train soldiers.

Speaker 2 He would only come every two to three months for a week at home.

Speaker 7 The money was good, though. In fact, Goulam's generous salary allowed the family to move out of a cramped apartment in the Bay Area and into a nice house in Sacramento.

Speaker 23 My uncle always wanted to have a big house for the kids and always wanted them to live in a better community and go to a better school.

Speaker 7 With her husband often away and the kids getting older, Shajia kept herself busy too. Thanks to her husband's connections, she did some translating work for the government.

Speaker 13 Shajia spoke several different languages.

Speaker 7 And after almost two decades of focusing on her family, the 45-year-old also went back to school, taking criminal justice classes at the local community college.

Speaker 23 She always wanted to be independent.

Speaker 7 She also visited her homeland for the first time since she'd fled more than 20 years earlier.

Speaker 1 She would travel to Afghanistan once or twice a year.

Speaker 13 She made a lot of trips by herself.

Speaker 7 Foreign vacations, a comfortable suburban home, and a bright future. By 2011, it looked like Shajia and Ghulam had put their war-torn past well behind them.

Speaker 1 They came here to achieve the things that they could not in Afghanistan.

Speaker 13 This family did live an American dream.

Speaker 7 But that December, more than two decades after escaping Afghanistan, Shajia and Gulam would discover that no place is safe from sudden and seemingly senseless violence.

Speaker 7 Coming up, is the attack on Gulam simply a robbery gone wrong?

Speaker 11 Carjackings are a very real fear in California.

Speaker 7 Or is it a matter of national security?

Speaker 1 We had a a surprise visit from the FBI.

Speaker 7 On December 18, 2011, 45-year-old Shajia Iobi called 911 in Sacramento, California.

Speaker 7 and reported that she and her husband, 53-year-old Ghulam Iobi, had been the victims of a violent carjacking while driving down the freeway.

Speaker 14 You shot my husband, but I'm still wasting time in the car as they got off.

Speaker 1 She was directed to pull off the freeway, and the patrol officers met Mrs. Ayobi.

Speaker 11 Sejia was completely unharmed, but Gulam is in very critical condition.

Speaker 7 He'd been shot three times in the head.

Speaker 15 Paramedics weren't sure that he was going to make it.

Speaker 7 While the paramedics loaded Gulam into an ambulance and rushed him to the nearest hospital, the investigators drove Shajia to the police station to take her statement.

Speaker 24 I hope you can finish as soon as possible.

Speaker 17 Yeah, we'll do our best.

Speaker 7 Shajia began the interview by explaining that her husband was an Afghan refugee who worked as a cultural specialist for the U.S. Army.

Speaker 24 The soldier before they deployed to Afghanistan, he gives them some kind of training in role-playing. So it's called like limbist/slash roleplay.

Speaker 13 His primary duty was to train and familiarize the American soldiers to Afghan culture.

Speaker 7 Normally stationed in Louisiana, Shajia said that her husband had flown home on a red-eye the night before.

Speaker 17 So he barely been home 24 hours then.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 1 He arrived in Sacramento very early in the morning, and he hadn't seen his kids for six months, so he stayed up all day.

Speaker 7 And that night, they'd gone to a dinner party hosted by friends.

Speaker 25 So I just thought we went and the kids stayed home

Speaker 21 with my mom.

Speaker 7 Shajia said that the party had ended just before midnight and Gulang, going on more than 24 hours without sleep, had asked her to drive home.

Speaker 24 I didn't see him at all, but maybe they were all the way in the back and I couldn't see it all.

Speaker 24 They just came out all of a sudden. I just heard the noise of the voice word.

Speaker 1 The carjacker emerged from the back of the minivan

Speaker 1 and he announced that he was robbing them.

Speaker 24 I tried to see if I could talk him, talking about exactly what he wants. So I said, what do you want? I know.

Speaker 25 We can give it to you.

Speaker 21 Can you please don't do something, you know?

Speaker 24 He said, yeah, I told my husband, give me your wallet.

Speaker 7 Shajia said that she had told Ghulam to hand over his wallet, but Ghulam had refused.

Speaker 24 He tried to grab him, I think. He tried to resist something.

Speaker 18 Your husband tried to grab the guy.

Speaker 7 And according to Shajia, that's when she heard the first shot.

Speaker 21 I think they shot him one more time.

Speaker 21 I'm still over so shocked.

Speaker 7 And according to Shajia, she wasn't the only one shocked by the shooting.

Speaker 24 As soon as he fired, then I heard another voice, and it was a female voice.

Speaker 7 There were two assailants in the back of her minivan.

Speaker 1 It was a male-female robbery team.

Speaker 25 She got mad at him and called him or something.

Speaker 24 Said, why did you do it? We just want the money.

Speaker 7 Shajia said the carjackers had argued briefly in the back seat and then fled with Gulam's wallet.

Speaker 24 He said, make a quick stop right here. We're going to get off.

Speaker 24 Or something, don't look or something. Just keep going, he said.

Speaker 25 And as soon as I just stopped, they jumped, closed the door, and in front of her, I took off.

Speaker 7 According to Shajia, while the carjackers had left her unhurt, she said that it had all happened so fast, there was little she could tell the police about the attackers.

Speaker 18 If somebody got out of the car, you might have seen them, somebody moving around outside. Did you see anybody moving around outside?

Speaker 26 Yeah, they told me that they were gonna get out, right?

Speaker 24 So as soon as they got they got out, they shut the door so hard.

Speaker 24 When I looked back, I didn't see because it's so dark, the windows are tempting and they're hard outside.

Speaker 25 They close the door so fast.

Speaker 7 And she wasn't sure how they'd gotten in her back seat either.

Speaker 11 The carjackers must have gotten in their van while they were parked at a friend's house for a dinner.

Speaker 17 Where was your car parked at the house?

Speaker 26 Around the corner in that entire pane of it.

Speaker 7 It was a harrowing story, and it was about to get worse.

Speaker 17 I'm really sorry to have to tell you

Speaker 17 that your husband didn't survive.

Speaker 14 Oh, God.

Speaker 21 I want to let you know we're going to do everything we can to solve this.

Speaker 21 You can.

Speaker 21 I'm very, very sorry to have to tell you.

Speaker 21 Oh, God.

Speaker 7 And when they got the news later that morning, the rest of Gulam's family was just as devastated.

Speaker 2 The first question was, is it true that my uncle has been killed?

Speaker 14 Murdered.

Speaker 2 Reality hit me. I collapsed.
I laid down on the floor crying.

Speaker 13 My first reaction was like, it's impossible. This is not true.

Speaker 7 But when the deadly carjacking made the news, it seemed all too plausible and frightening to the rest of Sacramento.

Speaker 11 Carjackings are a very real fear in California.

Speaker 19 There are a number of gangs there as well that kind of migrate from the Bay Area and from the Stockton area as well.

Speaker 7 And when crime scene technicians finished processing the family's impounded minivan, what they found also appeared to fit the carjacking scenario Shajia described.

Speaker 1 The shooting happened inside the van. We have no doubt about that from the trajectories involved and the shell casings.

Speaker 7 But could they ever track down the shooters? Later that same morning, just hours after the shooting, the investigators got what appeared to be their first big break.

Speaker 1 There's an apartment complex where a maintenance worker, doing his normal rounds, saw this brand new looking laptop bag right on top of the pile of trash.

Speaker 1 And when he opened it up, he found a wallet that turned out to have Mr. Ayobi's identification in it, and it was covered in blood.

Speaker 7 A.32 caliber pistol was also in the bag.

Speaker 1 That matched the shell casings that we found in the car.

Speaker 7 And yet, while they had apparently recovered the murder weapon, there were still some aspects of the crime that puzzled the investigators.

Speaker 1 It's very odd for people to be driving down the freeway and be carjacked in that manner.

Speaker 19 Usually, carjackings happen at intersections. They're approached at gunpoint, told to get out of the car, put the vehicle in park, and to exit the vehicle.
And that's kind of how carjackings happen.

Speaker 1 There's going to be something more to this case.

Speaker 7 It was a theory the investigators would explore further a few days later when they received an unexpected visitor.

Speaker 1 We had a surprise visit from the FBI.

Speaker 7 Normally, the Bureau wouldn't get involved in something like a carjacking, even a suspicious one like Ghulam's death. But the Afghan refugee wasn't a typical murder victim.

Speaker 1 He was the military contractor training our troops getting ready to deploy to Afghanistan.

Speaker 7 Could the murder have something to do with Ghulam's job?

Speaker 15 Is this some act of terrorism?

Speaker 1 The possibility was there, so that actually caused us a lot of concern.

Speaker 7 But was that also why the FBI had taken a sudden interest in the case? The answer was not exactly.

Speaker 1 This agent was a handler for Shajia.

Speaker 7 And why would Shajia have an FBI handler?

Speaker 7 It turned out that while her husband worked for the military training troops as a cultural advisor, Shajia had also been working for the government as what was euphemistically known as a cultural informant.

Speaker 1 The FBI counterintelligence has a program where people who are traveling abroad are recruited to, when they return to the United States, to give a report on basically what people are thinking, what their mindset is, and how they feel about America.

Speaker 7 Which was a roundabout way of saying that Shajia was dabbling in espionage.

Speaker 7 Coming up, Shajia takes the international intrigue to the next level.

Speaker 19 She said it was a CIA plot.

Speaker 7 And according to Shajia, Gulong was the target.

Speaker 27 He's leaking a lot of information.

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Speaker 28 Of the 880 men who survived the attack, around 400 would eventually find their way to one another and merge into one larger group.

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Speaker 7 By New Year's 2012, it had been two weeks since Shajia Ayobi's husband Ghulam had been gunned down in what she said was a deadly carjacking. People in the community were scared.

Speaker 7 It made the news, but the investigators were starting to have doubts.

Speaker 1 The story about how a carjacker was concealed inside the car and made himself known while they were in motion, to me, that sounded very Hollywood.

Speaker 7 But the most Hollywood aspect of the story had to be what the investigators learned about Shajia, that the 45-year-old Afghan immigrant and mother of four was actually a government informant working for the FBI.

Speaker 1 They apparently have a network of people that do that, travel to Afghanistan.

Speaker 7 Couple that with the fact that Ghulam worked for the U.S. military as a cultural advisor, and the investigators wondered if the so-called carjacking was simply a cover for something else.

Speaker 12 Knowing that both Mr.

Speaker 3 Ayobi and Miss Ayobi had worked for the United States government at some point, it might very well have made them a target for some terrorist type of organization.

Speaker 7 However, there was one big problem with the idea that Shajia's spying had something to do with her husband's murder.

Speaker 11 Sajia was completely unharmed, even as her husband was critically wounded and later died.

Speaker 1 Something's just not right with the story.

Speaker 7 So doubtful that terrorists had anything to do with Ghulam's murder and hoping they might have some insight into who else might want him dead, the investigators turned to his family.

Speaker 7 Questioned about Shajia and Ghulam's marriage, the family told the investigators that the couple had seemed happy.

Speaker 2 You could see that my uncle was truly in love with Shajia.

Speaker 23 She was very pleasant, very outgoing, a very fun person to be around with.

Speaker 7 But the family said that Shajia had changed after moving to Sacramento, that she joined a new mosque and turned her back on her earlier American lifestyle.

Speaker 2 She started following a lot of Islamic rules, started wearing, of course, the burkas.

Speaker 7 And if the sudden change in Shajia wasn't unsettling enough for Gulam, the family said she'd force the children into following her example too.

Speaker 2 His children have had simply converted and changed 100% the

Speaker 2 you know 360 degree from a modern living style, open-minded and just like any child in the United States to individuals wearing burkas.

Speaker 7 According to the family, Shajia and Ghulam regularly fought over the issue.

Speaker 23 My uncle wanted them to be raised as an Afghan American, to know their culture, but at the same time, I mean, you know, when we live here, we have to adapt American lifestyle.

Speaker 23 She did not want to hear what my uncle has to say about the kids or her or their lifestyle or the way Shajia was raising the kids.

Speaker 7 Informed of the trouble in Shajia and Ghulam's marriage, the investigators brought Shajia in for more questioning on January 19th.

Speaker 1 We've been working very hard to

Speaker 16 to try to solve this case.

Speaker 1 The forensic evidence that we have is very, very good,

Speaker 1 but it

Speaker 1 requires somebody to put it in perspective, and that's what I'm hoping that you'll be able to tell us.

Speaker 7 But what Shajia had to tell them wasn't at all what they expected.

Speaker 7 Instead of talking about her marriage or the alleged attackers, the former FBI informant was about to add a whole new level of intrigue to the case.

Speaker 20 Over a year ago, I was

Speaker 28 somebody came to my door and wanted to visit me in the morning.

Speaker 20 It was sometime in November of last year, 2010,

Speaker 27 showed me his ID badge.

Speaker 27 CIA agent said that he's a special

Speaker 27 operation

Speaker 21 or

Speaker 21 task force or something.

Speaker 7 And according to Shajia, the CIA agent had come to talk about her husband.

Speaker 1 He'd explained to her that they had been watching Ghulam for a while.

Speaker 27 He's leaking a lot of information to outsiders.

Speaker 3 Miss Ayobi's second story was that he had become this sort of double agent.

Speaker 7 Shajia said that she had been shocked by the news.

Speaker 27 I got so scared and um

Speaker 20 and um

Speaker 27 he said that um

Speaker 20 um

Speaker 27 they know every they know a lot about him

Speaker 7 And according to Shajia, the CIA was prepared to put a stop to Ghulam's spying, too.

Speaker 27 Naraya said you could just fire him, you know,

Speaker 27 if he's not a good person for a job.

Speaker 27 He said, no, we can do that, but that's not enough.

Speaker 28 We have to get rid of him.

Speaker 19 She said it was a CIA plot to kill her husband.

Speaker 7 Although, according to Shajia, the agent asked her to take Ghulam out for them.

Speaker 27 They just handed me a bag, said that, okay,

Speaker 27 save this part right now and we will notify you next time what to do about it.

Speaker 25 I just took it and

Speaker 27 I said, let me open it.

Speaker 28 He opened it and it was inside it was a gun.

Speaker 7 Shajia said that she'd held on to the gun for several months until the CIA agent contacted her again.

Speaker 25 He showed up again at the door one day and then he said that

Speaker 27 I didn't do anything.

Speaker 14 I said, I don't know what to do.

Speaker 27 I can't do. I don't know how to shoot.
I don't have the guts to shoot.

Speaker 23 You know, how am I going to do this?

Speaker 27 He said, okay, we will help you with this.

Speaker 7 And according to Shajia, that's when the CIA agent told her to hide the gun in her minivan.

Speaker 27 Put it

Speaker 27 under the seat in the back.

Speaker 27 Just leave it there and we will do no job.

Speaker 7 It was all the investigators could do to keep a straight face.

Speaker 1 I knew that it was preposterous. I was skeptical about it the

Speaker 1 whole time.

Speaker 7 For starters, how many secrets could a mere cultural advisor pass on to the enemy?

Speaker 19 He wasn't that high-ranking. I don't even know what type of clearances he had.

Speaker 7 And even if the CIA had wanted to stop Gulam, wouldn't they have done it in secret rather than involve Shajia?

Speaker 19 It's just totally unbelievable.

Speaker 7 And the investigators let Shajia know it, too.

Speaker 21 Shania,

Speaker 1 your story does not make sense.

Speaker 21 To me, it makes sense.

Speaker 18 It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 1 At that point, she was arrested.

Speaker 7 The fact that Shajia had been charged with Gulam's murder didn't exactly take his family by surprise.

Speaker 23 Hard as it is, deep down, I knew Shajia had something to do with it, all along.

Speaker 7 But was Shajia actually the person who pulled the trigger?

Speaker 7 Because the next day, after her mugshot and the story of her arrest made the papers, a staff member from the college where Shajia had taken criminal justice classes walked into the Sacramento Police Department with some urgent information.

Speaker 1 He said, I need to tell you some details about this story.

Speaker 7 The man told the investigators Shajia had been close to one of her classmates, 19-year-old Jake Clark.

Speaker 1 Jake Clark is a very personable, very likable person. He's got a very outgoing personality.

Speaker 7 And according to the school staff member, Jake had approached him a few weeks before Ghulam's murder to ask his advice about something.

Speaker 1 Shajia

Speaker 1 was

Speaker 1 soliciting him to buy a gun.

Speaker 7 He said that at the time, he'd essentially blown Jake off.

Speaker 1 He didn't take him seriously until he saw Shajia's photo in the paper and he thought, you know, there's a connection here.

Speaker 7 Did Jake have inside information about Gulam's murder? After receiving the tip, the investigators brought the young man in for questioning.

Speaker 1 He was very cooperative, acted like he wanted to help.

Speaker 7 And he told the investigators that part of the way through the fall semester, Shajia had pulled him aside and made a shocking request.

Speaker 17 She was like, well,

Speaker 17 I have this problem. My friend's husband has been been abusing the daughter and has been abusing and raping the daughter and abusing the wife.
In my country, he would be killed.

Speaker 18 He would be hung, beheaded, he'd be killed.

Speaker 17 Here at Westmore's police won't do anything. I want him taken care of.

Speaker 7 According to Jake, she'd been willing to pay.

Speaker 17 She was like, Jake, I really need you to do this. I will pay you $10,000.

Speaker 21 I will pay you.

Speaker 7 Jake said he'd refuse Shajia's offer.

Speaker 16 That's that

Speaker 18 It doesn't settle well with me.

Speaker 7 But when the investigators checked Shajia's bank records, they told a very different story.

Speaker 1 We found two $5,000 transactions, one month before the murder and one a couple of days before the murder.

Speaker 7 And when the investigators pulled Shajia's cell phone records, they found evidence suggesting that the money had gone to Jake.

Speaker 1 The day before the murder, Jake texted his address to her to go meet her. We knew at that point there's something up.
Jake is more intertwined and involved in this case than met the eye.

Speaker 7 But could they prove it? The key turned out to be the messenger bag that the police had found dumped in the trash at an apartment complex near the murder scene.

Speaker 7 A bag that had contained a gun, Goulam's bloody wallet, and as it turned out, something else.

Speaker 15 That bag also contained the DNA of Jake Clark.

Speaker 7 Armed with new evidence, the investigators took Jake into custody.

Speaker 7 But when the investigators confronted him, Jake maintained that he was innocent.

Speaker 16 I did not sit in the backseat of that car and shoot that man.

Speaker 7 But if that was true, how had his DNA ended up on the bag with the gun? According to Jake, it all started with a phone call he received just minutes before Shajia dialed 911 to report the carjacking.

Speaker 16 Answer it. Somebody breathing hard.
It is Bled Shaw. Okay, so I know you're tripping now.
Something must have, something's gone down.

Speaker 7 Jake said that Shajia, obviously in a panic, asked him to meet her at a street corner not far from his old apartment.

Speaker 1 His story is that she pulled up in the minivan. He said he saw Mr.
Ayobi was mortally wounded in the front seat.

Speaker 18 She pulled up.

Speaker 21 Boom.

Speaker 18 I see him. He slumps.

Speaker 16 She pushes him back.

Speaker 16 I need you to take this.

Speaker 1 She gave him $100

Speaker 16 and the bag containing the gun i'll take that uh walk off walk through the apartments throw the bag right where you found it because otherwise if i was like okay where did we find it in the trash can in the trash can in the apartment complex

Speaker 1 he said the reason why he did that was to help her get caught That was my thinking behind it.

Speaker 4 Now I see him.

Speaker 16 I see him in the front seat dead. I seen the murder weapon.
Now you guys have the murder weapon.

Speaker 7 And according to Jake, that made him a hero.

Speaker 18 Said you guys give medals to people for that, correct?

Speaker 1 In his mind, he thinks that we never would have solved it if we didn't find the bag with the evidence.

Speaker 7 Coming up, the investigators uncover a powerful motive.

Speaker 2 So altogether, it could have equated to $700,000, maybe a million dollar.

Speaker 7 And Shajia offers up yet another explanation.

Speaker 11 Everything becomes about paranoia and imminent danger.

Speaker 7 On April 15th, 2013, Shajia Ayobi went on trial for murder in Sacramento, California.

Speaker 7 The 46-year-old Afghan refugee and mother of four was accused of masterminding the murder of her husband Ghulam, a cultural advisor for the U.S. military.

Speaker 3 Initially, the reports were that this was a carjacking and a carjacking that had gone terribly badly.

Speaker 7 And when the investigators began to doubt Shajia's carjacking story, she'd made an even more incredible claim.

Speaker 1 Shajia said that she was involved in assisting the CIA to

Speaker 1 murder Gulam as basically a double agent.

Speaker 7 But in their opening argument, the prosecution claimed that Ghulam's murder had nothing to do with government spies, terrorism, or the war in Afghanistan.

Speaker 1 She was dissatisfied with the way her life was going.

Speaker 7 And most of all, according to the prosecution, she was dissatisfied with her marriage.

Speaker 15 She was happier when her husband wasn't around.

Speaker 7 Years ago, Shajia had divorced her first husband. But that was before she had any children.

Speaker 1 She couldn't leave him, you know, just just walk out of the marriage because of the children.

Speaker 7 And it was also before she joined a new, much more conservative mosque.

Speaker 2 In our culture and religion, divorce is very bad. Women are not looked

Speaker 2 good upon if they are divorced.

Speaker 11 The prosecution believed that that stigma of getting divorced a second time would be too much for her to bear.

Speaker 7 However, avoiding the stigma of divorce may not have been Shajia's only motive. According to the prosecutors, Ghulam's murder may have been about money, too.

Speaker 19 But there was a $285,000

Speaker 19 insurance policy out for Gulan.

Speaker 7 And that wasn't all that Shajia stood to inherit either. There were also Gulam's retirement accounts and the family's comfortable suburban home.

Speaker 2 So altogether, it could have equated to $700,000, maybe a million dollars.

Speaker 1 She stood to gain a lot, both emotionally by being able to live her life the way she demanded to,

Speaker 1 but also to be be able to afford to do so.

Speaker 7 And according to the prosecutors, that was why Shajia had approached her classmate, 19-year-old Jake Clark, in the fall of 2011 and offered him $10,000 in exchange for killing Gulam.

Speaker 13 This was premeditated. Shajia had planned.
She knew exactly what she wanted to do.

Speaker 7 And the prosecutors claim that on the evening of December 17th, when she and Gulam went to dinner at a friend's house, Shajia put her plan into motion.

Speaker 1 I think that Shajia left the van open and told Jake where the van was, and he got into it and waited.

Speaker 7 Gulam, exhausted after his red-eye flight the night before, didn't suspect a thing.

Speaker 1 He wants Shajia to drive, reclines the seat back to make it more comfortable for the 20 or 30 minute ride home.

Speaker 7 And according to the prosecutors, not long after Shajia drove drove off with her husband dozing in the passenger seat jake had made his move

Speaker 1 i think it was an execution i don't think he had time to resist

Speaker 7 then with her husband dying beside her the prosecutors theorized that shajia had driven jake to the apartment complex

Speaker 4 when she dropped him off he immediately deposited

Speaker 1 the evidence into the dumpster.

Speaker 7 And whether Jake intended the murder weapon to be found or or not, the texts between Shajia and Jake and the $10,000 she withdrew from her bank account shortly before the shooting all pointed to Shajia being behind the murder.

Speaker 1 The two $5,000 transactions right before the murder are very significant.

Speaker 7 But would it be enough to convince the jury? Despite admitting to hiding the murder weapon, Jake had never agreed to testify against Shajia.

Speaker 1 I think he enjoyed the cat and mouse game that he played with us during the investigation.

Speaker 7 But they did have Shajia's earlier statement where she had claimed to be part of a CIA plot to kill her husband.

Speaker 19 She conceded to having had some involvement in the homicide. That's not disputed.

Speaker 7 So, trapped by Shajia's earlier statements, when it was the defense's turn, they offered a new twist.

Speaker 7 According to Shajia, what she'd allegedly told Jake about wanting to take out an abusive husband was true. Only it wasn't for a friend.

Speaker 1 Her story totally changed to say that she suffered years of abuse at the hands of Gulamaobi.

Speaker 19 Shajia's defense was that she suffered PTSD.

Speaker 7 Not just from her husband's alleged abuse either. When Shajia took the stand in her own defense, she claimed that she had been battered by life.

Speaker 11 She had PTSD from growing up in Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion.

Speaker 7 And according to Shajia, that was on top of the trauma she suffered as Gulam's wife.

Speaker 1 He was described as a very domineering figure in the household.

Speaker 11 He was allegedly very abusive, both physically and emotionally.

Speaker 7 And she testified that her only relief had come when Gulam's new job took him to Louisiana for months at a time.

Speaker 2 For two to three years, my uncle was in another state. He wasn't living with her.
He was barely at the house.

Speaker 7 Although, according to Shajia, the abuse continued whenever he did return, so much so that she dreaded every homecoming.

Speaker 11 The defense argues that everything becomes about paranoia.

Speaker 7 And by December of 2011, Shajia said she had reached her breaking point.

Speaker 19 Over a long period of time of her having been abused by this man, she finally snapped.

Speaker 7 To her, there were no options left to her that's what shajia claimed at least the defense was that she should be acquitted because it was an act of self-defense the prosecution and gulam's family strenuously objected to shajia's portrayal of her husband there's no evidence that he was abusive that golam that we knew and she knew just as well was not capable of hurting even a fly.

Speaker 7 But they also worry that Shajia's story of abuse might play into the jury's preconceptions.

Speaker 11 The story can be really heartbreaking because women are a lot more oppressed in conservative Islamic society.

Speaker 7 And Ghulam's family figured that Shajia was playing to that prejudice when she accused him of abuse in the first place.

Speaker 2 She's a very intelligent lady. She was very convincing.
We were definitely worried that she may get away with this.

Speaker 7 Coming up, the jury struggles to reach a verdict.

Speaker 11 They were having a really hard time coming to a unanimous decision.

Speaker 7 On April 25th, 2013, the jury retired to consider a verdict in Shijia Ayobi's murder trial.

Speaker 7 The 46-year-old mother of four was accused of hiring a hitman to kill her husband of 18 years, 53-year-old Ghulam Ayobi.

Speaker 15 The prosecution and the defense agreed that Miss Ayobe had orchestrated the death of her husband. They disagreed on the reason that she had done so.

Speaker 7 At trial, the prosecution argued that Shajia sought to both end her marriage and collect more than a quarter million dollars in life insurance.

Speaker 11 She stood to inherit $285,000 from that policy if her husband died.

Speaker 7 But according to the defense, Shajia had orchestrated the murder to end years of abuse at her husband's hands.

Speaker 19 She's not a cold-blooded killer. There are circumstances that mitigate what she did that day.

Speaker 15 Ms. Aobi asserted that she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and the death of Ghulam was an act of self-defense.

Speaker 7 But would the jury agree? On April 30th, five days after deliberations began, the jurors sent word to the judge.

Speaker 11 They were having a really hard time. They couldn't come to a unanimous decision.

Speaker 7 Was a mistrial in the making?

Speaker 11 The judge instructs the jury to go back into deliberation and think about it some more.

Speaker 7 Or would Shajia's claims of abuse win the jury's sympathy?

Speaker 15 They had an option of finding her guilty of something less severe than first-degree murder.

Speaker 7 The answer came the next day on May 1st when the jurors announced that they had finally managed to make a decision.

Speaker 11 She was guilty of all charges.

Speaker 7 The verdict was a vindication for Ghulam's family and his character.

Speaker 13 They truly gave Ghulam justice, made everyone see for who Ghulam was, not what Ghulam was portrayed by Shajia.

Speaker 7 But at her sentencing hearing on June 14th, Shajia stood by her abuse claims.

Speaker 15 During her sentencing hearing, she recounted her fear that she was going to come home and find that her children are the victims of her husband's abuse and that they would be the ones that ultimately were killed.

Speaker 15 And that's why she did what she did.

Speaker 7 But would her claims have any more impact on the judge than they did on the jury?

Speaker 7 When she handed down her decision, the judge sentenced Shajia to life in prison, but with the possibility of parole after 26 years.

Speaker 2 I would ask for capital punishment, but definitely life without parole is what we were looking for.

Speaker 7 But while Ghulam's family is disappointed with Shajia's sentence, they do take comfort in one thing.

Speaker 13 We may forgive her, God may forgive her, and,

Speaker 13 you know, the authorities may forgive her, but how can she forgive herself? This is something that she's going to have to live with for the rest of her life.

Speaker 3 Shajia Ayobi will be eligible for parole in 2031.

Speaker 10 She will be 65 years old. Jake Clark was convicted of first-degree murder in 2014 and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 22 years.

Speaker 5 How hard is it to kill a planet? Maybe all it takes is a little drilling, some mining, and a whole lot of carbon pumped into the atmosphere.

Speaker 5 When you see what's left, it starts to look like a crime scene.

Speaker 7 Are we really safe? Is our water safe?

Speaker 5 You destroyed our town.

Speaker 10 And crimes like that, they don't just happen.

Speaker 29 We call things accidents. There is no accident.
This was 100%

Speaker 3 preventable.

Speaker 5 They're the result of choices by people. Ruthless oil tycoons, corrupt politicians, even organized crime.
These are the stories we need to be telling about our changing planet.

Speaker 5 Stories of scams, murders, and cover-ups that are about us and the things we're doing to either protect the Earth or destroy it.

Speaker 5 Follow Lawless Planet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

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