[phone ringing]
[operator speaking]
[B'dour speaking]
[operator speaking]
[B'dour speaking]
-[operator speaking] -B'DOUR: Oh, my God.
B'dour, just like anybody else, had goals and dreams.
But she was all about power
and control and greed.
AL-YASARI: The first second I saw her,
I saw evil in her face.
I never in a million years would
have thought that she was capable of this.
[officer speaking]
She was incredibly manipulative.
[officer speaking]
[B'dour speaking]
She was always playing as a victim.
B'dour was the quote-unquote mastermind.
She's a real monster.
[theme music playing]
[mellow music playing]
NARRATOR: 26-year-old Ammar Al-Yasari escorts his fiancee,
18-year-old B'dour Al-Mohammed, to their engagement party.
GEBBIA: You have Ammar walking B'dour
into the house at her family's home.
This is just such a proud moment for him.
[speaking foreign language]
They had this traditional ceremony
of presenting the bride-to-be.
Her family was from Iraq, and they moved to
the United States when she was two years old.
B'dour was quite westernized. She was an American.
And they're dancing and being kind of playful.
Ammar looks really happy.
He's smiling, and she's smiling,
looking like any young couple in love.
AL-YASARI: Ammar and I grew up in Iraq.
Ammar was always so smart
and always helped me to do my homework.
He was going a lot to the library, searching on
the computer.
His dream was coming to the United States.
He was determined to give himself a better future.
NARRATOR: In 2008, Ammar wins a place to
study agricultural economics at Michigan State University.
GEBBIA: He earned a scholarship from his government.
As part of that agreement,
he signed a document saying that after Ammar had graduated,
he would go back to Iraq for at least two years
to share his knowledge.
I was the international student advisor for Ammar.
Ammar really stood out, because he was open
and talkative -- even though his English wasn't perfect,
he was eager to be successful in everything that he did.
There was an individual in the Iraqi community.
His name was Aman.
He helped these new students from Iraq adjust to the U.S.,
meeting people, bringing them shopping,
anything that these individuals need.
Aman had a large family,
and one of his daughters was B'dour.
Aman introduced Ammar and B'dour.
AL-YASARI: Ammar described her in a very nice way.
He said she's a pure person.
She's so kind.
I thought Aman was trying to snatch up
the best of the best for his daughter.
NARRATOR: A month later, Ammar tells Zahraa that he and B'dour
are getting engaged.
Ammar's announcement that he was getting
married came out of the blue.
Ammar was the only one of his family
who was in the United States.
So everybody else was back in Iraq.
It was a very hard and a big deal for my parents
to miss that day, not being there to help and support Ammar.
We felt like we are left out.
We didn't have any role.
Like, they just did everything so quick.
It was very risky to marry an American for his scholarship.
The whole purpose of these scholarships
is to have high-achieving individuals
come to the United States,
learn from our education system,
and then return back home
and make a difference in their communities.
And that's what the government of Iraq
was hoping for and was planning on.
And if he did not return back home,
he would have had to repay
all of the tuition and all of the stipends,
everything that his sponsor had given him.
AL-YASARI: We have no idea about her family,
about her background.
He could lose everything -- he could lose
his scholarship and everything he built before.
Then Ammar said, "What about if you talk to B'dour,
get to know B'dour more, maybe you'll change your mind."
My family met B'dour
on Skype for the first time.
I felt like Ammar made a wrong choice.
B'dour was 18 years old.
She was still at school.
Ammar was 26.
His personality, his character,
everything was different.
GEBBIA: B'dour and Ammar got married
just a month after they got engaged.
AL-YASARI: Me and my family were in Iraq,
so that day was so hard for us.
Ammar called my mom -- she was crying, and he told her,
"Please don't worry about me."
She said, "I felt they took Ammar from me on that day."
NARRATOR: In July 2010, the newly married couple
fly to Iraq for Ammar's sister's wedding.
Ammar's family throw a party
to celebrate their first in-person meeting with B'dour.
AL-YASARI: My family tried their best
to make everything ready,
but she felt everything was not enough for her.
I was getting ready for my wedding day,
and she took all the attention to her.
She was comparing herself with me on that day.
She was complaining everything to Ammar.
"Zahraa had this, and I don't have it.
They decided to make this for Zahraa, but they forget me."
B'dour was pushing Ammar hard against my family.
But I was too late to tell Ammar,
because she was pregnant.
GEBBIA: Ammar's first child,
a daughter, Abaya, was born on New Year's Eve
2010, and he was very excited about that.
Whenever Ammar talked about his little girl,
he would just light up.
You could tell that she had him
wrapped around her little finger.
AL-YASARI: As a dad, he was loving, supportive.
He was so understanding.
GEBBIA: Ammar graduated with his master's degree
in agricultural economics.
[speaking foreign language]
GEBBIA: At the same time that Ammar was finishing up
his degree, B'dour also finished up her
degree and graduated from Baker College.
Oh, there's B'dour accepting her diploma.
She's smiling and happy and...
Ammar, you know, he's got the camera around his neck,
taking pictures.
He was so proud of her.
He was always encouraging her to be a success.
We were so happy and proud of him.
No one could expect the bad things to come.
GEBBIA: December of 2012,
they took a family trip to Washington, D.C.
This was after Ammar had graduated.
[B'dour speaking]
[Ammar speaking]
GEBBIA: And so this video would have been
to show his family how proud
he is of his wife and his daughter
and everything that they've accomplished.
AL-YASARI: Ammar had achieved his dream of being in the U.S.,
having a happy and nice family.
[B'dour speaking]
At this time, Ammar worked as a mortgage loan officer.
Ammar and B'dour had their second daughter
on April 2015.
Now they had two beautiful girls.
NARRATOR: A year later, Ammar buys his first house
in Holt, Michigan.
AL-YASARI: Ammar described his house as four bedrooms
with a big backyard, and there's a pool.
He was so proud of himself -- having a house in America,
it's so hard, especially because
we came from a different country.
GEBBIA: B'dour started working in the same office that I did.
So then I got to know B'dour more.
She was friendly and smiley, talked about her kids a lot.
She used to always use Snapchat,
and she would make pictures with the girls.
She was the adoring mom.
It was interesting to hear her talk about the things
she wanted and how Ammar would get them for her.
AL-YASARI: Jewelries, clothes.
She was like a queen, and Ammar
was providing everything for her.
GEBBIA: She would just tell him, "I want this,"
and she would get it magically.
She just showed up one day with this huge, fancy truck.
She was like, "No, I just --
"I told him -- I told him I wanted a truck,
and so he got it."
NARRATOR: Later that year, Ammar's sister,
Zahraa, comes to the U.S. to live with her brother.
GEBBIA: I remember B'dour talking about Ammar's sister
coming over from Iraq, and she was not happy at all.
Zahraa and Ammar were so close,
and they had a relationship that didn't include B'dour.
I think that made her kind of jealous.
For some time,
I stayed at Ammar's house.
I found out B'dour has two faces.
When Ammar was not there,
she was so mean.
When Ammar back at home, she was so helpful,
nice -- she was completely a different person.
NARRATOR: But Ammar and B'dour seemed to be a tight couple.
AL-YASARI: Ammar came to my house with B'dour and his kids.
He told me B'dour is pregnant.
He was so happy, and his kids were happy, too.
GEBBIA: And then they were testing
her hormone levels or something.
Doctor said he was very concerned about her.
And after two weeks, I receive a call
from Ammar telling me B'dour lost her child.
I was so worried about her.
I went to see them.
When I entered the room, he was holding her hand,
telling her, "Please, be strong for your kids."
NARRATOR: As the months go by, cracks start to appear
in the couple's marriage.
AL-YASARI: Ammar started to come to my house a lot,
like after work, and he seemed sad more than usual.
I was worried about him.
GEBBIA: Ammar learned of texts that B'dour had been sending,
complaining about Ammar and how insensitive he was
and uncaring -- really just bashing him.
He would never say a bad word about B'dour,
and she was being incredibly disrespectful
and rude and lying about him.
I can definitely see how that would
have caused a rift in the marriage.
B'dour started turning down my lunch invitations.
I thought, you know, that's weird.
She -- she's usually the one who's asking me to go to lunch.
Then our mutual friends there
told me that she was
meeting a guy every day at lunch,
and they would spend lunchtime chatting.
And then later, they told me
that they actually saw them kissing.
I realized Ammar started losing a lot of weight.
I did ask him, like, "What's wrong with you?"
He said, "No, I'm fine,"
but I felt there is something wrong.
Something made him sad.
[phone ringing]
Ammar called me.
He started to talk about life and about the kids.
He said he's worried about his kids.
"If something bad happened to me, who will take care of them?"
Like he knew something bad will happen to him.
[phone ringing]
[operator speaking]
[B'dour speaking]
[operator speaking]
[B'dour speaking]
[operator speaking]
[B'dour speaking]
[operator speaking]
-[B'dour speaking] -OPERATOR: Okay.
[operator speaking]
[B'dour speaking]
The call came in to the 911 center
at 8:05 p.m. that evening.
The caller identifies herself as B'dour Al-Yasari.
The 911 operator was trying to get her
to go check on the status of her husband,
and she kept saying she was too afraid to go in.
When you respond to a call like this,
you have to use extreme caution.
Maybe there's someone in the house -- when the patrol
officers arrived on scene,
the only person located in the residence was Ammar.
When myself and Sergeant Shattuck arrived on scene,
we came around the corner to the edge of the kitchen.
We could see Ammar's body down on the floor.
He was lying on his back, face up,
clearly surrounded by a big pool of blood.
It appeared as if he was chopped up multiple times to
his face, his neck, to his head area.
SHATTUCK: It was 24 chop wounds
to the head, neck, and face of Ammar.
My first instinct was that it had been
some type of a hatchet or an axe.
Where Ammar was located in that hallway,
it looked like he had taken
off his shoes and immediately been ambushed.
LO: On the 911 call, B'dour does talk about walking
into the front door and finding
the front door unlocked.
We looked at the door jambs to see if they were damaged,
and there was no signs of that.
We did notice a lot of electronics still in the home --
his TV, computers, tablets.
Ammar himself, on his person, his wallet was still on him.
So we quickly ruled out this being some random act
of a home invasion, of somebody
trying to get a quick grab of some items or something.
SHATTUCK: The house smelled like bleach, and it
looked like there had been bleach poured on Ammar.
You could see clear bleach pooling in,
mixing in with the blood on the ground.
To me, it tells me that someone is trying
to cover up their tracks.
When I arrived to Ammar's house,
I saw the police cars, the ambulance,
and they stopped me to go
inside the house.
I asked one of them about what happened to Ammar,
but when he said, "He's passed away,"
I kept saying "No, that's not true."
At that moment,
I felt like there is a part of my heart,
it's kind of just broken.
We assigned deputies to do a neighborhood canvass
and asked them if they saw anything suspicious.
We got really lucky.
The neighbors that lived directly across the street from
the Al-Yasaris were coming home
from a shopping trip, and they passed a subject walking
towards the Al-Yasari home.
They could just tell by the stature,
the physical build of the person, that it was a male.
When they pulled it into their driveway,
they noticed the subject walk into the house.
We knew whoever that was, is the person that
we need to find.
SHATTUCK: The only way that we can learn
anything about Ammar is to talk to B'dour at that point.
At 10:44 p.m., B'dour came into the office for questioning.
[Lo speaking]
No.
One of the questions I did ask was,
"What type of lifestyle did he live?
Would there be anybody that would be upset with him?"
LO: She tells me that he's pretty much a homebody,
that he gets up, goes to work, very family-oriented.
To have somebody come in and cause this type of
damage to a person, made me think
is there something more here that
she's not being completely honest with?
So learning the dynamic of
their relationship was very important.
[Lo speaking]
[B'dour speaking]
[Lo speaking]
-[B'dour speaking] ...did he think that...
As she talked about not being able to move
freely within that marriage, led me to think,
is there something else in
this relationship that I'm missing here?
[Lo speaking]
The more I asked her about it,
the more open she became.
[Lo speaking]
And then she tells me unprompted
about this one specific individual.
[Lo speaking]
LO: Okay.
[Lo speaking]
LO: Do you -- do you under...
Her reluctance to share that name was obviously
a big red flag.
If she was really trying to help find the person
who did this to her husband,
she would be very open, forthcoming with information.
[Lo speaking]
LO: And that's when she decides that she wants
to no longer answer questions and requests an attorney.
SHATTUCK: She wanted to protect this individual.
If you think about it, this poor lady's husband has
just been brutally murdered, the father of her children.
And she doesn't want to tell you the name of
the guy that she had an affair with last fall,
according to her?
So we knew we were on the right track at that point.
The next step, we have to identify this person.
[phone ringing]
[Shattuck speaking]
[man speaking]
Wednesday the 6th,
a phone call was transferred to my desk
from the records department,
and it was a young man who wanted to tell me
who I should be looking at
in regards to the murder of Ammar Al-Yasari.
[distorted voice speaking]
He explained that B'dour was living two lives.
She was living her life at home with her family,
and then she was running around on the weekends,
partying, and he advised that
Jake and B'dour had been dating.
The red flags were just skyrocketing now.
We knew we were on track.
LO: We started to focus on trying to figure out
and identify who this Jacob or Jake individual was.
And we believed that there would be evidence
of who this individual might be on B'dour's phone.
So after seizing that cellphone,
I had to turn that phone over to Detective Cramer.
When we downloaded the phone,
that's when we located both of her Facebook accounts,
one that she had for her family,
then a separate account that she used for more
for outside-the-marriage encounters.
We had received a tip that it was a guy named Jake.
And that's when we discovered the Jacob Ficher screenshot.
And that was a Facebook profile from a missed audio
Facebook call approximately two weeks ago.
Seeing that profile picture
and that Facebook account is what gave us
the opportunity to discover his residence.
It was time to start conducting some surveillance.
NARRATOR: Investigators stake out Jacob's apartment
on the evening of February 6th, 2019.
They spot a man inside the property,
but he is not Jacob Ficher.
He is Jacob's roommate, Levi Thomason.
LO: Levi actually leaves the residence and starts
walking down the street to a local bar.
Detective Ward, when he walks in,
he does see that Levi is interacting with an individual,
and we later identify that individual as Jacob Ficher.
WARD: So I ended up sitting about
two barstools away from Jacob and Levi.
Whatever conversation they were having,
they wanted it to keep very quiet.
It appeared Levi was trying to console him.
It was -- it was raising some red flags
that we are definitely on to the right person.
LO: Jacob was intoxicated,
and they began to cause the disturbance.
Jacob was subsequently arrested
that evening for disorderly conduct.
It worked out in our favor, because then we can
now actually sit down and, uh, talk with Jacob.
[Lo speaking]
-Yeah. -Okay.
[Lo speaking]
I terminated that interview, and Jacob was
brought down to the jail to be lodged.
WARD: Detective Lo's interview with Jacob was
going on simultaneously with me interviewing Levi.
SHATTUCK: Levi was able to give us a lot
of information into the relationship between
B'dour and Jacob.
[Ward speaking]
[Thomason speaking]
[Ward speaking]
[Thomason speaking]
WARD: That was a big piece of the puzzle, to be able to
establish that this wasn't just
some fling that B'dour had with Jake.
Levi confirmed that they had
actually been dating for several months.
NARRATOR: Police find messages on B'dour's phone
that make clear B'dour and Jacob's relationship.
CRAMER: They started dating in August, and it was hot
and heavy, and then there was a break-up in October,
and then she reached out to him in November, and then it
seems that the seriousness of their relationship really took
off from there.
The Snapchat search warrant returned had a lot of
still photos and videos of B'dour and Jacob together,
which just solidified how intimate
their relationship was.
We were able to determine that she had taken one
of her two daughters and introduced the child
to Jacob Ficher.
And they began talking about Jacob
and her running off to the West Coast.
They began planning to rent a car
and take the two kids to get away from
her family and move in with his family out there.
It was just a couple of weeks before the homicide occurred
when she really started turning up
the pressure on Jacob to help her out
with this abusive relationship
she was saying she was having.
B'dour had painted a picture
to Jacob of Ammar being a monster,
controlling, terrible husband.
It was obvious that that's what was fueling Jacob's fire
to want to intervene.
LO: The more we reviewed the messages,
he became a more viable suspect
as to the person who killed Ammar.
We executed a search warrant at Jacob and Levi's residence.
Jacob's bedroom,
we found the packaging for a camp axe.
We thought Ammar was killed with a hatchet or a camp axe.
That's exactly what we had right there
was the packaging for it.
WARD: We located a receipt to a local grocery store.
On the receipt,
it showed a purchase of a camp axe,
and then a bottle of bleach,
and we knew that bleach was used at the crime scene.
The next day, we sent Detective Ward to Kroger,
which was the store the bleach was purchased from.
When I was reviewing the surveillance footage,
we actually started right at that moment of the purchase.
Jacob Ficher began his checkout at 3:33 p.m.
At 3:35 p.m.,
he exits the store holding his groceries in one hand,
and then in the other hand,
he's holding a bottle of bleach.
SHATTUCK: That photo speaks a thousand words.
I remember sitting there, probably looking over
Detective Ward's shoulder, looking at that, going,
we got him.
WARD: So at that point, as we were watching
the surveillance footage,
we were actually able to go back,
then figure out exactly what vehicle he came from.
On the surveillance footage,
we see that Jacob exits a vehicle,
a red Dodge Ram pickup truck, that is consistent to
the vehicle that we know B'dour owned.
And that's when we figured out that it
was B'dour Al-Yasari's truck that had pulled in.
When we saw B'dour taking Jake to get the weapon
that would be used to kill the father of her girls,
we knew that she had something to do with it.
Jacob Ficher remained in custody following
his arrest on Wednesday,
February 6th, for disorderly conduct.
WARD: When someone is arrested, we'll go through
all their property when they're booked in.
Detective Shattuck told me there was a bus pass in his wallet.
From the bus records that I obtained,
I could articulate that
Jacob Ficher used his bus pass at 5:53 p.m. on February 4th.
And where he would have gotten off puts him right in the area
of the Al-Yasari home,
within minutes of the witnesses across the street
putting a figure matching his description in the front door.
Jacob Ficher was formally charged
with the murder of Ammar Al-Yasari.
Then we shifted all of our attention to B'dour.
It was time for us to really solidify her involvement.
Al-YASARI: I remember we were in the funeral home with Ammar.
I saw B'dour there
with her family.
Then I told her, "B'dour,
they arrested the guy who killed Ammar."
She's shocked.
She was so nervous, and her reaction
was not normal to me.
NARRATOR: Investigators analyze the communications between
B'dour and Jacob in the leadup to Ammar's murder.
We discovered a screenshot of
the communications between B'dour and Jacob.
That was Jacob Ficher asking B'dour to
tell him how much Ammar had damaged her.
B'dour obliges and sends a list of all the things
that she's claimed that Ammar has done to her.
SHATTUCK: B'dour is describing Ammar to Jacob,
calling him physically abusive,
mentally abusive -- flat-out lies about Ammar.
There was absolutely zero evidence that Ammar was ever
abusive in any way, shape, or form to anyone.
B'dour was pumping up Jake to kill Ammar.
She's using Jacob to accomplish what she wants.
LO: When we processed the items in both B'dour
and Ammar's vehicles,
we noticed that they both had dash cams.
In reviewing B'dour's dash cam footage,
it pretty much gave her account of when
she leaves work to when she arrives home.
So that dash cam was very helpful to us.
NARRATOR: At 5:32 p.m. on the day of Ammar's murder,
a microphone on the dash cam captured
the voices of B'dour and her daughters.
[daughter speaking]
[B'dour speaking]
She actually says on the dash cam footage that
she's going to be deactivating the alarm to the house.
[B'dour speaking]
SHATTUCK: She's disabling the alarm,
but Ammar doesn't get out of work for almost another hour,
and she doesn't plan on being home till 8:05 p.m.
Why would anybody turn off their alarm when nobody's home?
[B'dour speaking]
SHATTUCK: This was an incredible piece of evidence,
not only for the mere fact that she did it, but the timing.
Jake swiped his bus pass and got on that bus at 5:33 p.m.,
just one minute after B'dour had disarmed the alarm system,
letting Jacob right in the front door.
Also at 5:33, the CCTV footage at
the library shows B'dour pulling in with her daughters.
When you watch the CCTV footage, and you see how
comfortable and how normal she appears to be at that stage,
and she knows the entire time that
her husband is gonna be brutally murdered by her lover,
and for her to be able to just go on
about her day as if nothing is wrong is
absolutely incredible.
LO: B'dour and her girls left the library
at 6:52 p.m. that evening.
Once B'dour and her daughters arrive home, that's when
she says she sees her husband down on the ground.
CRAMER: The Snapchat app showed us that she had
talked to Jacob just moments before calling 911.
LO: The two of them are working in concert.
They have planned it, and now their plan is going exactly how
they want it to go.
SHATTUCK: It was really the tipping point
in the case against B'dour.
CRAMER: On February 14th, 10 days after the homicide,
we were able to secure the arrest warrant for B'dour.
B'dour Al-Yasari was arrested
for the murder of Ammar Al-Yasari.
NARRATOR: The prosecutors in both trials
stepped through the events that led to Ammar's murder.
SHATTUCK: Jacob and B'dour were making plans
about running away with the girls
and starting a new life.
She's manipulating Jacob to get what she wants,
ultimately convince him to kill Ammar Al-Yasari.
Jacob tried to paint a picture that B'dour Al-Yasari
had nothing to do with this, and this was all on his own,
which we could show was false. It was a lie.
CRAMER: She took him to purchase the murder weapon
and the bleach to help cover it up.
SHATTUCK: That evening, Jacob left his apartment,
and just moments later, B'dour remotely
disarms the alarm system on their home.
[B'dour speaking]
Jacob takes the bus down, and he's seen
walking in the front door by the neighbors.
LO: When Ammar arrives home at 7:20 p.m.,
he goes in, takes off his shoes,
and before he is able to turn on any lights,
he is attacked by Jacob, who is hiding.
Jacob then attempts to erase or destroy any type
of evidence at all by pouring the bleach onto Ammar.
She had the choice to leave,
but she chose to stay,
and then she did what she did.
She never had any guilt or any feeling.
She's a real monster.
I cried for Ammar, and I cried for his kids, too.
They lost their dad and lost their mom.
He was always caring about their future,
thinking about their future, how they will be a success.
I don't think there is a day goes
without thinking about Ammar.
I miss him a lot.