was nearby watching it all unfold. tell me what that was like. nerve-racking. it s exhilarating. did you see magdi? not at first. but soon enough, he came into view. the undercover s approached his car. what s up my [bleep] what s going on? what s happening? did you bring me a check? no. cash? 15? yeah. so i took the envelope, basically snatched, it and counted. what was, it 1500 dollars? 1500 dollars in bills. all right, my friend. everything good? yes. so, this was not some sort of frightened little miles 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. yeah, i m going to get it done and this will be it and it will be over. but, before it was, the undercover dropped one more
because he called the first time. to me, in this type of deal, when you call the first time, you know, you get over the nervousness and they re gonna call back. and magdi the 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. we know he s at a payphone. that got really interesting for me, right. their i m sitting in the car and myself on one off, i let it bring a few times and answered the phone, you know. this is the money, what s going on. you stopped by yesterday. yeah, i came by yesterday. man yeah, what is the problem, my friend? what s that? what s up? the problem is, my boy is locked up in the pen, like i told you yesterday. we want to know what s going on. you, know my boy to care for little business, you know. so we re just trying to get paid to keep the hush. you know what i mean? i thought you got paid everything. once he told me, hey, i thought i paid you guys everyt
waiting for? no, no, no. 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. and so the life you had before? it was never going to be the same. a court issued a protective order and magdi moved out of the house he worked so hard for. to an apartment complex he and his brother owned nearby. after more than two decades of marriage, it seemed magdi and ariet we re headed for divorce. there was a thought that seemed to terrify ariet. i think she was scared and had a lot of cold feet. about striking on on her own in the world? exactly. ariet it was totally dependent on magdi she had never written a personal check, didn t even know their mortgage was paid off. she would express to me, like, you know i wish all of this would just not be, here or i wish everything could go back to the way it was. magdi to seemed frightened.
like he was my dad. so, i felt really pulled. ariet agreed to sign the letter. magdi, no doubt, breathe a sigh of relief. but, then k s preliminary hearing. in which, ariet did something quite unexpected. she took the witness stand. and she told the truth. she felt that enough was enough. so, she went and she really laid everything now. not just about the night magdi gave her a black eye and bloodied her nose, but about abuse ariet described a stretching over two decades. did your dad feel betrayed? my dad was like, i can t believe what she set up there. ariet girgis had finally stood up for ourself. it might have been the manifestation of her own american dream. harriet hired a divorce attorney and begin planning a new life. i really felt like my mom was empowered. she just wanted to be happy,
write america s most wanted. and, they raised to 55,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of the suspect. all of it led to nothing. how many other cases do you need in those areas? a lot of murders. but, something about this on stuck with the. absolutely. was it something about area that may do not want to quit? you don t ever want to quit on any case but i think that the fact that she came so close to being an independent woman to standing up herself, to being the kind of mother that she wanted to be to those voice. and, she did everything right. she died on her watch. it was a 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. this time, it was james wilson