Hi everyone, this is Deb from Dying to be Found. Before we get started, I just wanted to say that episodes contain disturbing discussions on
harmful acts and crimes against animals and or humankind.
Recordings are not intended for young or sensitive audiences due to the content nature of this podcast.
Listener discretion is strongly advised.
Hi everyone, I'm Deb and I'm Beth and we want to welcome you to our newest episode of Dying to be Found.
Thanks so much for coming to join us today.
Beth and I are trying to find stories that you can relate to and leave the content up to you, our listeners.
So if you have a story you would like to hear, please email us at dyingtobefound at gmail.com
or you can message us on Instagram at Dying the Number Two
the letter B found or there is a new Linktree link that I'll put in our show notes.
Feel free to go in there and you can fill out a really quick gmail form.
It won't take you more than one minute to do and we'll be looking for that.
So we appreciate your being here today. Before we get started, as always, I want to check in with Beth.
Bethyboo, what are you up to today?
Well, I'm just worrying about tomorrow's weather.
It's supposed to be excruciating hot. I was about to ask you if it was going to snow.
I wasn't expecting a heat wave up there in the great white north.
Oh yeah, it's been very dry summer for Ontario, not much rain and tomorrow there's a big weather advisory.
Oh goodness. Snow usually comes around our October Thanksgiving.
That's the earliest and then if it doesn't happen then then maybe November.
That's not terrible. Well, snow flurries are known to come around here by Thanksgiving.
At least sometimes do, but also you need to know or maybe our listeners don't know that our Thanksgiving is different.
Yes, ours is a second Monday in October and when is yours?
I'm going to say it's a third Thursday of November.
I think it is.
I don't know. I just put it on my calendar. That's all I know and I follow it.
Do you do Black Friday shopping?
I've only done it one time. I can't handle all that. I am more of an online shopper today.
But I would say when Black Friday was big and popular, I'm not one of these early bird people
that can get up at four o'clock in the morning to hit all the stores. It's just not my forte.
Yeah, well I guess that's something to look forward to.
I've already done my Amazon Prime and got some really good deals this summer.
So that's the new Black Friday.
Oh good, good.
Yeah, okay. So today we're going to talk about Menhaz Zaman.
He is a 20-something year old son who was born to Bengali immigrants in 1996.
I kind of want to give a little bit of a pretext to what we're talking about, Beth.
If our listeners wanted to backtrack to episode number four, we had talked about Luca Magnotta,
and he's also known as the Canadian psycho. Do you remember talking about him, Beth?
Sure do.
Yeah. So we had talked about that and how people were on the internet trying to track him down.
Dog gone it. Dennis is at work again. He is barking.
And then I think somebody's yelling at him.
Nope, that's Ava chiming in. So we'll give it just a second.
In the meantime, I'm going to give you... Okay, have you heard of stupid dad jokes?
Yes.
I came up with some stupid Deb jokes.
Okay, let's hear a stupid Deb joke.
Because back in the day before we changed our platform, you dropped all the time.
I did.
And I took great pleasure of telling stories about you.
And I can't do that anymore because we have an awesome platform that we're recording on now.
But exactly.
So yeah, I have some stupid Deb jokes that I came up with.
And I'm glad that Dennis did not decide to bark in the middle of our recording.
He's doing it at the beginning. So I think I can throw this in until he stops barking.
Do you have a genealogy account, Beth?
No.
You know what that is, right?
Yeah.
Okay. So I do. I mean, I've been looking at our family history for a couple of years now.
Did you know that we have an Uncle Frank?
Where?
Well, in Canada, of course.
And in the notes in our ancestry, it says that when he died, he wanted his ashes to be put in his favorite beer mug.
Get out.
Yeah. Because his last wish, Beth, was to be Frankenstein.
Oh my gosh, you got me good.
Yeah. We don't have an Uncle Frank, not that I know of. At least I haven't found him in the family tree yet.
Okay. Well, that was my stupid Deb joke.
You know what you should put in? Can you put sound effects in?
Yeah, maybe.
I love it. We have to use it.
Okay. Beth liked my joke today. So yeah, things are about to get real heavy because we're going
to be talking today about this story that I had found and it's, I wouldn't say it's extremely
similar to the Canadian psycho case that we had talked about in the past, but I will say that
people online did the same thing that the people in our episode number four did with Luca Magnata.
They tracked down a killer.
Oh, wonderful. Now tell me, how did you find this story?
Okay. So a couple months ago, I was just, oh my gosh, hold up now. Let me go talk to Dennis.
I'll be right back.
Somebody was in our driveway, folks. Okay. Good God. I hope that didn't take too long. Anyway.
Okay. So today we are going to get into somewhat of a heavy case, Beth. This is one of those cases
where the surrounding community took action and hunted down a killer within a couple of hours.
Oh, amazing.
Yeah. So today we're going to talk about Menhas Zaman, who was a 20 something year old son,
who was born to Bengali immigrants in 1996. His parents immigrated to Canada in the 1980s
in the hopes for a better life.
Canada, eh?
Yeah.
So we're going to talk about Canada again.
We are talking about Canada, believe it or not.
Wow. More criminals than I thought.
Yeah. I mean, honestly, I think we've done quite a bit on Canada as of late.
So this just happened to be falling in the queue and it's not like we're always focusing on
United States or Canada because I have a story coming up, Beth, that is going to be overseas.
But yeah, so it's just the luck of the draw, I guess. Let's talk about Menhas.
He has one younger sibling who was a sister who went by the name of Melissa,
which is a Bengali reference to what we commonly refer to as Melissa.
Okay.
Like most immigrants commonly do, Menhas' parents brought their children up with the belief that
obtaining a good education will contribute to better opportunities. I will say I spun my
wheels for years, Beth, but once I got a degree, it really did open doors.
I don't think I realized that.
Mm-hmm. You know also that some cultures are very, very big on education. Well, Menhas' dad
expected him to grow up to be an engineer while Melissa dreamed of becoming a neurosurgeon.
So they had some aspiring dreams. However, if you see the difference here, Beth,
you can see that Menhas' dad wanted him to be an engineer, but he was letting his daughter
follow her dreams. For the most part of his upbringing, Menhas played the dutiful role of
a Bengali son. He was respectful towards his parents. He did his chores, and he did very well
in school. In his spare time, like anybody his age, Beth, in his teenage years in high school,
Menhas had a passion toward playing video games. Melissa, on the other hand, was rebellious and
often went rounds with her parents. She was a little headstrong, Beth, because she was bucking
up against her Bengali values versus Canadian values. However, she was an A student, but often
found herself in trouble for what we would refer to as acting out. Can you give us an example?
Oh, yeah. So one time, Melissa got suspended for flipping off a teacher in class.
Oh my gosh. Can I just add that my son was being babysat, and he did the same thing to the babysitter?
Are you kidding? I'm not kidding. So the babysitter immediately called my husband,
who immediately left work, came home, and gave him the spanking of the year.
Wow. So how old was he? Oh, he would have probably been around four.
And where did he learn that from, do you think? Because he had to learn it from somewhere.
Certainly not our household. You don't think that his older sibling?
Maybe. Who knows? Just kidding. We'll have to find out.
Yeah, I'll ask him. Hey, we'll ask him. Sarah, did you teach
Adam how to flip the babysitter off? All right. So Melissa also smoked weed and drank,
and even dated boys secretly without her parents knowing. Holy cow.
I mean, I don't think anything's wrong with that if you're dating some... Now, okay, yeah,
drinking and smoking underage, not acceptable. But dating somebody, I don't know what the rules
and regulations are for that culture, but I mean, I can understand, especially if they had
certain values that they did follow with their traditions. Right, but not...
You don't think I should have been dating in high school? Well, you were the wild one.
Define wild. I was not that wild. I just had spirit.
Yes. You're a very spirited young lady. Young lassie.
All right. So Melissa's personality often led to strife with her parents, obviously,
because they were butting heads. She turned into a teenager and she would often break curfew and
would suffer at her father's hand for this. So of course she's going to be punished. Her brother,
Menhaz, would sometimes get in between them, but more often than not, he really just put his
earphones on and went to go play video games in the other room just to drown out all the yelling.
All right. So what do you think about the differences between Menhaz and his personality
versus Melissa's? Well, Melissa seems to be a wild child.
She does. And I wonder how she was able to get away with that versus Menhaz. Would it be the
cultural differences between male and female? I think that's what it is.
All right. Canadian culture, males and females
are somewhat treated the same. And I am underlining that somewhat, but in other countries
and their religious beliefs, boys and girls are treated differently and they are very tough on
the girls. They want them to be on the straight and narrow. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. Well,
unfortunately, we know that many people do not come from more prominent countries to make a better
life for their own children. They usually trek westward and try to make a go of it, at least in
North America. And when this occurs, parents often take on menial jobs to provide for the family.
I want to give you an example. I have a coworker, Beth, who moved to America and works as an office
clerk, but in their own country, they were a lawyer. So I've had coworkers who have moved to
America and now work in office clerk positions, but in their own country, they were lawyers or
doctors. I have an interesting story if I can interrupt. Absolutely. I worked for a physician
and he was a prominent, well-known pediatrician in Poland. And he decided that he didn't want to
stay there anymore. So he went to speak in the United States, I believe it was, and then he
defected. Oh, wow. And he's a doctor in Canada now? He is now, but the poor man had to start out
here in Toronto. He had to drive for a sausage factory and he also worked as a taxi driver.
Wow. Now, interesting that you say that, Beth, because I was going to tell you that
Menhaz's dad ended up becoming a taxi driver when he came to Canada.
For goodness sakes.
And it happens a lot. So immigrants can give their children, obviously, a better opportunity,
but the trade-off sometimes passes onto the children. And because of that shift in what they
did in their own country, children feel a lot of pressure to become something that their parents
could not become when they came to the land of opportunity.
That's very true.
Yeah. Well, like I mentioned, Menhaz's father worked as a taxi driver just to make ends meet.
And in this case, Menhaz felt pressure to meet his parents' expectations, although he felt
compelled to go down another path in life. All right. So I've witnessed this, Beth,
and to our listeners, I'm going to go ahead and let you in on a secret that I've not really
mentioned before now. I've hinted it, but just in case you have not figured it out,
I teach for a living. So I wanted to give you an example. And several years ago,
an Asian student of mine came to me who was not even in one of my classes, but she knew that I
taught business classes. And she would just sit with me after school and tell me about how much
pressure she felt from her family to become a doctor or lawyer. And what she really wanted to
do is she wanted to pursue business. So I encouraged her to participate in some of my club activities.
And she actually went to some conferences with me too, Beth.
Fantastic.
Yeah. I wanted her to, of course, I'm never going to get in the way of family tradition.
That's not my place to do that. But I was just encouraging her to see what the business world
was like. She could take it home. She could talk to her parents. She could show them how she was
making leaps and bounds. She did really good. She loved it. She ended up in my class a year later,
but honestly, COVID happened and I'm not really sure what happened to her. I don't know what path
she's taken. She has graduated. That is a sad case. And thank you for sharing that.
Yeah. Well, coming back to Menhaz, obviously his immigrant parents placed a lot of pressure on
his shoulders to be successful and to help reach their own unfulfilled dreams. You know,
how people tend to live their life through their child. Yes. His parents often bragged about Menhaz.
And so it was likely that Menhaz began to feel isolated from his friends because in his eyes,
he was probably not living up to the expectations that his parents had on him. And during his
upbringing, Menhaz was taught that a high work ethic was important, which is part of his culture
and heritage. I get that because we were brought up the same way. So my expectations on work ethic is
pretty up there. It's likely that Menhaz suffered from culture shock actually, because at school
in the Canadian system, Beth, he was able to exercise more freedom within the Canadian culture
and who he was exposed to all day, all of his friends in the high school that he attended. But
when he got home, he had to transform into his own family culture. So realistically, these differences
have been known to lead to depression and homicide plus suicidal tendencies, Beth. So is this a common
occurrence? I don't know how common it is because I'm not a healthcare professional. I'm not a mental
health care professional. But in today's day and age, I can honestly tell you that mental health is
really a big thing these days. There's just so many stressor points, social media, even all this
isolation that we have experienced with COVID. You know, people are just not socializing like they
used to. Oh, that's so right. Yeah. So hopefully things will get back to normal soon. I want to
take a moment to provide you with a background on Menhaz's family, because I will give you a little
spoiler alert. Unfortunately, there were many deaths that occurred in this situation. And I want
to tell you their ages at the time of death. His mother, Momotaz, was aged 50. She nurtured her
children, was very generous to others, and even drove friends to their doctor's appointments.
She'd often cook meals for neighbors and was classy in her own rights. And by that, I mean
that she really had style. If you guys go look up pictures of Momotaz, she's a beautiful, beautiful
woman. Wow. She sounds like a very lovely lady. Yeah. Now, Monaru's Zaman, who is Menhaz's father,
he was 59. Quite opposite from his wife, he was a little bit more introverted, very humble,
and very devoted to his Muslim faith. He dressed in traditional Muslim attire that represented a
rich representation towards his own culture, which I think is great. Yes. Monaru's received
recognition at his job as a taxi driver as one of his company's most outstanding drivers.
Fantastic. Yeah, because, you know, work ethic. So he was probably all about work ethic. He spent
years working long hours to provide for his family and was able to buy his own home, along with two
other rental properties. So good for him. Hardworking man. For Rosa Zaman is Menhaz's
grandmother. She was age 70. And she eventually followed her own daughter, Momotaz, to Canada
and was Menhaz's and Melissa's caregiver while their father drove taxis and their mom tended to
the rental properties. So the parents worked, grandma took care of them. Melissa Zaman was only
21 years old. And as I mentioned, she was a little spirited, Beth, she was rebellious, conformed to
much more of the Canadian culture over her own and lived life at the speed of her own drum.
I think that's wonderful. She just seems like a very vibrant personality. In contrast, however,
Melissa was very devoted to her faith and even memorized most of the Quran by the time that she
had reached grade 10. That's quite a feat. Yeah. I don't really know much about the Quran, but
I have heard that it is definitely a feat to certainly memorize that for sure. Well, it seemed
to be a pretty tough year for the Zaman household, Beth, because it was during the tumultuous moments
between his sister and their dad that Menhaz began to recluse into his own world of video gaming.
And as I mentioned, he often drowned himself out in online gaming, just to drown out the arguing
that was going on behind the scenes between his sister and his father. And this is when he
discovered a video game called Perfect World. This is an online video game platform that launched in
2005. And it allows players to interact with each other across Israel, Belgium and Tunisia. So it's
a worldwide game, Beth. Wow, that sounds interesting. Yeah. Now in today's world,
this was back in 2017, but definitely in 2022, you can pretty much get on some of these video games
and do the same thing, talk with people worldwide. I know Corey's done it in the past. Menhaz's father
in 2017 was arrested for shoplifting from Canadian Tire. Oh no. Yeah. Charges were eventually dropped
in exchange for community service. So I had mentioned this was a somewhat challenging year
for the household. Melissa decided it was time to move out and go live with her boyfriend. I'm
pretty sure that didn't go off well. Nope. I cannot imagine that it would not in their culture. Well,
Menhaz became much more withdrawn as the pressure to become the perfect son really started to surface.
And he soon identified himself as an atheist, telling his online friends that he had become
disillusioned with Islam. So his personality is changing a little bit. Yes, it is. As time went on,
Menhaz expressed to his online friends that he wished to become more independent from his home
life. And he began spending more and more time online to the point that he was online more than
he slept in a 24 hour period. Well, that's dangerous. Not good at all. Dangerous for the
health and for the psychological aspect. And I will say this, when I was doing my studies,
Beth, I had 17 hour days between work and then school work. It was 17 hours. So I was not getting
my eight hours sleep. And then I was pretty much running on empty, I would say for over three years.
Wow. And that can do a lot as far as not really my psyche. It didn't do that. It was just a sense
of exhaustion at all times. Yeah. So Menhaz eventually graduated from high school in 2015
and was accepted into York University. He had told his parents that he had earned a full scholarship
to attend for electrical engineering and that he was doing very well in his courses. But in fact,
he was actually enrolled at Seneca College, a community college that offered an electronics
engineering program. He failed all of his classes during his first semester, but had signed up to
retake them the very next semester. And ultimately, Beth, he ended up dropping out. Oh my gosh,
I didn't see that coming. You didn't? No. Huh? Yeah. So he's trying to be one person for his parents
as usual, but yeah, it's about to turn. It's interesting that he was leading that double life.
Yes. So I'm going to stop here for just a moment because I have another story that I like to tell
my students that I'm a college dropout with a doctorate degree, Beth, because I've told you
before that I struggled in that darn geology class that I was taking when I first left high school.
I went directly into university and I struggled with science. It's just not my forte. And getting
up in the morning. No, I actually had no problem. I had eight o'clock classes and I could get up in
the morning for that. Yeah. Anyways, at the time I really do feel I was discouraged just because I
could not pass that geology class. And I ended up dropping out, Beth, I think because I was
discouraged. But a couple of years later, I did go back to community college to take a math class.
And guess what? Oh no, what? I failed. Again. And it's not for a lack of trying. I am seriously
not good with math or science. If it helps, I'm not neither. I mean, I struggled. I could study
for hours and I just, I just, I don't know where my mind block is at. I'm more of a art and
literature type person. So, and I know you are at least art. I wonder if that has anything to do
with why I'm not good at math and science. How so? I didn't complete a grade 12 math or science
program. How did you graduate without that? My counselor, she gave me a pass on taking those
courses. She says, because I would never pass the course. So they accommodated me. Wow. That's good
to hear. Well, I did try very hard, Beth, contrary to what anybody believes, but I didn't give up.
Later in life, Beth, it came a little bit more naturally to me because once I got my groove
going, it was almost like I couldn't get enough. And I've finished. I can't go any further than
what I am now, but it took me. I don't, I just don't think that that time in my life was the
right time. So when kids say that they do not want to go to college, I encourage them to go fly with
the airlines and see where you want to live. And you can learn about cultures just from the people
that you meet on planes. So go test the waters. If you don't think that you're ready for college,
the first year after high school, give it a year, but you better go back after one year,
or you will never go back at all. I heard that. So in Menhaz's case, he decided to drop out of
university altogether. But rather than telling his parents what he did, Beth Menhaz would get up
every day, like he always did, conduct his regular morning routine, then head on out to the college
campus or go to the gym before heading back home at the end of the day. So he is already forming
this routine that he's deceiving his parents on. I mean, what's going to happen when graduation day
comes? Well, what did he fill his time with when he was out of the house? What he would normally do,
he'd go to the mall, hang out at the food court, and he would video game all day long, all day.
Goodness, goodness. Yep. Because he'd be packing up his computer and heading out for the day.
For three years, he kept this routine and did not raise any suspicion with his parents whatsoever.
That is very strange. Three years and nobody caught on.
No. I mean, if he's living at home, I can see if he's supposedly living on campus or
in an apartment somewhere, but living at home, it's just difficult to keep up the facade for
that long, I would think. I would think too. Well, some of his gaming buddies maintained
contact for over five years where they had talked to each other every day. So he's going to, or he's
supposedly going to school, and I'm sure that they probably all have a schedule to say, hey,
I'm going to be online at four o'clock today. So meet me in the room and we will play the video
games today. Imagine that if you have even online gamers who have the same interests. So imagine the
relationships that they built over this period of time. Very true. Yeah. Because if they talk every
day. I am in a stamp forum. Oh yeah. And every couple of days I'm posting what I'm up to and
we interact. And once a month we do Zoom meetings and we learn a new card. Okay. New technique.
Okay. So you do tutorials for each other. Yes. That's so cool. So you understand the concept then.
I do. Yeah. Well, gaming became Manhaj's world. He was accepted into this platform as a priest
and a healer. So the characters that these people played, he was accepted as a priest and a healer,
which leveraged his ability to game and be classified as a good at both offensive
and defensive gaming tactics. So he was trusted. He talked with other gamers on the chat platform
and this platform was called Discord. So I didn't really look much into this, but I'm going to assume
that you've got one platform for the game where you're playing the video game. And then of course
you have something like a chat room like Zoom does. I mean, Zoom's got a chat room and the video,
right? Yes. So same concept. And then because he was trusted, this led the fellow gamers to believe
that Manhaj's eccentricities were related to having autism. And that didn't matter because he was
socially accepted and pretty much free to speak openly. With that being said, he was feeling
socially accepted by his friends. He felt he was able to speak freely. And on July 11th of 2019,
Manhaj's was online as usual chatting with all his gaming friends. He talked about how he had
intended to leave the perfect world to go kill his parents and go to jail. Oh my gosh. So out of the
blue, you're gaming with him for a couple hours. And when he just randomly says, Hey, I'm going to
leave you all so I can go kill my parents. Oh, that's freaky. I know. Well, he had spent three
years plotting this, Beth. Three years. And he was at the point where he was about ready to set out
what he wanted to do. Other gamers did not take him seriously and basically shrugged this off as
dark humor since Manhaj's often referenced homophobic and religious slurs while he was online.
I mean, if you're in the middle of gaming, you've known this guy for five years and he says something
random like that. Are you, are you going to take him seriously? I'm not quite sure. Yeah, I'm sure
that that's how his gamers were also feeling. But his dialogue became so extreme that he was banned
from the chatting site for two weeks because he consistently made racist remarks. Well, that's
unusual because compared to Canada, he would be racial. So he's calling the kettle black as the
saying goes. Yeah, he sure was. Well, during the month of June in 2019, Manhaj's parents were
preparing to throw him a graduation party because that time has come. Oh my. And not only this,
they were also about to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. Manhaj's parents held their
anniversary party with 40 close friends and relatives. And the next day, Beth, they held a
graduation party for Manhaj's that held 100 guests. That just blows my mind. Yeah. So they were a
caring family. They celebrated. They loved their family and friends. During Manhaj's party, his
parents talked to the guests about him moving on to his master's degree. So again, culturally, they
want him to be the best that he can be. He's about to graduate in engineering with a bachelor's and
now they already want him to move on to his master's. Manhaj's grandmother, Feroza, came to
visit from her apartment that she kept in Toronto. And as party goers enjoyed the lavish celebration,
Beth, Manhaj's took his plate and ate alone in his room at his own party. Yeah, I think he's probably
feeling the pressure at this point. He's trying to decide what he's going to do. And he logged onto
Perfect World and changed his handle to Don't Deserve Life. So basically he changed his gaming
name to Don't Deserve Life. And he talked to his friends about wanting to kill himself. And again,
they didn't really know what to do. They weren't taking him very seriously at this point. So at
the end of June on the 27th 2019, instead of graduating from York University with a mechanical
engineering degree that his parents had been so proud of him accomplishing Beth, Manhaj's
Zamen took a different plan of action. First, he posted on his Perfect World platform, quote,
gonna kill my parents and go to jail yo, end quote. You know, I think if I saw that I would
actually report it. I would think so at this point, because this is not the first time he brought it
up. So Manhaj's mom and grandmother had fallen asleep in the master bedroom while his father and
sister were both at work. And around 3pm that day, Manhaj's went to his mother's bedroom and
attacked her with a crowbar before leaving her for dead and then returning to his video gaming.
Oh, brutal. Yeah. And he then proceeded to post a picture online saying, this is my mom. He took a
picture of her and posted it online. There's just no words. No, an hour later, Beth, an hour later,
he took another break and attacked his grandmother with a crowbar and again went back to his video
gaming. An hour later. Yeah. At some point, Manhaj's looked at the clock and told his gaming buddies
what he had done, then said he was about to take a break for about five minutes because he was going
to take his sister out and his father an hour later. He's telling his friends online, Beth,
what he's about to do. Clearly he's sick. You know, it's going to change those lives forever. Yes.
Yes. That would be very traumatic. I could imagine. So without going into full details,
I'm not going to give you all that. He did follow through with his plan because his sister had
arrived home five minutes later, like he had said around 11 o'clock PM from work. And he attacked her
with a crowbar. An hour later, around midnight, when his dad arrived home, he also attacked him
with the crowbar. Just to be sure that he had finished the job, Manhaj's had taken a knife to
all four of his family members throats just to make sure they were dead. That is just so horrid. It is.
I think I do. I barely remember this case because I remember now that he took a knife to all his
family members. I do not recall hearing though, that it was a crowbar. So you remember this is
only five years ago. So, I mean, this would probably be a pretty big story at the time.
It was. Which is such a shame. So I do want to kind of talk about the gamers interactions at this
point because once his mission was accomplished, Manhaj's got back online and returned to his
video gaming to tell his friends what he'd done. And of course they didn't believe him and thought
he was just trying to gain attention. But to prove to them what he had done, Manhaj's posted pictures
of the murder scene and some of the interactions held between Manhaj's and his other online gaming
friends consisted of this dialogue. And I'm just going to say open quote, I just slaughtered my entire
family and will most likely spend the rest of my life in jail if I manage to survive. And one of
the gamers asked him, what are you going to do now? Manhaj's response was, I'm going to go see my
girlfriend. I wanted them to die so they didn't suffer knowing how much of a pathetic subhuman I was.
Well, that's an interesting take. I would have guessed that he was just angry with them all, but
really he's embarrassed and down on himself. Yes, that is exactly right. He was feeling the pressure
from being somebody that he knew he was not. And it was time to pay the piper. Graduation was coming
up. I know he was probably feeling like he said subhuman to what his parents' expectations were.
What I don't get is that he had plotted this for three years. I mean, go get a job or fess up.
It's not going to be, I mean, I can understand parents might be upset for the time being, but
this too shall pass. Don't sit there and plot for three years what you're going to do. No,
you'd think in those three years he would seek help for his thoughts. I'm not sure that he really had
escalating thoughts. I think that he was just trying to figure a way out to get past his
expectations with his culture. Because to me, I don't know if the video gaming itself could
have contributed to his thought processes. I mean, that's a real thing because at some point in time,
some people can't differentiate between reality and fantasy, eh? Right. Yeah. He had mentioned to
his gaming group that he might move the bodies to different areas of the house so that they would
photograph better. Oh. Then he mentioned that he might just take one last group picture. So clearly
he's disconnected at this point. What would you do in this situation if you were online with your
Zooming friends and they said any of this to you? What would you do? I'd call authorities. Yeah.
That is exactly the direction that the gamer's action plan went because once he started talking
about it, it didn't seem like he was stopping. And remember that he was interacting with people
worldwide, Beth, fearing that Menhaz would harm more people. These gamers who were interacting with
him attempted at this point to keep him online and talking because they did not want him to go out
and hurt other people. He had mentioned he was going to see his girlfriend. Would he do the same
to her? Oh, I bet you he would. Mm-hmm. The gamers were interacting with him. They created a
private chat to talk amongst themselves and attempted to track Menhaz's IP address. And for
anybody who is not technically savvy, it doesn't matter what computer system you use, all computers,
your cell phone, a laptop, a PC, they all have an address that can be tracked to you. Get out of
here. Did you not know that? No. Yeah. What I don't understand is how does it do that? Because when
you buy the thing or maybe does that is that how when you buy it, it's attached to you then? Yeah.
Do you know what the differences between hardware and software? Yes. Yeah. So it's part of the
hardware system. Okay. And at this point, all the gamers had to go on was the username Menhaz and
Canada being his location. So if you're online, then those were the two identifiers that they
could physically see on screen. They knew his screen name, they knew his location, but that's it.
That's all they had to go on. One of the gamers, and we're going to call her Nicole, was a criminal
justice student and let the group know that she felt that the pictures were very real and they had
to take this situation seriously. So one gamer from Texas attempted to contact police, but just like
that Luca Mignotta case, the police did not take him seriously. But another gamer living in Tunisia
still believed that this was a hoax until he saw a selfie that Menhaz had posted with him holding
a bloody knife. And this is when he called Crime Stoppers International. At least they're getting
the ball rolling, right? Yes, exactly. All the gamers came together. They were all talking in
their chat room, remember? So the pictures that Menhaz was posting online, they had opened other
tabs and were trying to locate those pictures online. They were Googling, they were just surfing
the net to see if any pictures would come up and they had no luck. One gamer boldly asked Menhaz for
his address and he brushed them off. So he was like, yeah, no dude, I'm not, you know, I'm not
going to give you that. And then digging through chat records and looking at Menhaz's IP address,
the gamers were able to distinguish at some point that he was in the Eastern time zone. Okay, so
even in Canada, as here in America, you've got the Eastern time zone, Central time zone,
mountain and Pacific. They were at least able to identify that he was on the Eastern region of
Canada at this time. They were also able to contact a perfect world administrator, I'll call him
Austin. Austin began monitoring this IP address, which was somewhat difficult to do because if
Menhaz was offline, he was not able to track him. However, because of his tendencies and you know,
Menhaz got off the computer and got back on, he'd log off, log on, log off, log back in. Well,
Austin was able to locate a New Brunswick address based on the IP address. And I will say that that
was not accurate, but they were getting closer and the chat group knew him not as a residence
of that province. So they just kept going. They said, no, he's not a New Brunswick. That's not
correct. So they all stalled Menhaz for a certain period of time and basically came right out and
said, why'd you do it? Why didn't you confide in anybody? And why do you think murder was your
only way out? Obviously this worked because Menhaz response was, I spent three years planning this
and I couldn't delay it any longer. I did this because I didn't want my parents to be ashamed
to have a son like me. I'm a pathetic coward. And since I'm an atheist, I don't believe in the
afterlife. So I was afraid to die. It's all very selfish really. Okay. So he's somewhat owning up
to what he had done, but I still don't think that there's a connection, Beth. Does he even realize
what he did or is it fantasy because he's been gaming in this perfect world platform?
Yeah, I've heard of that. So as the group continued to try to locate Menhaz, they did contact the
administrators from Discord, which was that chat room I had mentioned. It's on a different server
because they're two different companies. So they were able to contact an administrator from Discord
and as they continued to dig, the group was able to identify a Skype account from the Greater
Toronto area. Bingo. He lived in Greater Toronto area and we've talked a lot about the Greater
Toronto area in several of our podcasts. We have. The gamers were told to contact the Toronto police
who were then able to file an emergency request with Discord to find out Menhaz's identity. So
basically it's like getting a search warrant. Right. And while this was going on behind the scenes,
Menhaz proceeded to offer compensation to his gaming friends just for listening and said he
would send them money through his PayPal account. That's very crazy. It is. He thought at this point,
Beth, that he no longer needed money where he was about to go. True. Now one of these gamers was a
little slick and we're going to call her Bianca. She accepted Menhaz's offer for cash and allowed
him to send money through PayPal. Why? Because she was able to connect Menhaz's home address through
the PayPal account. Apparently there's some way when you are gaming and you're sending money through
PayPal, there is a way that you could connect home addresses. It happened to be 12 kilometers or 18
miles away from Bianca in Markham, Ontario. Have you heard of Markham? I don't think I've heard of
that tune. Oh yes. It probably wasn't around. It was just, it's now part of Toronto area, like the
greater. Yeah. The Metro area. Yes. So she was able to locate him and then she was able to contact the
police with that physical address without Menhaz PayPaling Bianca. It would have been virtually
impossible to track an exact location from the IP address. Really? Yep. So thank God for technology.
Oh, for sure. Now Bianca looked up previous payments. This is how she found out Beth,
because of previous payments, she was able to find that home address and 12 hours later, police
came to Menhaz's door for a wellness check. Obviously Menhaz was still gaming when they came
to the door. This was 12 hours later. As the police knocked on the door, he wrote in the chat room,
quote, the police are here. Goodbye. End quote and logged off. That's crazy again. Yeah. He just
sat there and waited for them. Probably a relief to him too. I think so too. I mean, you have to,
it was just a burden on him to live up to his parents' expectations in no way, shape or form.
Is it acceptable what he did? But I'm sure, like you said, he definitely had some sense of relief.
So all of these events took place within the span of 18 hours from the time that he told his gaming
friends what he had done until the police showed up at his door. Bravo to his gaming buddies on this
platform who were able to track down a killer in 18 hours or less. Fantastic. These are wonder stories
that people can be so savvy to do that. I think I would attempt to do the same thing if I were
put in that situation. Hopefully I will never ever be in that situation, but I'm so glad that
people come together when they have to. Yes. So I'm going to talk about the charges very briefly.
Menhaz was charged with four counts of first degree murder and in September of 2020, he pled
guilty to three of these charges. The fourth guilty plea was to second degree murder of his mother.
Had he gone to court and said he was not guilty, Menhaz would have had that charge up to first
degree murder, but he took a deal. He did apologize to the court for his actions. But honestly, Beth,
the judge wasn't taking any of that. He went off on Menhaz pretty hard and really reprimanded him,
saying in open court that he deserved severe punishment due to the violence that took place
and the betrayal of trust that had occurred. The judge was especially appalled with the fact that
Menhaz continued playing video games in between each action of murder that he had committed.
Yeah, that bothered me too. Well, yeah, I'm sorry to hear that because it's quite disturbing.
And Menhaz was automatically sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for a combined
40 years. So he will be 64 years old before he has the opportunity to be released. And that's older
than his dad, Beth, which is still pretty young in this day and age in the whole scheme of things.
59 year old dad. Yes. He's going to be older than his own dad. I hope he never gets out.
I hope not too. Well, if you're interested, there is a documentary and it's on Peacock TV. I don't
know if you have that where you're at, Beth. It's relatively new. No, I don't personally.
Okay. So it's just another one of those apps that's pretty new and it looks like it's from NBC.
I have not watched this documentary, but this is where I got the idea of the storyline. So,
I mean, all of my information came from online resources, which I will put in the show notes.
And kudos to the gamers who took them down relatively quickly. My heart goes out to the
family because nothing like this should ever happen. No. Well, thank you for sharing that
story with us. This case was quite a tough one. It was very hard to listen to because I can't
imagine your own son coming towards you and killing you and then going back to the game
and then killing again. He really had mental health issues and clearly needed help years before,
never sought help. But on the other hand, he seemed to know he was doing wrong.
Yeah, but he was so emotionless about it too. I mean, he literally told people what he had done,
but he didn't have any remorse because he went back and did it again. True. Yeah. I see where
you're coming from. It was, I mean, as I was digging into this, Beth, I couldn't believe what I was
reading too. I mean, you'll see in the resources, I always try to find the most reputable resources
that I can find. And had I watched the documentary on Peacock, I might have taken a different spin
on this, but the outcome was not what I expected either. No. I just can't believe that somebody
could go on for three years and not actively do something to change their path. You know what I
mean? For sure. Yeah. So at this moment, do you have a teachable moment? Sure. So let's talk about
the gamers who interacted with Menhaz. First off, Beth, bravo to you for everything that you did to
work together to get this guy off the streets. But we talked several times throughout this entire
podcast that mental health is real and it's not getting any better from this day and age and
everything that people are experiencing with COVID and things like physical trauma, or we don't see
the trauma that people are experiencing, but it doesn't mean that people do not experience mental
health trauma. It happens all the time. And in the case of the gamers, they had to have been
experiencing a traumatic event as well. And Beth, I think you mentioned that earlier in this podcast,
what they had to have gone through, right? They didn't see this coming, but they saw pictures,
they talked to this guy. Then the situation became very real that when they moved into catch this
killer, they also had to have experienced trauma throughout the whole process. So my suggestion is
that if you are a witness to something that personally impacts you through your own experiences
or other people's actions, please, I implore you to reach out to healthcare professionals and at
least talk to someone about how things may affect you. A lot of people sweep this under the rug,
Beth, but that is not always the best approach. Some people can handle things better than others,
but at some point, you know, things will come to the surface. You might find that you're stronger
than you think, or you might find that you really could use some help to get through it. So that's
my teachable moment. If you experience something that you have a hard time dealing with, go talk
to someone. Yes, there's a lot of people they can talk to. They can go to friends, they can go to
their doctor. There's crisis lines. There's a lot of help out there now and people are starting to
learn a little bit more about mental health. So please do your part for yourself. Absolutely.
That was very well said. Well, that's the case of Menhaz Zaman. I really, I didn't look up to see
where he's at today, but I'm pretty sure we all know where he is. And that's a wrap. That is a wrap.
And thanks for listening. Before we go, we would love for you to leave a review on your favorite
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Bye. Goodbye.