I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murph.
Whether we're aware of it or not, it's a fact of life in today's interconnected world that just about everything we do and everywhere we go is being traced, tracked or recorded.
Whether it's the digital shadow we cast when using our phones, the purchases logged by the use of an ATM card, or the video images captured by a surveillance camera, we all leave behind a traceable trail of our actions and whereabouts.
In most situations, these digital breadcrumbs if you will have no significant bearing on our lives.
But, as a married couple with two children from Holt Michigan will discover, that's far from the case when the situation is murder.
Holt, Michigan, is a residential suburb of Lansing with a population of about 25,000 people.
And it was here that Ammar and Badur Alyassari, recent immigrants from Iraq, decided to settle down and raise their two kids.
In 2019, 35-year-old Ammar was working for the Michigan State University Federal Credit Union.
His wife of nine and a half years Badur, was employed by Michigan State College of Osteopathic Medicine, and their two daughters were enrolled in local schools.
If you were to ask their friends and neighbors, they would tell you that the Alyasaris were a stable, happy family living a typical suburban life.
But on February 4th 2019 at 805 pm, that facade would come crashing down with a frantic call to 911.
Okay.
What's going on there?
Okay.
Are you with the patient now?
No, I'm outside.
I'm scared to go in.
Okay, how old is he?
I'm scared if someone's inside.
So the initial 911 call was from Badura Eliasari and she, during that 911 call, had told dispatchers that she walked into her home.
She didn't know what had happened, that her husband was down.
Okay, is he awake?
No, I don't know.
I just saw him on the ground and I left.
Okay, is he breathing?
I talked to him, we didn't talk to him.
Nicole Matusko is a prosecutor with the Ingham County Prosecutor's Office in Lansing, Michigan.
So some of the first questions they had for the 911 caller was, how did this happen?
What did you see?
Did you hear anything?
Yeah.
But Doerr told the operator that when she walked in and saw her husband laying lifeless on the floor, she immediately fled the home, fearful the attacker might still be inside.
I did not go back inside the house because I'm sure someone's still in there.
Within minutes, paramedics and deputies from the Ingham County Sheriff's Office responded to the location, the lights and sirens shattering the tranquility of the suburban street, where every house has an attached garage and a tree in the front yard.
So Holt is a residential area.
It was a very quiet neighborhood.
It was a dead-end street.
If you were to drive by the homes, you could see kids playing outside.
It's just your average neighborhood community.
We do have pockets of high crime, but I wouldn't call Holt one of those pockets of crimes.
Arriving deputies found Bedore crying hysterically in their front driveway.
She ran up to the deputies telling them that someone could still be in her house and that her husband was down.
Her friend had come over to pick up her children.
When deputies entered the home, they encountered a unsettling scene.
And from someone who has handled these panicked 911 calls, I can tell you, while your training kicks in in the back of your mind, you do wonder what you're walking into.
Of course, we're only human, and there are so many cases that even the most seasoned officer can be shocked by what they find.
And this was one of those cases.
When first responders came to that scene, I don't believe they knew what to really expect, and they definitely didn't expect what they saw inside the home.
It was a pretty violent murder, so there was blood everywhere in the hallway where Ammar was located and there was a single light on over where his body was bound.
Amar was clearly deceased, with multiple deep lacerations visible on his head, face, and neck.
He was still wearing a coat but no shoes, as if he may have just entered the house.
Deputies also noticed a very strong chemical odor hanging in the air.
All of the first responders.
What they were unanimous about was when they walked into the house, they were hit with a wall of the scent of bleach, which was not common in what we expect to see in these types of cases.
Just from the look of his injuries, it was clear that Amar had been violently murdered.
What wasn't immediately clear was whether his killer was still close by.
Their initial goal was to clear the house to make sure no one else was present inside the house.
Once that was done, deputies sealed off the home.
When homicide detectives soon arrived on scene, it was evident they would have their work cut out for them.
Typically when there is no murder weapon found at the scene, as the case was here, a cursory inspection of the victim's wounds can provide a clue as to what kind of weapon the killer may have used.
Not so in this case.
They weren't sure what type of instrument was used to kill Ammar.
But what first responders had noticed is many of the wounds were actually in Ammar's head and neck area.
So that was where the majority of the injury was.
You know Anastasia, there's a reason why that this observation is so significant because it tells us a lot about what may have happened and who may have been involved.
And look, we've obviously talked about things like this many times before in AOM, but these type of injuries often prove to be personal right.
Some sort of like deep-seated anger or rage.
However, again always looking at the flip side too, which investigators and prosecutors must do.
While not as likely, we've definitely also seen cases where something like this, even this severe, is completely random, with someone with a deep-seated anger and even maybe mental health issues on display.
But you know Scott, obviously there are signs of this not only being deliberate, but also thought out in advance, with the heavy smell that they determined to be bleach in the air.
When they actually got into the scene and started looking at it, there was evidence that the bleach had been poured on top of Amar because he had dark clothing.
And when bleach is poured, it creates the bleach pattern that many individuals are familiar with when they're doing their own laundry.
There was also evidence that the bleach had been poured on the walls and someone had tried to potentially wash down some of the blood spatter that was on the wall.
They had found bleach at the scene, but they weren't able to determine if that was the bleach used to pour on top of Amar or on the walls of the location where he was killed.
The use of bleach at a crime scene is usually an indication that the perpetrator had tried to either clean up or destroy evidence, as the chemicals in household bleach are typically strong enough to remove bloodstains footprints, DNA and other clues that might help identify a killer.
Whether the killer brought the bleach to the scene or found it in the house, it definitely indicated that this was likely not a chance encounter or botched home invasion.
This killer came prepared with a plan.
So there was no sign of forced entry.
The door didn't have damage to it.
There was no signs that anyone had to break into the house.
The house was also not ransacked.
So everything appeared to be in the place where it was expected to be.
Detectives theorize that Ammar likely walked in from the garage and had been attacked by someone lying in wait who was already inside the house.
A truly terrifying thought.
Even more terrifying Anastigas, when you think about what the medical examiner believed the killer may have used as a weapon.
The manner of death was homicide and the cause of death was from chop wounds.
So that would be different from, for example, a stabbing wound or something where a knife would have been stabbed into someone.
And we know that it wasn't a gunshot wound because it didn't have the characteristics consistent with that.
So he had indicated that a chop wound would be consistent with an axe and the characteristics would be consistent with the front portion of that axe.
And of those 24 axe wounds, 17 of them were deep enough to be fatal, leaving no doubt about this killer's intention.
According to Amara's wife, Bedore, she had left work at 4.40 p.m.
And, as she usually did, picked up her daughters from school, ran some errands and then arrived home at 750 pm.
And she had no reason to suspect anything was wrong.
The children were with her when she arrived home.
They were in the car.
She couldn't get into the garage door.
The garage door wasn't opening.
So she went in through the front door and she actually left her two children in the car.
After discovering her husband on the floor, she retreated from the house, fearing that that intruder might still be inside.
She then called a neighbor to collect her kids before finally dialing 911.
Which, considering the high stress of the moment, is understandable.
Her priority would have definitely been the children's safety.
But the fact that she did not enter the house to check on her husband and that short delay in calling 911, those were small abnormalities that investigators made note of.
They asked normal questions.
Did Amar have any enemies?
Is there anybody you could have expected to do this?
They're just trying to gather as much information as they possibly can to figure out who might be a suspect.
But Dora was adamant that she had no idea who may have wanted to kill her husband.
She described him as well-liked and respected at work.
Amar was also a private person who rarely socialized and not the type to engage in at-risk or criminal behavior that might put him in any kind of danger.
But detectives could not shake the suspicion that he was killed by somebody he knew.
And if the killer was indeed lying in wait inside the home, they also wonder how the perpetrator could have gained entry into the house, especially since there's a sign on the front door indicating the home is protected by an alarm system.
So this would have alerted anyone coming into the house that you know.
Hey, this house is protected by an alarm.
But also the alarm hadn't gone off.
So for this to be a home invasion.
There was no sign that someone broke in and the alarm company had notified law enforcement or done anything that indicated that the alarm was triggered.
So the alarm was turned off and the front door was unlocked.
You could imagine how that would start to raise suspicion about the only other person who had that kind of access to this house, Amar's wife Badur.
So detectives, as you imagine, wasted no time in asking her to sit down for a formal interview at the sheriff's office.
And if some of our listeners are thinking that this sounds a little premature, remember that in any investigation it is in the detective's interest to clear a spouse or domestic partner as quick as possible.
It's also important to remember that 54 of homicides are committed by someone the victim knows, the majority of those by the person closest to them.
And that's what they started with, is how was the marriage?
How were things going? you know, was anybody involved in any extramarital affairs.
She denied any of that.
But detectives got the impression that Bedore was not being completely forthcoming.
She seemed evasive about possible troubles at home.
And after additional questioning, she began to change her story.
According to Bedour, her marriage to Ammar was far from perfect.
She claimed he was often verbally abusive and, despite her education and employment, expected her to be just a wife.
She also said Ammar had been especially distant and cold to her, since she'd suffered a miscarriage five months earlier, adding to the growing tension in their marriage.
If true, these marital troubles were of course unfortunate, but it hardly seems like any sort of sufficient motive for murder.
What she revealed next, however, that was potentially a different story.
Eventually she did admit she had had an affair with someone, but she wouldn't provide any information.
She wouldn't provide the name of that person or anything as it relates to who the person would be.
So Scott, this is interesting to me because, of course you know, this isn't the only person to have an extramarital relationship outside of the marriage.
But at this point, if she's telling that much to investigators, why not just give up the name of the person she's having the relationship with right?
I mean, of course, there could be innocent reasons, but it does make you raise an eyebrow.
Absolutely.
You know, a relationship outside of your marriage, embarrassing, I'm sure, to admit to a detective.
But this is a murder investigation, looking into the person who kills your husband and the father of your children.
So BRF, big red flag?
Absolutely.
Now, if I was working this case, I would want to know right there and then, who is this person?
And if you're protecting him, tell us why.
Absolutely.
Because a potential love triangle meant a potential suspect.
Knowing there's a good chance her boyfriend's name would be revealed in text messages.
Detectives asked Bedore to allow them to download the contents of her phone, but she refused.
But police weren't going to leave it there, so they went about at that point obtaining a search warrant and confiscated her phone.
And while a digital forensics team extracted the phone's data, which would include a full history of calls, texts and locations, investigators followed up on another mystery from the crime scene how a Mars killer gained access to the home without triggering their alarm system.
They reached out to the alarm company.
They did search warrants to get records as to why it wasn't triggered or why it wasn't alerted if this was in fact, someone that broke into the hole.
They learned that the alarm had been turned off on the day of the homicide.
And here is a really important thread.
The alarm had been remotely disabled at 5.32 p.m. shortly before Amar was expected home from work.
They were able to determine by further investigation that Badour was actually the individual who turned off that alarm system.
I think that's when it started to raise a red flag that this may be an inside job.
In February of 2019, husband and father of two, Amar Al-Yusari, was found brutally murdered in his Holt Michigan home.
The perpetrator appeared to be a killer lying in wait, even though the home had a security system.
But detectives had turned up evidence that Amar's wife Badur, who had discovered her husband's body, had also remotely disabled the security alarm at 532 pm on the day of the murder.
I know that they really began to get suspicious when they got the records that showed that it was turned off remotely when she was not home.
And it would have been consistent with the time, or right around the time, when Amar would have been coming home.
Investigators also began to uncover inconsistencies in Bedore's statements and actions on the day of the crime.
She had indicated that she couldn't get the garage door to open.
But then when the first responders arrived on scene, her car was actually parked inside the garage.
So at some point, she was able to open that garage door and then pull her car inside.
There was also the fact that Bedore had called a friend to come pick up her daughters before calling 911.
And not only that, when police interviewed that friend, they made a disturbing discovery.
When her friend came to pick up her children, she was not hysterical.
She was calm and she put her children in the car, and she didn't mention that Amar was murdered brutally inside that home.
And then she called 911.
And then she called 911.
I think, Adesika, that's pretty significant.
So Badur goes into the home, witnesses something so horrific, walks out calmly and makes sure that her children are looked after before even calling 911.
So another huge red flag for me.
You know it's interesting and I've been kind of swirling these things around in my mind because yeah, like that strange behavior again taking the flip side, like is it that she's just being strong for the sake of her kids, you know, protecting them by not letting them see her break down?
Like she clearly doesn't want them either to go inside and also not to be there, so why she hands them off to the friend, right?
But I don't know, even going into the house without her kids initially like that's kind of odd.
Unless I don't know, maybe they're very young and she's taking groceries in and so she likes to get the door open before taking them out.
But it definitely is all things that I think even the fact that we're debating them back and forth right now to each other, it's going to make detectives need to look deeper and question at least the order of the way she did things.
On top of, to your point Scott, her demeanor like how calm she appeared.
Yeah, I'm going to have to lean into what you said because I totally agree with that.
I mean how many families with children come home and they leave the kids in the car at their own home just to walk in?
Unless they're just coming back out to leave.
But they were coming home for the night.
So that is completely out of character, I'm sure.
Then you have the situation where the alarm is being disabled from outside of the home.
That again is telling us that something here is definitely pointing towards people who had access to that system.
And who else would have access besides her husband?
Unless it's someone who has access to their laptops or their apps.
Like it is the cyber crime generation.
But again, all questions that investigators are going to want to figure out.
So, with suspicion swirling around Bedore's involvement in her husband's murder, the Digital Forensics and Cyber Crime Unit of the Michigan State University Police Department turned over the data extracted from Bedore's phone.
From text messages to her husband they learned that he arrived home that day at about 650 pm, giving investigators a good indicator of his time of death.
But it also confirmed to them that the door at the time was still several miles from home.
But investigators also discovered that just six minutes before she arrived home, in the midst of driving her kids home and running errands, she had deleted an app from her phone, an app that potentially held a treasure trove of incriminating data.
So they had learned through her phone that she utilized a social media app called TextNow.
What Bedore didn't know and I don't know maybe perhaps few people do is that even when you delete a text app from your phone, that texting data still lives on the company's servers.
So investigators were able to get a search warrant for the TextNow app and recover that stored data.
They started reading through the TextNow information and that's really when they started to learn about the affair with Jacob Fisher.
It became clear that 27-year-old Jacob Fisher was the man Bedore was having an affair with the man that she had refused to ID.
Fisher was a local community college student, originally from California and a former infantryman in the US.
Army.
And Bedore's text data revealed the entire chronology of their seven-month relationship.
So Jacob Fisher was someone that she had met months prior that she had started a relationship with.
They learned through those communications that she had called off the relationship months prior and then had reignited the relationship and got back together with him.
And that she was in constant communication with him throughout the days leading up to February 4th.
In her interview, Bedore had hinted to detectives that her husband had been emotionally distant, but her texts to Fisher revealed her marriage to Amar was plagued by far more troubling issues.
So there was indication through the text messages of her talking to Jacob Fisher about how much she didn't like Amar Alyassari.
And there was text messages back and forth about how she believed that he should die.
She had been telling Jacob Fisher that it was an abusive relationship with Amar.
And we didn't take that lightly because that does happen here as well.
While Bedore's phone data didn't turn up any texts making direct mention of a plan to kill her husband, it did reveal texts that seemed to set the stage.
We were able to locate a conversation where they were talking about the children and Jacob Fisher actually said why the f?
Do I care more about these children than he does?
Meaning a bar.
That mother f***er needs to die.
So I mean that led us to believe that they're talking about killing the person that Three weeks later is found murdered in his home.
A six-foot-tall, 240-pound trained soldier, Jacob Fisher, was more than capable of inflicting the brutal injuries that killed Amar.
And his relationship with Bedore gave him the motive.
They knew Badur was not the one that swung the axe or the weapon at Amar, because we knew where she was when he was murdered.
So they started investigating Jacob Fisher, and they learned that he lived here in the Lansing area.
Police chose not to re-interview Badur regarding her relationship with Fisher, and there was a sound procedural reason for this tactic.
Given the nature of how she wasn't forthcoming with his information in the initial interview, they were concerned that if they were to bring her in that she would either destroy evidence, tip him off or potentially run.
So the next steps was to find evidence that would directly tie Fisher to the murder.
On top of that list was the murder weapon itself, and it didn't take long.
When they conducted the search warrant at his residence, they located a Kroger receipt that had indicated that just a few days before the murder, the person had purchased a camp axe, bleach and some other minor items that were not associated with the crime.
The receipt was dated January 31st, just four days prior to the murder.
A chop wound is a unique injury in a homicide case.
And now you have someone associated with the wife of the victim purchasing this just days before Amar was murdered.
This is significant for two reasons.
Obviously, it would be great finding the actual murder weapon with DNA on it.
This, however, does give investigators an opportunity to take one more step.
These days, these types of receipts are so specific.
Not only do they tell you the items, they tell you the time, even what checkout counter that person used.
And also, as we all know, Big box stores have great surveillance cameras.
So this made this opportunity a really great find.
It was looking likely that Fisher was the man that killed Amar.
What investigators still did not know was whether he acted alone or was assisted in his plan by Bedore.
Something that was in the back of law enforcement's mind is maybe she's not involved, but they really tried to investigate to determine what her involvement, if any, would be, without bringing her in because they didn't want him.
Jacob Fisher tipped off.
Or if she was involved, again, we have her turning off the alarm shortly before Amara got there.
They didn't want evidence to become destroyed.
Armed with a subpoena, investigators showed up at the store where Fisher bought the axe and bleach.
And Kroger had great surveillance.
They were actually able to get pretty clear surveillance footage of Jacob Fisher purchasing the camp axe and then a bottle of bleach.
But that wasn't all investigators got.
They also left the store with strong evidence suggesting Fisher had an accomplice.
They also were able to get surveillance footage from the outside of the store which showed the parking lot area.
And they were able to show that Jacob Fisher arrived in the passenger side of a red truck, a truck consistent with the truck that Badur Ayasari was known to drive.
This was confirmation.
The turning off of the alarm and now we have her, or someone, driving a truck consistent with what she was able to drive with Jacob Fisher buying the murder weapon was a really big indication that she was involved in the crime.
Investigators were convinced Badora Alisari conspired with her lover to murder her husband.
But gathering enough evidence to convince a jury would be another matter altogether.
We knew that this would be a difficult case to prove.
We knew that it would be very evidence-based and technical.
The wealth of circumstantial evidence convinced authorities in Lansing Michigan that Badr Alyassari and her boyfriend Jacob Fisher conspired to murder Badr's husband and father of their children, Ammar.
The matter of the brutal murder 24 swings of a camping axe was an indication not just of intent but aggression and merciless rage.
Another indication of Fisher's lack of remorse the revelation that shortly after he was identified as the prime suspect after the murder, Jacob Fisher had showed up at a local watering hole boasting that he had killed someone and needed money to get out of town.
But instead of helping him flee, patrons notified police and within minutes, officers from the Michigan State Police.
They were swarming the bar.
So Jacob Fisher was actually arrested first.
He did not provide a statement.
OK Scott, can we just talk about the fact that someone goes to a bar and starts boasting about murdering someone and needs help to get out of town?
Like, does that even make sense that someone thinks that that's going to work out and that somebody is not going to tip off somebody else?
Ie equaling the police.
It is surprising.
But how many times have we heard this before?
Where somebody just goes into a place, has a couple of drinks and just decides to use that for creds.
The fact that you know whether it's true or not.
I'm sure they don't know, but just hearing a story like that about a camping axe being swung 24 times and committing murder in that type of rage, that's worth at least checking out.
And I think to your point Scott, and I think it is a good point that, as we know, people say all sorts of things and many people may have just taken it as like oh, he's boasting and really not thought much about it.
But you know, it's also interesting that, as much as he talked in the bar when he was arrested, he chose not to make any statements to police.
Yeah, there's many things that you could tell people in the bar and a bartender and order a drink.
But one of them seems to be off the wall to tell them a story like this.
And one week after Fisher's arrest, Bedora Alassari was also taken into custody.
And like Fisher, she gave no additional statement to investigators.
So here we was, Anastasia talking to bartenders, talking to bar patrons, but not talking to investigators.
And so, based on the evidence that law enforcement has collected at this point, which included footage from a dash cam that Bedore had operating in her truck, investigators formed a theory as to how the pair had worked together to commit murder.
Our theory was that Ammar had indicated to Padur that he had left work and that he was driving home.
We then had her at a stoplight turning off the alarm remotely.
It was our theory that she had communication with Jacob.
He knew that alarm was going to be off.
She had turned it off and she had let Jacob Fisher inside the home just moments before Ammar Alyassari would have arrived.
Police suspected Bedour Alassari had left the front door unlocked to allow Fisher access and then theorized the ex-soldier waited in the dark for Amar to pull into the garage and enter the home.
Amar likely didn't get far from the door.
He had removed his shoes, but then he was murdered right where he would have entered the home.
Right behind where he was murdered, there was a room which was like a laundry room.
We believed that it was likely that Jacob Fisher was hiding in that room, and he ambushed Amar and then struck him with the camp axe that he had purchased just days before.
There was a back door that was unlocked to the back of the house.
So we believe that that's likely where he left the home after he murdered Amar.
Investigators were certain that Badur Alyasari had conspired with Fisher to kill her husband.
But it was prosecutors who would need to present a compelling case making the strength of the circumstantial evidence clear enough to hopefully prove it in court.
Our biggest concern was really making the evidence into a timeline that made sense, that couldn't have a lot of holes poked into it.
So Anastasia, while it may seem obvious that Bedora was, at the very least, an accessory to this murder, that is not the same thing as proving the guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a courtroom.
A hundred percent.
But as we all know, like I like circumstantial evidence cases.
And to me, it is like the truck that he's in when he's purchasing the ax and that alarm.
Like, of course, that is pretty strong evidence.
It's exactly how I'm starting, not only my opening, but my closing.
Abudur Alyasari was instrumental and she was working along with her boyfriend to brutally murder her husband.
So we needed to make sure that the evidence that we had would be able to sustain that burden of proof, to prove beyond a reasonable doubt and to convince the jury that this did happen.
To help prove Alassari's guilt, investigators were determined to know what was really going on inside her marriage.
Texts pulled from her phone offered key insights showing that she had told Fisher her husband had been abusive to her.
And while domestic abuse can definitely be a precursor to more extreme violence, including murder, there was no actual evidence that she was telling the truth.
There were no complaints ever filed, no visits from police and, more importantly, most importantly, I should say, no one close to Badur Alyasari who could verify her claims.
In preparing the cases against Alassari and Fisher, Nicole spoke numerous times to Amar's sister and she disputed that Amar was ever physically abusive.
We kept in close contact and we talked through what the relationship was like with her so that we could know, going into this, was it a healthy marriage?
Was there abuse?
That type of information.
She basically had told us that that didn't take place, that Amar was a loving husband, was a loving father.
They had arguments like any married couple, but there was no evidence that it was an abusive relationship.
In fact, Ammar's sister had her own suspicions that her sister-in-law was the one who had actually harbored dangerous resentments about her marriage.
His sister wasn't surprised that she had been arrested.
She had a sneaking suspicion that somehow Badour was involved.
Prosecutors argued that Badour Alassari played the role of mastermind.
Feeding Fisher lies in a ploy to get him to kill her husband.
That was.
Our theory of the case is that she was fueling him, that she knew Jacob Fisher, being from the military, would have the ability to commit the crime, but she had to ignite that fire and give him a reason to do it.
She manipulated him and told him what she wanted him to hear.
But Dora Ayasori had claimed from the start that she had no knowledge of the murder.
If this had been true, it was only logical that she would have been enraged at Jacob Fisher for killing Amar, her husband and the father of her children.
However, her actions post-arrest and prior to trial seemed to contradict her denials.
I think what stuck out to me was, even after Jacob Fisher and Bedora were charged with murdering Amar, they kept in contact while they were in custody in our jail.
And that never made sense to me, with her trying to say that she wasn't involved in this.
Prosecutors decided to try each defendant separately.
In November 2019, Jason Fisher was the first to face a jury.
Charged with murder and conspiracy to commit murder, he entered a plea of not guilty.
Circumstantially, we had to prove that Jacob Fisher was the individual inside that home that day.
Prosecutors introduced evidence that Fisher had bought a camp axe and bleach just prior to the murder and that Badr Al-Isari had driven him to the store and then later disabled the alarm to aid him which, let's be honest, really doesn't look very good.
It definitely doesn't.
But again, still technically on its face, it's all circumstantial.
And under Cross the defense tried to convince the jury that prosecutors couldn't definitively place Fisher in the Al-Isari home on the day of the murder.
So for his trial, a lot of the defense was based on the identification of Jacob Fisher as the person inside the house wielding the axe and murdering Amar Alyassari.
We had neighbors that saw a figure walking down the road but didn't see a face, for example.
It would ultimately be up to a jury to decide.
But before that, Fisher's defense shocked the court when they announced that Fisher would not only take the stand, he would be the only witness they were going to call.
As we've discussed before, it's always risky for a defendant to put themselves on the stand and open themselves up to cross-examination.
And even Nicole was surprised by the defense's decision.
But she was even more surprised by what Fisher said when he testified.
I was shocked that Jacob Fisher was willing to take the stand in his own defense.
I was more shocked that he had more or less admitted that it was him inside the home, but had just indicated to the jury that he was there to confront Amar because he was in love with Badur and Amar.
He and Badur were going to be together.
So he needed to basically allow a peaceful divorce.
And then Ammar had assaulted him.
And Jacob Fisher, because of his training in the military, had just responded.
And he happened to have a camp axe in his hand.
So that's how Ammar got the 24 chop wounds.
On the stand, Fisher claimed Amar had abused Bedour physically, emotionally and sexually and that he brought the axe only to intimidate him.
He even went so far as to quote an old military platitude that soldiers don't fight because they hate what's in front of them, but because they love what's behind them.
Fisher went on to testify that they had plans for Bedore to file for divorce, then take the children with him to the West Coast where he'd grown up.
But most importantly, that Bedore Alyassari had nothing to do with the murder.
In that moment we were also in a bit of a disbelief that it was happening the way that it was happening.
But he stuck to his ground and he actually testified that Badur was not involved or didn't know that the murder was going to happen.
According to Fisher, he sent Badur al-Sari a text message telling her he had killed Ammar and warned her not to allow the children inside the home.
And that's how she knew to keep them in the car.
During the cross, we were just trying to poke holes in as many parts of his statement as possible.
But was this the truth, or was it merely an effort to protect this woman he seemed to love, a woman that had potentially manipulated him into committing murder and now taking all the blame?
The jury was left to deliberate his fate.
Ultimately, he was convicted of conspiracy to commit murder as well as murder.
So from that conviction, it's pretty apparent that the jury didn't believe that testimony.
In January 2020, Jacob Fisher was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
While Fisher admitted he killed Amar, the jury rejected his assertion that he didn't intend to kill Amar, that it was self-defense that Amar had first attacked him and that the attack wasn't premeditated.
And prosecutors were also intent to prove that he didn't act alone.
In April 2022, Badar Alyassari faced the same charges as Fisher murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
In her opening statement, Nicole told the jury that the pair not only plotted, planned and worked together, but that Badar Alyassari knew how to fuel Jacob Fisher's hatred to manipulate him into killing her husband.
This is a very circumstantial case that we had to prove based on a lot of search warrants and putting a lot of pieces together.
So the concern would be we believed that she was responsible, but we wouldn't be able to meet that burden of proof.
The linchpin of the prosecution's case was using the digital data to prove that it was Badur Al-Asari who remotely deactivated the alarm, allowing Fisher to enter the home undetected.
Badour and Ammar had dash cameras in their cars as well.
So we actually had video of Badour's day that day and what she was doing.
So we were able to piece together and actually show the jury that when she remotely disabled that alarm, she was still driving with her children in the car.
So I think that made it easier to understand that it wasn't just she was turning off an alarm, but that something else was happening.
Prosecutors also presented evidence that a neighbor of the Alyassaris, between 530 and 6 on the day of the murder, had seen a man on their street in a dark hoodie fitting Fisher's build.
They watched as he entered the Alyassaris' front door, likely left unlocked by his accomplice.
Bedour.
Alyassaris' defense harped on the fact that she wasn't in the home at the time of the murder and tried to poke holes in the circumstantial evidence linking her to the murder weapon, for example the surveillance footage from Kroger.
You can't see who is driving.
We had testimony that she spent a lot of time with Jacob Fisher that day and they carried in bags from Kroger, but we couldn't prove who was the driver.
So it was circumstantial evidence that we were asking the jury to rely on in their own common sense as to what transpired.
So their defense for Badur was really they didn't meet their burden of proof.
The prosecution team did have the evidence to show that Bedor Alyassari was guilty, but would they be able to convince a jury, a jury they feared might be sympathetic to the widowed mother of two young children?
The short answer?
They did.
She was found guilty of both first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.
In securing the two convictions, Nicole was quick to give credit where credit is due.
What stuck out to me was just how much work the law enforcement agency had to put in to be able to hold both parties accountable.
It would have been very easy for them, once they identified Jacob Fisher as the person who was inside the home that day, to stop the investigation there and not really ask the question of how he was given access to Amar to be able to do this crime.
A lot of it came down to really understanding great digital forensic work and going through all of the records and then piecing it together into a timeline.
In the end, Badar Alsari's and Fisher's attempts to cover their tracks were both clumsy and futile.
With a little bit of pre-planning and post-planning of I'm going to delete this, I'm not going to be home.
They try to get around the investigation, but nothing beats that a hard investigation.
And I think it's readily apparent that we leave footprints of what we do, you know, our cell phones and digital media in forensic evidence that you can't ever erase it.
Despite the dual courtroom victories, Nicole's thoughts on the case still center on Ammar Alyassari son brother, friend and father, as well as those he left behind.
His sister spoke at both sentencings about how this had impacted her and how Amar was her best friend and how she now has to navigate a life without her brother and her best friend.
I got to know his sister pretty well.
I felt her grief.
But also through that relationship, you really get to know Amar.
Because Amar is someone, as prosecutors, we would never meet because he was murdered.
We got to know a lot about him.
We got to see videos of him with his children and how he was before that day.
And I think that's important, because I think that that allows you to be able to best advocate for the people that are harmed.
Early into this investigation.
Once it became clear that Bedore was directly linked to the murder plot, investigators quickly zeroed in on a crucial question.
What could possibly motivate Fisher to carry out such a cold-blooded act?
The first hint at an answer surfaced straight from Bedore's own cell phone.
Reviewing the trial's cell phone evidence, I came across a text exchange that I felt spoke volumes.
Fisher asked her directly to remind him how Amar had hurt her, and her response painted a dark portrait, claiming quote For 10 years he has made me feel worthless, a slave, a prisoner, alleging an ongoing emotional and physical abuse at the hands of her husband.
The text exchange was shortly before the murder.
But during the trial Nicole did emphasize that not a single shred of evidence supported these accusations against Amar.
In fact, quite the opposite was true.
Ultimately, the jury saw through her deception, recognizing her manipulation as the true weapon she wielded to end her husband's life.
Ammar Alyassari walked in from work, likely thinking he'd have dinner and spend some time with his family before going to bed.
Instead, he was met with a brutal death.
How is it that someone who once either loved him or at least said that she did, can so callously arrange for him to die?
And how can the person in a relationship with her so violently murder another human being?
Those are questions I've often asked myself about many cases over the years, but clearly neither I nor anyone really has that answer.
With his murder, Amar was taken from both his kids, two young girls who will never again have the love they deserve to be shown from their dad.
As we remember Amar, our thoughts are of course also with his daughters, and we hope they are surrounded with kindness and with love.
Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.
Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Fresetti Media.
Ashley Flowers is executive producer.
This episode was written and produced by David Rader, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa and Philjean Grande.
So, what do you think, Chuck?
Do you approve?
I approve!
