Alians just never land in Central Park.
They are rarely ever spotted flying above Times Square.
It's a thing.
It's like extraterrestrial beings just have an aversion to high costs of living and expensive real estate.
But you will see a UFO flying over a cattle ranch in the middle of Montana.
And the only witness to that is going to be a guy named Dale, who takes a quick picture of it on his russet potato that he has now converted into a camera.
And to be fair, maybe the aliens, they could be flying over Times Square and we just don't see it.
But the concept of it is interesting.
Why always in the middle of nowhere?
Why do aliens choose to fly the routes that they choose?
It's almost like if you want to go see an alien, you have to go to the middle of nowhere, where you least expect it.
And for Mateo, the place that he least expects to see something out of the ordinary, out of this world, is the local pizza shop.
Matteo is driving to town.
It's a town called Nuremberg and this is in Germany.
It's about two hours from Munich.
He's in the driver's seat.
His friend that he dragged along for no reason other than the fact that he did not want to go on a lonely road trip is sitting in the passenger seat.
They start driving and it's towards this highway ramp where there's like a little pizza shop.
It's a local pizza shop.
Everybody knows this pizzeria.
It's not like the most delicious pizza in the world.
It's not like the hottest restaurant.
It's just been around for a while.
And the locals like it.
As they're driving past this restaurant, Mateo glances out the side of his window.
And in that exact moment, he sees, I mean, he sees something.
And his friend's head in the passenger seat almost hits the dash because Mateo is slamming on the brakes.
And his friend is like, what the hell is that?
Mateo barely responds.
He just says, quote, screw Nuremberg.
There's something more important right now.
He does the quickest U-turn he can physically manage.
He pulls right up into the lot of the pizza restaurant.
It's honestly a surprise that he puts the car into park because he's just flying out the driver's side door.
He walks straight up to a girl with very long dark hair standing in front of the pizzeria.
She looks very like skittish.
Her eyes are really big and she's staring at him and he's staring at her and she's staring at him.
And he says the first thing he asks her is, are you?
Are you dead?
What?
She's staring at him and she responds slowly.
I don't know.
And then she runs away.
Mateo jumps back into his car and he's got to follow her because she's not supposed to be here.
I mean, she's not supposed to be anywhere.
She's supposed to be dead.
Thank you.
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Disclaimers, there are brief mentions of DV self-exit in today's case, so please watch with caution.
Today's case also takes place in Germany, so we had help from our translators to navigate the language barrier as we were researching.
We do our absolute best to ensure everything is represented accurately, but do keep in mind that all statements and quotes have been translated and then may even be condensed for brevity.
So with that being said, let's get started.
Before the dead woman even has a name, they already have a suspect.
Everyone in town has pointed the finger at who they think they did it.
They're tagging him in Facebook posts about the news.
The dead woman found in the car.
He's the one that did it.
And his name is Rowan.
They want Rowan to know that they think it's him before he goes down for it.
I knew it before the cops did.
Those are a lot of Facebook comments, which is exactly how Rowan ends up in this all gray room sitting on a small square table.
I mean, the squareness is really inconvenient for him because he has one officer sitting on the left, one officer on his right.
It's very suffocating.
I mean, they couldn't get a bigger table.
I'm sure the size is likely the intention though.
Usually when the local town starts tagging, this is the killer in Facebook comment sections.
I mean, the police have a picture of who it's going to be and Rowan does not fit that picture.
He's young, like very young, early, mid 20s.
He looks fit.
He's well groomed.
He kind of has this soft energy to him.
He kind of looks like an Instagram model.
I mean, not that that measures someone's morality.
If anything, it probably decreases the morality.
But like it's just not what detectives are expecting, especially because he came in here voluntarily.
The detectives were looking for him and he said, I will come to you.
And that is how, for the next four and a half hours.
They're sitting in this gray room together on a square table, and the female detectives are sitting on either side of him.
And the first question they ask Rowan is, how are you?
He looks at them.
You know what?
I feel an absolute emptiness and utter chaos inside.
That's a direct quote.
For the past 24 hours, Rowan says he was scared to go outside.
Everyone in his phone is texting him, sending him social media posts, writing things like you're a wanted man.
They're going to want your head for this.
You're going to go down for this.
So did you do it?
Did you kill her?
So yeah, I mean, he's seen better days, okay?
But why would everyone accuse him of killing the girl that was stabbed 56 times to death in the back of her car?
The car was parked on a residential street.
It's like one of those tree-lined residential streets.
I mean, was the car parked in front of his house?
Did he leave fingerprints?
Why does everyone think it's Rowan?
It's because the woman that was found dead is Sherry.
Cherubin Kay.
But they call her Sherry.
And it's his ex-wife.
They met in 2015.
It's kind of like one of those meet cute dramas he's explaining to the officers.
It was at a subway station.
Rowan is going up the escalator and Sherry is walking down the stairs right next to it.
And he says, quote, it's a very special moment for me.
I mean, I saw this girl, beautiful.
Her hair was so beautiful.
They make eye contact.
The rest is history.
But now Sherry's parents are adamant that Rowan had something to do with their daughter's death.
They just know it.
The detectives ask him, why do you think that they think you're the one who did it?
It's a really, really long story.
This all starts unfolding less than 24 hours ago.
23-year-old Sherry tells her parents that she's going to go see her ex-husband Rowan, at Rowan's house.
But by 10 p.m., she's still not home.
And everyone in the family probably everybody in the town knows that Sherry and Rowan's relationship ex-relationship not good.
Not good at all.
So whatever they're meeting for could not have gone well if she's still not home.
She's also not picking up her phone.
Sherry's parents start getting anxious.
They're thinking, you know, but it's still Rowan.
Like, there's no way that he could do anything.
I mean They jump into their car and they start driving the road that Sherry would have taken to get to Rowan's house.
And in the middle of a residential tree-lined street they stop the car because they're like isn't that her car?
Isn't that not Sherry's Mercedes?
They parked the car in the middle of the road.
They jump out and they start looking in the car.
This is not where Rowan lives.
It's like on the way to Rowan's house.
So it's very weird.
Like it looks like Sherry's car.
It has the same tinted windows, but like maybe it's not her car.
So they stop, they get out and the front is empty.
It's a, E-class coupe, E300.
It's kind of relevant because the back windows are much smaller and they're tinted extra dark.
So nobody's in the front, but now they're trying to peer through the back.
They're cupping their eyes.
They're like sticking their face as close to the window as they can.
And they're like, it's Sherry.
Sherry's in the back.
They see in the backseat, there's a woman with long brown hair.
She's laying just like splayed out on the backseat on her back.
She has a jacket covering her, but you can see her hair.
You can see that she's just laying there and she's not moving.
It's not like she's taking a nap.
Sherry's parents start pounding on the window.
One of them starts with all their strength, just trying to brute force open the door.
It's locked.
The car key isn't inside the car, which is weird, because if this is Sherry's car and Sherry's inside the car, taking a nap or something, would the car not unlock?
By this point, you know, it's a small residential street.
Neighbors have started coming outside.
They're wondering who the hell is screaming.
A lot of them are angry until they see Sherry's parents and they're like oh OK, we have no right to be angry.
Something bad is happening.
We got to help.
Some of them are coming up trying to smash the windows with Sherry's parents.
Someone tries to break in through the passenger seat.
Someone's trying to crawl under the car like someone's calling 911.
It's chaos.
And then the police arrive.
They smash open the car window, unlock the car. they create this like human barricade as they carry sherry out of the car and immediately place her on the ground neighbors the quick-thinking ones they're also creating a wall in between the police and sherry's parents because sherry is gone she's drenched in blood her entire body is covered in punctures stab wounds all around her chest neck face her face looks like she's just been completely torn apart It would make more sense had she been mauled by an animal, but it's clearly much more sinister than that.
Like there are clear knife puncture wounds.
From neighbors' accounts.
Sherry's mom is uncontrollably screaming, trying to fling her own body through the neighbors, through the police, so that she can get to Sherry.
Other neighbors, new neighbors.
They start running out of their house because they see some sort of commotion and they said that it was a really difficult sight.
When they run towards the crowd.
You just see some of the neighbors are standing there with a very somber look.
One person at the scene says, the paramedic who was on site, the one who had actually attempted resuscitation struggled, for instance, to place the breathing mask over her mouth, because her face was so utterly destroyed by stab wounds that the device simply could not create a proper seal.
It was clear that this is no longer a living body.
At the scene, Sherry's dad is announcing while his daughter is on the ground, Rowan did this.
I just know that he has something to do with this.
And now Rowan is sitting inside this police interview room.
Why would Sherry's parents think that he's involved?
Rowan tells them everything about their relationship Sherry getting pregnant, her parents, the soap incident.
You know everything in between.
And then he tells them, you have to understand, I was with Sherry for seven years.
I went through a phase where I was so desperate for revenge, was driven by vengeance.
I was really scared that either she would hurt me I would hurt myself or that she would force me to hurt her.
After four and a half hours, everyone in the interrogation room decides it's time for a break.
Rowan is not formally under arrest.
So he asks to go outside to smoke a cigarette.
And as he's lighting up his cigarette, taking his first quote, I took a deep drag.
The officer, female officer walks out and she's got like a weird look on her face.
And she just says, she's alive.
She's alive?
Yeah, like, what do you mean she's alive?
He just got grilled for the past four and a half hours because they thought he killed her.
What do you mean she's alive?
They confirm that Sherry was just now found alive, caught on CCTV camera, a dead woman walking.
Or at least she was supposed to be dead.
Rowan says in a very confused state, like, Sherry's alive, but then another girl is dead.
Yes.
But then who is the other girl?
And why was she found dead in Sherry's car?
It seems like a modern book trope.
You meet your doppelganger and they slowly come into your life and they decide I think this is my life now.
And they do whatever it takes to slowly drive you crazy, isolate you from your loved ones.
And then one day you go missing.
You come back, you knock on the door and a woman who looks just like you opens the door and she claims that she's you.
She's married to your husband.
Your kids call her mom.
All your friends think that she is you.
But not only that, they like her better than they ever liked you.
What the hell is going on?
Okay, that seems like a new and fresh trope, but it's actually a trope that's been around for hundreds of years, because there is terror in the idea of being replaced.
I think the fear that identity makes someone unique is not unique at all, is a big fear that your identity and your life can be studied and then someone can rehearse it and then they can just take over your life by pretending to be you, as if, like it's just a jacket that you can put on.
Even the classics love this trope.
Dostoevsky wrote Double, where the main character is like this meek government clerk and he meets a man who looks exactly like him.
Same face, same name, same everything, same job, but everyone loves him.
Nobody likes the main character, but everybody loves him.
So his double doesn't just steal the main character's life.
He lives the main character's life better.
Sometimes the doppelganger and the main character, like Edgar Allen Poe's William Wilson.
The main character is being stalked by a double who shares his name face they even have the same birthday.
The doppelganger just keeps ruining the main character's life and reputation, sleeping with married women, pretending to be him, conning people.
Eventually he has enough and he stabs the doppelganger only to find out it's just himself.
Sometimes the doppelganger is you.
Sometimes the doppelganger is very real and you have to run for them.
And sometimes it's a hostile takeover.
Sometimes you see someone who looks just like you and you think, what if I took over their life?
Imagine you meet someone who looks identical to you.
Nobody would ever be able to tell you apart, but they're an oscar-winning actress living in a mansion with an infinity pool and a husband who chases her around just to get her affection because he's a dog on a leash for her.
Her friends are super supportive.
They all have a book club where they read non-fiction books about how to better themselves, but not in the annoying way, in the way that they just want to show up as better friends for one another.
All of her bills are on auto pay.
She doesn't even need to know how much the electricity bill is.
Every month.
She takes spontaneous trips to tokyo for cherry blossom season And all you have to do is kill her to take her life.
Do you do it?
Most people are going to say no, but I think maybe, like most people, should have a few glasses of wine and think about it at night in a way that's nonjudgmental.
It's just part of human nature.
Some people will be a little bit more honest with themselves of I might at least think about it, which is why the new secondary feeling around doppelgangers is it's a death omen when you meet yours, because you're not supposed to meet them.
It's like a glitch in the universe.
When you meet someone who looks just like you, exactly like you, something really bad is going to happen to you, because one of you has to die.
I mean, both of you can't be alive, right?
That's the omen.
But what are the odds that you run into someone who looks exactly like you?
I mean, it's likely very, very low.
Even with social media, you have people who look similar, but I've never seen two people where I'm like No, they could literally take over the other person's life.
They're identical in every sense of the word.
Their loved ones would never know.
So what are the odds that you come across your doppelganger?
But then what do you do when someone who looks just like you messages you on Instagram and wants to meet up?
A total of 26 messages are sent out to 26 people who could all pass somewhat as doppelgangers.
Not really, but kind of.
They're all in their early 20s.
They've got dark long hair, specific facial features.
They're between 5'2", 5'4", in height, brown eyes, dark hair, all of undertone skin.
To say they look identical would be a lie.
But if you take off your contacts and you take three shots of tequila and you sit on a vibration plate on the highest setting while everything is shaky and blurry, and you see a photo lineup of the 24 people, you could potentially mistake a few of them as being each other.
They all have similar features, but so do like half of the world.
If you actually study their faces, they don't actually look alike.
But that's okay, because perfection is not what Sherry is looking for.
Khadijah is one of the 26 girls who receives a message.
A lot of people online have been calling her a beauty blogger and she certainly is beautiful and she certainly has a high interest in makeup.
She also posts on TikTok and Instagram.
But a lot of her friends don't love that title because it almost just the negative connotation.
It almost dumbs her down.
Khadija worked at a cafe.
She worked at a restaurant.
Her best friend that she grew up with says that she was always someone who had a knack for languages.
She just learns languages so quickly so she wanted to become an interpreter, get married, have kids of her own that was her dream.
And then, 23 year old khadija gets a message and it's going to lead to a series of events that is now called the doppelganger case in germany Cherubin K Cherie.
She is not living the life that she's always wanted.
I mean, who is?
But like Cherie isn't someone who likes to just sit there and accept her fate.
Is it her fault that her family immigrated to Germany when she was seven because they were being hunted down and killed for their religion?
Obviously not.
But Cherie is trying to adapt.
Everyone said that during school Cherie was like the center of attention and she very much liked male-centered attention.
And objectively speaking, she just liked to be around guys.
Most of her energy was placed into which guys she could talk to after school.
And then even later in life, it was just, it was all about guys, okay?
And people start stating this is very inappropriate.
But people started stating that she had a very seductive behavior about her.
Which, I mean, is inappropriate to say the least.
But she starts dating this guy named Rowan near the end of high school.
And she's at this subway station kissing him when she hears this familiar voice behind her.
Get your hands off my niece.
It's her uncle.
Which now would be a pertinent time to let you know that Sherry's parents are incredibly strict.
They do not want her dating anybody.
And she's just making out with this guy named Rowan at a subway station.
She is 18, but this is still very young for her family.
And Sherry's uncle is pissed.
And allegedly, instead of informing Sherry's parents about what he saw, he starts blackmailing Sherry.
He's like, I'm just gonna blackmail you.
I don't know what he's getting from Sherry, whether it's money or something else.
I have no clue.
How do we know he blackmailing her?
Yeah.
A lot of inner sources close to Sherry were saying she was getting blackmailed by her uncle.
Wow.
But he starts blackmailing her about her relationship.
Eventually Sherry's parents.
They find out regardless and they urge Sherry and Rowan.
Then you guys just need to get married.
If you're going to date, you're going to fucking get married.
All of this only works out because Rowan is Yazidi.
Yazidiism is one of the oldest continuously practiced religions in the world.
It's an ethno-religious faith.
It's like a closed-door religion.
So you have to either be born into it, you cannot convert into it, and once you leave it, you leave it permanently.
The Yazidi community was centralized in Northern Iraq, Turkey and Syria, which is.
In 2014, ISIS launched a coordinated attack against Yazidis.
The incident has been recognized by the UN as a genocide.
Thousands of Yazidis were beheaded, burned alive, killed.
More than that was they were kidnapped and enslaved and trafficked.
Young boys were forced into ISIS training camps.
Young girls, some as young as nine years old, were either trafficked or sold or gifted to ISIS soldiers.
So in 2014, a lot of Yazidi believers they fled to neighboring countries, and Germany ends up being like a huge one for the diaspora.
A lot of the Yazidi community had already been steadily growing in Germany.
So people are like, we got to go to Germany.
Now, two important things to note.
One.
There is a lot of tension between older Yazidi family members in Germany and younger generations of Yazidi in Germany because there's a lot of complaint.
I mean, a lot of these elders, they're like, we fled for our lives because of our religion.
Like these are our traditions.
We need to stand by this.
We almost lost our lives for what we believe in.
And then the younger ones that are born in Germany or have been raised in Germany.
They're like I just want to scroll on TikTok and date people.
And a huge problem is in the Yazidi religion.
You can only marry another Yazidi and they have to be in your caste.
Yazidi has a caste system.
So the top are religious and community leaders.
Then you have the priests and then you have the majority.
So you have three castes and you have to marry someone in your same caste.
Now A lot of people in Germany, the younger Yazidis they're like.
Well, I don't even know if I want to marry someone who's also Yazidi, because most of the people that I grow up with are not.
But Rowan happens to be Yazidi and so is Sherry.
And not only that, they're the same cast.
So, despite the fact that the two families Rowan's parents and Sherry's parents do not get along, they actually really, really don't like each other.
They end up getting married and they open up a hair salon together.
It's mainly Rowan's.
He has his own barbershop.
Sherry starts doing like facials there and sometimes she does updos for brides and these like women's hairstyles.
But aside from that and a few strange incidents like Sherry breaking into Rowan's brother's house and then taking a taser to his neck and tasing him in the back of the neck and then immediately apologizing and begging for forgiveness other than some strange incidents like that, the couple seems normal.
What do you mean?
What does that mean?
They got into a fight and she just decided to physically assault him and attack him?
She felt like Rowan's brother did not like her.
So she broke into his house and tased him in the back of the neck with a taser.
And then he turned around and she started apologizing profusely.
Fascinating.
So you think she tried to attack him thinking that he wouldn't find out, but turned out he saw her?
Perhaps because she does try to kill him later, but we'll get more into that in a second.
Yeah.
So from the outside, aside from some of the weird incidents that people have kind of heard about, the couple seems normal enough.
And then in 2020, Sherry is barely 20 years old and she gets pregnant, but not with Rowan's baby.
He says their entire relationship, he could practically smell the other men on Sherry.
Rowan calls Sherry's dad very emotional.
He's like, I can't do it anymore.
He won't even let Sherry's very domineering dad talk.
He's like, let me talk.
It's my chance to talk.
I'm speaking now.
These are direct quotes.
I have nothing to lose.
I'm going to talk and you will listen.
Rowan tells Sherry's dad everything.
And at the end, he tells him, I'm not going to do this anymore.
I don't want to be with Sherry anymore.
And then there's just silence.
And then on the other end, Sherry's dad tells Rowan, if you abandon my daughter, it will cost three human lives.
What does that even mean to this?
Rowan just responds, then I would rather die by a bullet from you than die a little every day with your daughter.
Who are the three lives?
Did he say?
It's going to work out in a weird way.
He never said.
Now, maybe Sherry is so done with her life, she decides she doesn't want to live it anymore.
Maybe she can take someone else's life, like all of those thriller books, find someone that looks like her, that's living a better life than her, and then get rid of them and resume their identity.
That's the plot of thriller books.
But that's not what Sherry wants to do.
Sherry has a completely different plan.
Instead of taking someone else's fate, she wants someone... to take her fate.
She wants someone to die for her.
And that is how Khadija, a woman who knows nothing about Sherry, who has nothing to do with Sherry.
The only connection between the two of them is that Sherry thinks that they look alike.
I will say Khadija is much more beautiful.
But that's why Khadija is found with her face bashed in, with brass knuckles stabbed in the face, neck and chest, dead in the back of Sherry's Mercedes.
Within days, Sherry is brought in and she's treated as the prime suspect of what the police originally thought was her murder.
So she goes from being the presumed victim to the potential suspect.
And by this point, a few things have occurred.
When a body was found in the back of Sherry's car, with dark brown hair, just like Sherry, her face is disfigured from stab wounds, but she's about the same height, the same weight.
Everybody assumed it was Sherry.
Sherry's parents went on to facebook to post about her death, her murder, begging locals to help identify who they think that did this to their daughter.
Even though they think it's rowan, sherry's parents are telling the police that if they had to put their money on anybody, it would be rowan.
The whole town is ready to form a mob and go burn down rowan, the ex-husband's house.
Meanwhile, the authorities are quietly doing a dna test because while they still i mean, they still have to make sure that this is sherry.
And there's something curious The body in the car has a small tattoo on their arm, and Sherry's parents are adamant that she does not have any tattoos.
So either Sherry lied about getting a tattoo or something weird is happening.
And people keep calling into the police dispatch trying to frantically explain that they saw a dead woman.
There's a guy who's like, I saw a dead woman at a pizzeria, I swear.
So the police decide to bring her, the town ghost in, the victim, the suspect, we don't know, okay?
All we know is that Sherry is not that hard to find.
She's not deep in hiding.
She's just like there all the time.
And she tells the police, it's the Albanians.
And the police are like, what?
The Albanians are after me.
The Albanian mafia want to kill me.
What?
Okay.
So the first person that Sherry points them to is a man named Shakir.
He's the one that did this.
He's after Sherry.
So the police go after him and they also arrest Shakir.
The investigators, they start putting the pieces together.
They quickly arrest Sherry and Shakir, but they still need to figure out who the body in the car is.
They cross-reference with missing persons alerts in the neighboring areas, not just this town but all the surrounding towns.
And they identify the body to belong to Khadija.
And I'm only saying first names, because German privacy laws identify each person as just their first name and last name's first initial.
So it's like Cherubin K Once authorities figure out that the woman in the car is Khadija, they can actually start getting somewhere.
They go through Khadija's phone, they go through Cherie's phone and they find a series of odd DMs on Instagram.
The first one reads, Hey love, would you like to take part in a music video?
You have very good charisma and you will be paid very well.
You don't have to do much.
I would be happy if you would get in touch.
Best wishes.
And it's like a random account that has no followers.
That account belongs to Cherub and K, Cherie.
I mean just reaching out to Khadija for a job to be part of a music video.
Khadija is like hey, I'd be up for it.
But I guess it depends on the genre of music and where it is.
It's a well-known artist, and you probably know them too.
Okay, what's their name?
Maybe I know her.
And where would the shoot be located?
The shoot would be in Offenburg.
You definitely know her, but this would all have to be kept secret until the song is released.
They tell Khadijah the name of the singer, and it's a pretty big artist named Loon.
So Loon has over a million fans on Spotify, almost 400,000 followers on TikTok.
And Khadijah thinks, I mean, it's a secret project, so I can't tweet about it.
But like I could DM Loon and ask Loon directly.
And the police find all of this on Khadijah's phone.
And she's like, I hope you can give me an answer because I'm very, very unsure.
A woman messaged me saying I'm filming a video, music video supposedly for you.
And now I don't know.
I'm sure, you know, I don't know.
I'm not sure if it's fake or not.
I don't want to go there.
And then something happens.
Loon responds to her, fake sister, don't go.
Wow.
And she responds, oh, okay, thank you.
So Khadija ignores the music video request DM, but then another one comes in from another account.
The DM means, hey, good evening.
We're looking for girls to test our new lasers.
Would you like to collaborate?
We offer permanent hair removal with the world's fastest and most effective laser, 100% pain-free.
If you're interested in permanent hair removal, you can contact me at any time.
We work with a state-of-the-art medical grade laser that costs $2,500 per session.
So they're saying if you come to the salon and you get this laser treatment done and you just post about it, it's a free laser treatment.
The only problem is Khadija lives 100 miles away from the salon because they give her the address to the salon.
Is it their home salon?
It's Rowan's Barbershop.
Oh, wow.
And it's a three hour trip.
So the salon manager is like well, you know, I can pick you up from your house and then drop you off at the salon, do the salon laser for you and then drop you back off at your house.
All the DMs lead straight back to Sherry.
August 17th 2022, sherry and shakir get into the car together.
They drive and they pick up khadijah, and on the way to the salon, it's getting dark.
The sun is setting it in.
Between khadijah's house and the salon, there's like this very long stretch of woods, it's like a forest.
Sherry pulls over, pretending to be lost, and she asks khadijah to get out of the car to read the road sign.
And that's when Sherry and Shakir both jump out.
Shakir jumps on top of Khadija and starts stabbing her.
They put Khadija back into the backseat of the car, drive all the way back into town, park Sherry's car on a residential road between Sherry's parents' house and her ex-husband Rowan's house, and then they leave.
Sherry and Shakir leave, but they don't flee.
They don't skip town.
They just kind of linger around until they're both arrested.
Why don't they leave town?
What's their plan?
Who the hell is Shakir?
And what the hell does he have to do with any of this?
And why does he partake in this murder?
Weeks before Khadija is killed, Sherry is going around being what one can only assume is the world's most insufferable.
Pick me.
She's going to the bars in town getting drunk, leaning in close to all the guys that she's friends with, acquaintances with random dudes.
Would you kill for me?
She keeps asking them.
Some of the guys think it's a great way to try and impress her and not go home alone.
So they're like, of course I would.
I would do anything for you.
But they don't mean it.
She knows they don't mean it.
Other guys are put off.
Some of them are straight up looking at Cherry and going, why would someone die for you?
She says things like, I can be free forever and stay with you all the time.
For most people, most normal, sane people Sherry's reasoning that she can be free, stay with him all the time.
Intimate relationship.
It's not worth killing someone for.
Except apparently Shakir.
That's what the prosecutors are arguing.
Arguing what?
Shakir meets Sherry a few weeks before the murder.
And she's like, would you kill for me?
And we can be together.
And he just does it.
So that's why they're saying that's his motive.
Yes.
He killed for her.
Yeah.
That's fucking insane.
But none of these even make sense.
Nobody even has an answer for why Sherry and Shakir kill Khadija.
None of it makes sense.
And Sherry and Shakira, they're not going to give honest answers.
So naturally, people have to come up with their own theories, even the prosecutors, with what they believe happened.
The very first theory to come about is the doppelganger theory.
Sherry doesn't like her life.
She cannot escape her religious parents.
And instead of walking away and starting over or just standing up to them, she decides she needs to fake her own death to get away from them.
But she can't just disappear because they will never stop looking for her.
The only way to get everyone to stop looking for her is if they know for certain she's not coming back.
There needs to be a body, and that person needs to look like Sherry, which is why, weeks leading up to Khadijah's murder, prosecutors find in Sherry's phone she's got multiple Instagram accounts.
She's DMing everyone that looks similar, even remotely similar, to her, asking if they want a free laser treatment as long as they post an exchange on Instagram.
Khadija agrees.
Sherry picks her up, has her killed and places Khadija's body in her own car on a street that her parents are likely going to go down looking for her.
They're going to find her body.
They're going to think it's Sherry because Khadija's face was so violently disfigured.
And everyone's just going to assume it's Sherry because like, who else would it be?
And then Sherry would move on.
What does Shakira get out of it?
Probably intimate relations, love, who knows?
The prosecutors are a little constantly wishy-washy about what Shakira gets out of it.
But more on that later.
The problem with the doppelganger theory, though, and there's a lot.
The first one being, Sherry has four criminal defense attorneys.
Two of them are court-appointed, the other two her parents are paying for, and her attorneys argue that everyone is being racist by stating that they two look alike and that Sherry sought out a doppelganger.
Just by the fact that all of them have dark hair and are of Iraqi descent does not make them doppelgangers.
So they're saying if they're not doppelgangers, then this whole prosecutor theory of the doppelganger murder falls apart.
If they're not doppelgangers.
And so, like this, becomes a whole thing during the trial where everyone's like are they doppelgangers or not?
And the judges are like it doesn't matter if they're not doppelgangers, because everyone in the room can tell that Khadija is exponentially more beautiful than Sherry will ever be, which also depicts a level of self-awareness in Sherry herself, right?
But they're saying it doesn't matter if they're doppelgangers, as long as Sherry believed that they could be.
Yeah, exactly.
The attorneys are arguing, but that means, if they're not doppelgangers, Sherry is not faking her own death with Khadija's body.
That's what an argument.
The prosecutors though, still have to prove that Sherry has motive for this theory, that she desperately needs to get away from her family and she thinks that, like she's crazy enough that she thinks this will work.
Sherry is evaluated by a psychiatrist and she spends four days with the psychiatrist.
She comes out with no strong diagnosis, no sign of a disorder.
Not that that would absolve any guilt.
However, she's mentally there, she's fit to stand trial.
The psychiatrist testifies in court that she does have a tendency towards conflict.
She's extremely impulsive, manipulative.
She believes manipulation is the best way to get what she wants.
And most importantly, a part that the defense latches onto, right?
The defense is like, the prosecutors say this is a doppelganger murder.
Let me tell you why it's not.
During Sherry's psychiatric evaluation, it is confirmed that her IQ stands at around 86, which they describe as quote just shy of a learning disability in Germany.
Anything below 85 is indicative of a learning disability in Germany.
So the defense are like, she's too dumb.
To be doing a doppelganger murder?
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
So by this point, okay, just to fill you in, Khadija is found in Sherry's car.
Very quickly, Sherry and Shakira are arrested.
And everyone in the news becomes obsessed with this case.
Everyone in Germany becomes obsessed with this case.
It goes to trial and it's actually one of the longest criminal trials in recent German history, especially in this area, because there's over 100 witnesses brought in.
And the confusing part is...
It seems like the prosecutors kind of drift between theories of what they think happened.
And everyone's just trying to figure out what the hell happened.
And the two defendants, Sherry and Shakir, Sherry's always lying.
Anytime she opens her mouth, you can assume she's lying.
She does testify, but nobody believes her.
Shakir, dead silent.
Won't say a single word.
So everyone's like, why would you guys do this to a random girl that you don't even know?
And the only connection is you were looking for people who looked like you and you think that she looked like you.
That's really the only connection.
Right.
Other than all the physical evidence.
Right.
There's no clear motive.
Exactly.
Committing the crime.
And so every motive that the prosecutors bring about the defense are just trying to poke holes of like well, she's too dumb.
She's too dumb to carry something like this out.
So the defense are like, she barely has a brain, okay?
That's what the defense is arguing, which the prosecutors, they start arguing back.
We never said she was smart.
If she was very, very smart, perhaps she would have realized how horrendous this plan is.
But nevertheless, the prosecutors argue, the motive is there.
Forget intelligence for a second.
Sherry has motive.
Her life is falling apart.
She wants to get away.
So she wants someone to take her place for her death.
She wants to be dead to her family.
The prosecutors bring in about 100 witnesses that testify about Sherry and Shakir, and one of the most important witnesses on that list.
He went into hiding before the trial because he was terrified of sitting up on the stand.
He thought someone was going to kill him to keep him quiet.
Is the ex-husband Rowan.
Who is he scared of?
To kill him?
Because remember sherry's dad was like three people are gonna.
Oh the dad, that's right.
So he comes in, he sits on the stand and he starts testifying about his relationship, his marriage with sherry, and It's not looking good.
Multiple witnesses by this point have already testified that Sherry is known as a gas station groupie.
It's like a thing when you live in the suburbs in a lot of places, including Germany, where you have nowhere to hang out.
People just like loiter in gas stations.
In the parking lots.
They come in, rev their engine, they pump gas and then they park near the gas station.
They get a slurpee and a beer and then they sit in their driver's seat, rev their engine some more and then hang out.
So she likes to talk to guys at the gas station.
You can't even fascinating pay me to stay in a gas station for two seconds longer than i actually have to.
Yeah, All the guys with their loud cars.
They like to sit there, and Sherry will show up in her Mercedes.
And one German reporter describes them like this.
And I don't know what this means.
They live in the suburbs, but they like to feel as if they're living in New York City in the Bronx.
Oh, okay.
Like they think they're cool.
Right, right, right.
Like, okay.
Yeah, I can see the visual.
Okay.
Okay.
It's almost as if this Mercedes also changed Sherry.
Rowan is testifying like she has an obsession with this car.
She loved this lifestyle, beautiful cars, fast driving, easy money.
That's a quote.
She's, you know, helping move drugs.
And it's very important for her quote to drive up and down the famous roads in Munich, listening to loud music and attracting attention.
It's like the people that drive circles on rodeo drive.
And you're like, well, I've seen you 20 times.
And he says the beginning of their marriage started out pretty normal.
Eventually, Rowan starts noticing this very obvious pattern.
Quote she was always looking for arguments with me, just so she could storm out in anger.
She'd be like, fine, I'm done with you.
I'm not doing this anymore.
Run out the house and be gone for three days.
And she would block his number.
I mean, he can't even ask where she is, who she's with.
And he can see right through it.
It's not like a real fight.
Like she's doing this so that she can go be a gas station groupie.
And she'll go out with a bunch of guys each time.
They're reportedly all in like a criminal world.
If he tries to talk to her about it.
It's just another way for her to start another fight that lasts three days.
So she can go out and loiter at gas stations.
And that's how she ends up pregnant with some other man's child at 20.
And she ends up terminating the pregnancy.
Rowan tells her he's fed up with her and he tells her, you know, I'm going to talk to your parents.
I've already called your dad.
She turns around and this is in their apartment.
She hits him on the back of the head.
She starts throwing things out of the cabinets.
She grabs a bar of soap and is like whacking him with a bar of soap.
He flees to the bathroom and quote, she slams my head onto the mirror.
Everything goes black.
I start feeling dizzy.
So then when he wakes up, he's like, I can't do this anymore.
I got to pack my bags.
I'm going to go stay with my brother.
He gets into the car and he starts having an epileptic seizure.
The police get called out.
There's footage of this.
The police getting called out, him having a seizure in the car.
And he says that because of this marriage, because of Sherry's violence, he had his jaw dislocated.
He lost 30% of his vision in the right eye.
I mean, these are all documented violent altercations.
Right.
February 2018.
She's convicted of aggravated assault for teasing her brother-in-law in the neck Rowan's brother.
October 2021, she tried to run her husband over with her car.
November 2021, she assaulted her husband with a bar of soap and smashed his face into a mirror.
There's a protection order prohibiting her from even approaching her ex-husband.
By this point, a few weeks leading up to Khadijah's murder, Rowan says the families have facilitated at least three peace meetings.
So in Yazidi religion, marital disputes are resolved through community mediation.
I imagine like this is when the marital disputes become irreconcilable.
But okay, side note, divorce and separation are a huge thing in Yazidi culture.
Yazidiism is a closed religion.
So you can only be born Yazidi and you must marry another Yazidi.
Or else if you marry someone that's not Yazidi, you get excommunicated.
Some communities have loosened up the rules a little bit to say that you're no longer excommunicated by your loved ones, but it really depends.
And from my Reddit research, it seems as if divorce is not unheard of.
It's not encouraged, but more people are open to divorce.
However, if after divorce, you marry someone that is not Yazidi, that could lead to excommunication.
So these peace meetings it's like when you're about to have a divorce all the male elders from both families will have meetings and try to talk to the couple to figure out how they can resolve their marital dispute.
They have three mediation sessions.
The first two, Rowan's like, I'm not gonna do this, okay?
Your daughter is like practically certified insane.
And they just keep telling him how much she loves him, how much he means to her, and all this nonsense.
And Rowan is still trying to save Sherry's face, but he wants a divorce.
And finally at the third mediation, he's like, I know what I need to say.
I just need to tell the truth.
He says if a husband says your daughter has been cheating on me, then typically the father of the wife will tell the husband.
Okay, like you, decide what you want to do now.
And he's like, I want a divorce.
And that's the last time he saw Sherry.
She moved out, moved back in with her parents.
And that was a huge problem for Sherry.
A lot of Sherry's friends were called in to testify by the prosecutors, because the prosecutors are like the doppelganger theory.
Remember, she needs to get away from her parents.
Her friends are sitting on the stand and a lot of German reporters are like this is the most insane trial that we've ever covered in our lives.
These little gas station groupies are cursing at the defense attorneys, are cursing at the prosecutors.
You mean, all her friends are also gas station groupies.
Yeah, and all of them are sitting.
Like some german reporter was like i've never seen someone sit with their legs as wide open.
You know, like guys like to pretend like their ding dong is so massive that they can't even.
Oh, you're saying some of the guys are sitting with their legs, are like reaching as far as they can.
Yeah, in a court setting is just inappropriate, but also i think it's like interesting At that point they're like doing splits.
So these people are out here supporting Sherry.
No, they're just being called in to testify and they just like snap at everyone.
Interesting.
All right.
So Sherry is complaining to her friends.
Her friends are testifying like, yeah, I saw her after the divorce.
And she's complaining that her dad would only let her leave the house for 20 minutes every single day.
So she goes from living with Rowan being able to go out for three days at a time, be a gas station groupie.
And what's Rowan going to do about it?
Nothing.
But now that she's back with her very strict religious parents after a divorce, they're in full control.
They're not letting her out of the house.
They're not letting her be a gas station groupie.
They're controlling everything that she does.
And she's sick of it.
One witness said, I saw her in the middle of the road.
She was like parked on the side of the road.
All of her car doors were open.
The trunk was open.
So I was like, is she looking for something?
I thought maybe her car broke down.
So I pulled over and I'm like, do you need help, Sherry?
Like did something happen to your car?
And she dramatically pulled something out.
And there's a little tracker in her fingers.
And she just tells me, my father, that son of a bitch.
I guess she found a tracker in her car and her dad is tracking her.
So the prosecutors are like look look, she has every reason to want to get away from her family and she can't.
Then the prosecutors bring in Rowan's brother.
Yeah.
You know, the bizarre incident where she uses a taser to get him in the neck.
The brother-in-law testifies.
She showed up to my house.
I didn't even know her really at the time.
I didn't even know who she was.
She introduced herself to me as a friend of my brother.
She was completely distraught.
She was crying, claimed that Rowan was stealing and using drugs.
And then she suddenly tased me in the back of the neck with a taser.
That's their first time meeting?
Yeah.
What in the world?
And then she ran down the stairs.
Then she comes back up the stairs.
He doesn't even chase after her because he's like on the ground, tased.
She comes back up the stairs and said, I don't know why I did that.
I'm so sorry.
Please don't tell anybody.
And starts profusely apologizing.
And he called it.
He said, I naturally went to the hospital and filed a police report.
And he says, and then they got married.
And then I met her uncles.
The entire family is weird.
They're weird.
They also hated me, the brother.
They just hated me.
One of Sherry's uncles said about Rowan's brother, we have a plan for him.
Whatever that means.
Yeah.
They just keep saying weird things.
And Sherry blames the brother-in-law stating, he made my life a living hell for Rowan and me.
He was the one who persuaded my husband to force me to terminate my pregnancy.
So Sherry is claiming that she was pregnant with Rowan's baby.
And Rowan was like, that was definitely not my baby.
Trust me.
And Sherry is like well, your brother was the one that convinced you to convince me to terminate the pregnancy.
I mean, both rowan and his brother are like that's definitely not true.
Okay, now rowan's brother testifies and then they bring in the prosecutors.
Then bring in another guy.
His name is vulcan.
He gets up on the stand and he tells the judges i'm the guy that sherry paid to kill her brother-in-law, rowan's brother, and i was like what the hell is happening?
He's like that wasn't the original money-making plan, first of all okay.
So when I met Sherry, originally we were going to go into business together to open up a COVID testing center.
Because remember back then, you used to have to go to a testing center.
They shove a three-foot-long Q-tip up your brain like you're getting lobotomized.
And then they wanted to do that.
But instead Sherry starts talking about perhaps, before they do that, maybe you could kill someone first.
And Vulcan is like, I should start going along with it.
And the prosecutors are like, why are you going along with it?
And they said, I don't know.
She just seemed kind of dumb.
And she had money.
So he's like, I was going along with them.
Sherry offers him $10,000.
Kill Rowan's brother.
I'll give you 5,000 euros in advance.
Sherry thinks that her brother-in-law is the reason that Rowan even wants to get a divorce right now.
So, you know, once he's gone, Rowan's going to be obsessed with her again.
He's the one that supports this separation, so it must be his problem.
The two of them, Vulcan and Sherry, they put together their approximately seven brain cells.
They come up with this masterful plan.
The plan is he's going to kidnap Rowan's brother administer, date rape pills to him, change him into swim trunks, throw him into Lake Starnberg so that his death would appear to be a drowning.
She tells Volkan all I need is photos to prove that you did murder him and you'll get 10000 euros, 5000 euros in advance, right now.
And if successful, quote, this day will be more beautiful than any other day on earth.
She also sends him an 18 minute voice message where she's enthusiastically screaming no mercy, no mercy.
Make sure you shove the pills deep in his throat.
They played all that?
Yeah, in the trial.
Obviously, the testimony from Volkin and the corresponding evidence is damning to say the least.
But her attorney tries to spin it.
Her attorney says.
According to my client's own statement, this specific allegation of wrongdoing presents itself in a completely different light.
The claim is that a man proactively approached her not the other way around and allegedly offered to kill her brother-in-law.
That raises a distinct set of questions, entirely independent of whether she genuinely desired the act or took the offer seriously, or whether she might have subsequently withdrawn from the plan.
They said a whole lot of nothing, but they're basically trying to be like maybe she was testing him to see if he would do it.
She did give him the 5,000 euros.
She did.
And, uh, Vulcan argues in court that he just did it to get some easy money.
You know, she has money and she's also a bit stupid.
That's a direct quote.
He testifies that at the trial.
But the interesting thing is like the prosecutor is like, thank you so much for testifying.
So you're actually arrested for fraud because regardless, you took money and did not deliver a service.
You took money and you didn't kill someone.
That's a fraud.
Yes.
So they arrest him for fraud.
You're kidding me.
They also charge him with tax evasion, which is apparently a very German thing.
They take tax evasion more seriously than the Americans.
That's crazy.
That's considered a fraud?
Yeah.
Maybe he tried to get a lower deal.
What?
I can't believe this.
He got sentenced.
He had his own separate trial.
The fake hitman had his own little separate trial and he was found guilty and imprisoned for a year.
Wait, how is that?
I don't understand.
It's probably something in their code, like their legislation.
Okay.
You think it will happen in America too?
I cannot imagine this being fraud though.
We have very specific laws for conspiracy to commit murder.
Maybe they don't have like specific laws, so this is the one that fits the best.
But what i'm saying is, let's say he never intended to kill and he still took the money.
He's like i'm just here to scam someone.
That's, that's fraud.
Yeah, i think that's why they maybe they charged him with fraud, because he's not like trying to kill, so he's just a con man.
Okay, this is weird.
Okay Yeah, it's all very strange, but they get him for fraud and tax evasion because he didn't pay taxes on the 5000 euros he got in cash.
And as if this case can't get even more confusing, the main prosecutor theory is that this is a doppelganger murder.
And that's actually what it's known for just when it goes viral on a global scale.
But that also kind of has these plot holes, because it's an escape where nobody flees.
If she got someone to be a doppelganger, killed them so that she could flee.
She doesn't flee.
Sherry is literally arrested driving around leisurely through town.
That's how the arresting officer describes her demeanor.
If she killed Khadija to take her place as a dead body, would she not skip town and start a new life?
She doesn't do that.
So then some people argue it's because she was waiting for Rowan to get arrested.
She's not trying to die and disappear and start a new life.
She wanted the police to arrest Rowan for her murder and then she would leave.
She was gone girling him.
But that also necessarily doesn't make sense, because there's no indication that she was tracking Rowan tracking the investigation.
She was genuinely just hanging out.
By the way, she also went back to her gas station groupies.
I knew it after she was dead and they're like aren't you supposed to be dead?
And she's like i'm in some shit, some people are after me, they're trying to frame me anyway.
Yeah, this is wow.
It just doesn't make any sense, which then leads to a black magic theory, and this was a theory that was heavily debated in court.
Eventually, the court denies it.
A lot of the black magic theory comes from humans doing what they do best and kind of just being idiots.
So in Sherry's car, when police search it, they find two things two small pieces of paper folded together, one into a triangle and then another one into a square, and then taped together with scotch tape and then wrapped in foil.
When they're unfolded, people discover writing on them that nobody can decipher.
And one of them has a picture of Sherry and her ex-husband Rowan taped to the back.
But the words?
No one can decipher the words.
So this theory comes about that Sherry killed Khadija as a human sacrifice so that Rowan would come back to her.
That's why she doesn't flee or escape town.
She stays.
When they ask about this paper, Sherry's like, I've never seen that before ever in my life.
Which is refuted by the fact that her fingerprints are found inside.
Like after you unfold the scotch tape and the foil, it's like inside.
Then there were news reports that Sherry had been online searching specifically for a magician.
So all of this is coming together until they're able to find out who wrote this undecipherable words on the paper.
It's a religious leader in the Yazidi faith.
They're called sheikhs.
She's looking online for a religious leader.
But the way that they translate it is like she's looking online for a magician, because the word they use to describe their religious leaders in Yazidi sounds like magician.
So they're like, she was looking for a magician, dark magic.
So then she finds one and the prosecutors find him.
They bring him to court.
They're like, tell us about this black magic that you're doing.
And they're just basically talismans.
So you know in religion when you want to be blessed or you are looking for specific things in your life.
Religious leaders in certain religions will write talismans for you on pieces of paper.
But the whole questioning gets weird because he's illiterate.
So he wrote it, but he can't tell anyone what it means.
There's no meaning, it's just a bunch of scribbles yeah, and like, the prosecutors don't believe that.
So they're like no, it's black magic.
Just tell us it's black magic.
And then he's like no, actually i'm genuinely illiterate.
And they're like no, we don't believe you.
And then they make him try to read.
It was just like a whole thing.
And then he was like it was revealed to me in my dream, so that's why i wrote it.
What is going on?
The judges ultimately rejected the theory of human sacrifice, which means why the hell did Sherry and Shakir kill Khadija?
Maybe, instead of focusing on Sherry, the answer lies with Shakir, because nobody can figure out what he has to do with any of this.
Most people believe he is the one that physically carried out the killing and stabbed Khadija.
Medical examiners say that it could have been a man.
It could have been a woman based off of the stab wounds, but it's really important.
So in Germany for murder, you get a life sentence, but you're eligible for parole after 15 years.
Unless, unless there's special circumstances, and stabbing someone 56 times is a special circumstance, which means that you would be eligible for parole after 25 years.
So Sherry and Shakira's attorneys are like, no, she's the one that stabbed her.
And then they're like, no, he's the one that stabbed her.
And everyone's just trying to figure out.
And it's just, I don't really think it matters.
Throw both of them in for it.
Khadijah's dad says, in court, I faced my daughter's killers.
I was only 10 feet apart from them.
What do you want to say to Shakir?
I want to eat him alive.
I want to devour him whole.
There are text messages between Shakir and Sherry.
And the day before Khadijah is killed, Sherry is messaging Shakir.
Things like tomorrow is going to be wild.
There's going to be a lot to do tomorrow.
I'm looking forward to it.
This is the night before the murder.
After killing Khadija, they both head back to Shakir's place.
There's no evidence that either of them are romantically involved afterwards, but they part ways and both of them are kind of on the run, kind of not on the run.
They both stop by the gas station.
Shakir goes to the gas station too to hang out with his friends.
He's got scratch wounds on his arms.
He even tells a friend, I killed an innocent girl for this whore.
They're like, who's the whore?
Who's the girl you killed?
He doesn't clarify.
The brass knuckles are found in Shakir's apartment.
His DNA is found on Khadija.
The prosecutors, they just keep going back and forth on what Shakir's motive to help Sherry was.
I mean, this is a girl that he's only known for a few weeks.
Why would he kill Khadija for her?
So sometimes the prosecutors think that it's sex.
Sometimes it's money.
There's no evidence that money was transferred, but maybe it could be the promise of money.
Shakira is silent the entire trial.
He does not testify.
He never gives a defense.
He never tells them, no, this is what happened.
Sherry.
On the other hand, she gets up on the stand and she says let me tell you the day of the murder.
My original plan was to just meet with Shakir, but he requests that I bring a can of gasoline with me.
So she does.
She meets up with him.
He takes her phone and then he guides her to a strange address.
She's the one driving.
He tells her to park the car.
She does.
And then a girl walks up to the car, approaches the car and, just based off the energy, it seems like the girl and Shakir know each other.
Girl gets into the seat, shakir moves to the back and sherry's in the driving seat and shakir is telling sherry where to drive.
They start driving into the forest, but out of nowhere.
Shakir's like pull over, i need a smoke.
She pulls over in the forest, he goes, takes a pee, everybody gets out so they can smoke a cigarette.
Once sherry's done, she walks back to the car to get in.
But then she hears a scream.
Hey, She whips around and she sees Shakira just pummeling the girl Khadija, in the face with brass knuckles.
Quote, he had brass knuckles in his hand and was hitting her on the head right on the right side.
I think it was against her eyes and forehead.
When I saw that, I was shocked.
I fell to my knees.
I screamed.
I was paralyzed for a moment.
I couldn't breathe.
I saw him continue hitting her head.
So I ran over to them and with all my strength I pushed him away from her and I yelled at him to stop.
She was gasping and whimpering.
He grabbed my arm, dragged me to the side.
And when I looked up at him, I saw his face, his anger and the way he yelled at me.
And I got scared.
I thought, now it's my turn.
He's going to come after me.
I took a few steps backward, turned around, covered my ears.
He grabbed my arm, pulled me towards the car and threw me inside.
And then I turned around and she's she's in the driver's side now.
She turns around and Khadija is in the back somehow lying there.
He dragged her into the car.
Shakir gets into the passenger seat and Sherry says he threatened to kill my family if I didn't stay in the car.
He wanted me to keep driving, but because my legs were shaking so bad he had to hold my knee steady as I pressed on the accelerator.
He's screaming at me, drive, drive now.
Then they get to the road.
And at some point he tells her to pull over on a supermarket, like parking lot.
He tells her to get out of the car.
She gets out the car.
And then she hears screaming inside the car.
And he's just stabbing Khadija in the back seat, which the police are like.
Actually, the evidence shows that Khadija was stabbed in the forest.
But anyway, she says, I was frozen.
I fell.
I lay on the floor.
I covered my ears.
I didn't dare look.
And then I looked toward the car and I could see the two of them.
It was like they were fighting.
She was screaming inside the car.
Eventually, everything was covered in blood.
He walked around the car, threw the knife across the street.
He put on a fresh t-shirt, pushed me back into the car, took Rowan's jacket out of my trunk, covered Khadija with it.
He gets in, orders me to keep driving.
He had in his hand a different, a new knife.
I steered the car back onto the road.
He pressed down on my leg again because I didn't have the strength.
And then at the end of all of this, she looks at Khadijah's dad in court.
I can't get the images of what he did out of my head.
That's crazy.
Yeah.
She spoke with confidence?
Yeah.
A lot of people said it was terrifying because she was just emotionless the whole time in a very creepy way.
And a lot of people testify about Shakir and they say that he's actually a harmless guy, which I mean I don't know what people's perception of someone can even hold up in court.
His ex-girlfriends testify like he's never had any rage or anger towards women.
I don't know what any of that means, but something is definitely odd with Shakir.
An inmate says that he was given a list of 13 people from Shakir and he was told that he will get paid per witness that is killed.
Who's paying who?
Shakira is like, here's a list.
And he gives it to a cellmate.
And he's like, for each person that is killed before the trial, I'll give you money.
That's what the inmate claims.
So he wants this inmate to pull some strings to kill some witnesses outside.
Yes.
Now Shakira's attorney is like, that's not true at all.
The prison guards.
They search the cell and they find a list of witnesses and their addresses, with plus or minus signs next to them.
It doesn't necessarily mean it's a hit list, but it is there.
What does plus or minus mean?
No one knows whether it could be they're going to say something positive or negative about me.
Or I want them dead or I want them alive.
Hmm.
Nobody knows.
And just when everyone thinks that this trial is going to wrap up, most people can't even make sense of the theory.
I mean, maybe the doppelganger theory is the most relevant, and then they're just kind of dumb that they don't flee.
I don't know.
That's like the one that most people are going with.
Everyone just thinks Sherry is dumb, but this is the theory that she thought.
This is the motive that she originally had.
Then they bring in right.
As they're about to wrap, a man walks in to testify and his name is Furcon.
Some people call him Furfur.
He's a local rapper.
He says that he has a connection to all of them.
He's like, I'm connected to Shakir and to Sherry and to the victim Khadija.
He knows Shakir through a mutual friend and he claims that he was dating Khadija and he went back to Sherry's hotel with her.
Let me explain.
Furkan is an interesting character.
Okay, so he mainly stakes a claim at the local club.
He's not a gas station groupie, he's a club groupie.
And he is described by people who know him as, quote, Furkan is trying to break into the rap scene.
He's a big flashy guy with a 10 foot long cloud of perfume trailing behind him.
That's pretty much what he's like.
He's like, I'm here now, look at me.
So everyone, I gotta be the center of attention.
Well, recently, Sherry asked Furkan to go back to her hotel with her.
And there was this whole incident.
This is what Furkan is testifying.
He went back to the hotel with Sherry.
She had a hotel room.
And she's just like trying to unbuckle his pants, is trying to kiss up on him.
And he flat out rejects her.
He's like, she was trying to pull down my boxer shorts.
And I pushed her away.
And I said piss off you slut.
Okay, whether this is true or not, it's up for you to believe.
He thinks that maybe she was upset that he was in love with khadijah.
What, yeah?
So some people are like either sherry was rejected and was upset that he liked khadijah, so she killed khadijah, or some people are like well, maybe he told her to get rid of khadijah and then they could be together and that's why she killed khadijah.
Regardless, the day that the investigators went to go talk to Furkan, he had gotten rid of his phone, which is very suspicious.
But they state there is no evidence to link Furkan to this crime.
There's no investigation into him being part of anything.
But it just leads people to wonder if there's a bigger reason to why Sherry specifically went after Khadija.
Was it because Khadija was one of the only 26 people that responded and was willing to meet up?
And is this a doppelganger murder?
Or is this... a murder out of jealousy, like what is it?
And I think that's why this case goes so viral.
I mean, I think obviously the whole doppelganger classification of this murder and what it's most commonly called It has all the points that make people wonder what the real motive is.
But also, it's just everything about Sherry's demeanor in trial, for Germans was so odd.
She'll come in covering her face every time with like a packet of folders and papers.
And then every break that they get, her mom is just like supplying her with snacks every day.
She's laughing and giggling with her family.
A lot of German reporters believe that she was actually acting quite flirtatious with her four attorneys as well.
She kept twirling her hair.
But ultimately, both of them are found guilty.
Which again, for Sherry, that means 25 years before she's eligible for parole.
And for Shakir, it's 15 years.
Khadija's dad is very upset with Shakira only getting 15 years.
He was really distraught.
He says Some netizens have taken to point out that Sherry was delusional thinking Khadija was a doppelganger, because it's so obvious that they look nothing alike and that they don't even compare.
But with that, that is the doppelganger murder.
What are your thoughts on this case?
Let me know in the comments and I will see you in the next one.
