Ali Asghar Borujerdi

hello again and welcome to serial killing a podcast this is elissa carroll and i am your host and the creator of at serial underscore killing on instagram where we go through the life stories of serial killers to see if we might catch a glimpse of why they display their famous vile and disturbing behaviors this week's podcast will be on ali asgar borgerdi and let me say right off the bat that i will most definitely butcher the names and the places and i deeply apologize for that i mean no disrespect whatsoever ali asgar borgerdi was born in 1893 but the exact date isn't known and he was born in borgerd western iran so let's get into some history for that time in 1893 the infamous lizzie borden was found not guilty of murdering her father and stepmother the railway line from germiston to pretoria south africa was open to the public and the great northern railway connected seattle with the east coast in the united states thomas edison completed the world's first movie studio at west orange new jersey the first movie close-up was of a sneeze of all things the ivory coast of west africa officially became a french colony 1893 is also the year that mahatma gandhi committed his first act of civil disobedience where we talk about gandhi a lot don't we at the age of 23 he set sail for south africa to be a lawyer for an acquaintance once he arrived he was faced with discrimination due to his skin color and heritage he was not allowed to sit with the european passengers and stagecoaches and was actually told to sit on the floor near the driver and when he refused he was beaten and this would not be the only physical assault also in 1893 the new york stock market crashed there was also a petition organized by kate shepherd demanding women's suffrage which was delivered to new zealand's parliament signed by over 25 000 women a fifth of the adult european female population then new zealand became the first country to grant all women the right to vote chinese people who were living in san francisco were deported back to china under the exclusion act this act was the first significant law restricting immigration into the united states many americans on the west coast attributed declining wages and economic ills to chinese workers although they composed of only 0.002 percent of the nation's population the exclusion act was put in place to appease the workers demands as well as prevalent concerns about maintaining quote racial purity some famous people born in 1893 or at least the ones i had heard of were may west herman goren harold lloyd leslie howard who played ashley in gone with the wind and lefty williams and bullet rogan both baseball players so this was the atmosphere that asgar was born into his father was ali mirza who was a then well-known bandit boasting that he had murdered at least 40 people with his bare hands his father before him was zufali who was also a bandit and he robbed caravans in the cities of boru jared malayir and iraq and he sometimes murdered the people he robbed due to ali mirza's infamy the family was forced to leave boru jared and go to baghdad iraq boru jared is on the western side of iran and it actually has a moderate climate with cold winters i was kind of surprised there the conditions are good to grow grains and sometimes cotton and melons grapes almond trees and so on people that lived in the more rural areas worked on farms it is also said to have been a great destination for nomads and many went there during the summer boru jared is one of the oldest cities in iran baghdad iraq is more in the eastern portion of iraq back then in baghdad the ottoman corps headquartered there and their population was growing rapidly it gets very hot there sometimes topping out at 111 degrees fahrenheit in august so again the family had to leave boru jared due to asgar's father's criminal activity and the trip to baghdad would have taken an unbelievable amount of time if traveling by car it would take nearly nine hours to get there alone that means if they were walking it took them nearly a month to get there then you have to account for four children as asgar was one of four with two brothers and a sister and it would have been an extremely exhausting trip during their travels his father was actually killed by the persian cossack brigade which was a cavalry unit from iran modeled after the imperial russian army and commanded by russian officers and there was no time to grieve so his wife continued on to iraq with the children alone she told her children that their father was a soldier and had been killed due to war in the area which we know was not true he was just eight years old he left his mother and siblings and fled to karbala iraq south of baghdad though i couldn't find any information as to why he left and really not much is known about his younger years we do know that he robbed people to survive you know as a child most likely would be forced to do but he was also becoming very physically aggressive when he reached the age of 14 he left karbala and traveled to baghdad at this point he knew he was attracted to boys which was basically a death sentence in his part of the world at that time during the 18th and 19th centuries there was a rise in islamic fundamentalism which called for adherence to the hadith or traditions containing sayings of the prophet muhammad and the major source of guidance for muslims before this surprisingly homosexuality had been tolerated during the ottoman empire but during asgar's time it was criminalized and why well of course the rise in the fundamentalism but according to the sources i read it was also due to european influence in their society interesting then on top of that he began to feel very violent urges that he felt he could not control so at 14 he began sexually assaulting and raping little boys he made money by selling food and he would lure these young boys to him by offering them snacks once they accepted he would grab them kidnap them and rape them violently once he was done he would let them go the boys would then go home and report what had been done to them to their parents of course and then the parents turned asgar in asgar was ultimately arrested and the parents believed that the teen had learned his lesson and consented for him to be released and so he was but he hadn't learned his lesson in fact he went right back to selling snacks to children and adolescents without skipping a beat he also went right back to sexually assaulting young boys and got away with it for four years he was again caught and arrested and this time he was sentenced to nine years in prison after he served his full nine years he was released at 27 years old so that was asgar's childhood now as we take a look clearly he came from a line of men who were prone to criminal behavior both his father and his grandfather were bandits who often murdered the people they robbed and they showed no remorse for that i've discussed the quote warrior gene or the maoa enzyme that is involved in aggression emotion and cognition in lots of other podcasts except if you remember it's located on the x chromosome which is inherited from the mother so then we move to the question of whether or not asgar was exposed to the violence his father and his grandfather displayed he was quite young when his father was killed now we will have to make some assumptions here that very well might not be accurate but we're kind of exploring some ideas so one it is highly unlikely that asgar accompanied his father during his criminal activities when he was under the age of eight two we of course have no way of knowing for sure but there's a possibility that the violence his father displayed while out of the house might have also happened inside the house and if that were true then asgar could have been exposed to domestic violence in the home and we know that children exposed to domestic violence are up to 60 percent more likely to be abusive and lastly asgar could very well have experienced abuse or violent behavior from his father himself and all three of these would point toward an environmental exposure rather than a genetic one so we also know that he left his family or ran away when he was eight years old i didn't have time to really dig deep to see if it was even statistically relevant that such young children left home like that in his area at that time but from prior research it really isn't common kids run away for a few different reasons like a fear of consequences or not wanting to go to school substance abuse problems or even as a way of controlling the power dynamic within the home another reason is that the child has idealized or romanticized the idea of life on the streets where they have complete control but again we don't know why he left but these are a few of the more common reasons what we do know is that young children who are runaways and living on the streets are at an extreme risk for all manner of negative experiences one being sexual assault and exploitation we've seen other serial killers the first that comes to mind is one of colombia's most famous serial killers luis alfredo garavito who was only eight years old when he was picked up by a pedophile and believe me his life went downhill from there garavito's later behavior nearly mirrors asgar's so while i don't know for sure i feel pretty confident in saying asgar was most likely sexually abused once he was out on the streets children who are sexually abused at a young age can have their natural maturation stunted they can get mentally quote stuck at that age which is in line with asgar then going on to sexually abuse and rape boys much younger than him when he was 14 and during puberty then he was caught but then he was released and then caught again and served his time now we all know that rape really isn't about sex it's more about power and control there are different categories for rape such as disadvantaged specialized opportunistic high mating efforts and partner rapists i believe asgar falls under the specialized type which is this a type of rapist who is distinguished by being sexually aroused by violent sexual stimuli we see this with bundy and others and keep in mind that he was gay during a time and in an area where that would have gotten him killed as well so again a lot of this is just theories i kind of sound like ancient aliens here we have no concrete proof of any of it but it would make sense so let's get back into it when he was released from prison in 1920 he was 27 years old he was put under surveillance and rightfully so and rather than learn his lesson instead he became very frustrated with the constant police presence so he decided to change the way he would go about it did that mean that he felt he should stop oh no no no see he decided that since he couldn't control his urges and the courts had ordered him to stay away from children he would instead lure them away use the boys as he pleased and then kill them he was later quoted as saying quote every night the police would come to my home and control my actions at home so i decided to kill any boy i raped unquote and he did just that young boys began to disappear he would lure them away from the public eye he would viciously rape them murder them and then mutilate their bodies as children began disappearing in alarming numbers asgar realized after killing 25 boys the authorities were going to be coming for him so he fled from iraq to iran he said quote i killed 25 children in baghdad often drowning them some resisted and since i was not going to leave any traces behind the last kid i shot another child saw me and then i escaped to iran unquote he settled in tehran he then began selling vegetables and watched as the vagrant children ran about the area and being that he wasn't known there like he had been in baghdad he found it much easier to lure victims to himself he was able to kill another eight boys now of course the iranian authorities were alerted to the mutilated bodies of adolescent and teen boys as they were beginning to be found they were located in random places like furnaces and aqueducts in the southern part of the city asgar's need to kill had become out of control and he was killing multiple times in the course of two weeks fear began spreading through tehran in early 1933 a teenage boy's skull was found in a park but his body wasn't there the boy that found the skull immediately went to report what he had found five days later a headless body was found nowhere near where the skull had been found but there were also two other bodies there as well the authorities began working diligently to find clues and interview witnesses in order to catch this killer they began draining wells thinking they could either find more human remains or at least prevent any further body dumping in march of 1933 during the investigation into the murders the police found a middle-aged man and questioned him as he was selling supplies out in the desert as asgar was being interviewed and he was telling them that he was just a mere vegetable vendor selling okra the police noticed that he had blood on his clothes and he had on him a bloody knife they asked him about it of course and he said that he had bought the clothes knowing that no one sells clothes with fresh blood on them they arrested him right there investigators then went to asgar's home and spoke with his neighbors who said he had had a teenage boy over to spend the night and the clothes that asgar was wearing had belonged to the boy eventually they were able to get asgar to confess to raping and murdering eight children in iran and 25 in Iraq He said That's a translation I found I'm sure that's not 100% accurate but you get the idea He was perfectly fine with killing these kids Completely fine No remorse So of course he was found guilty and he was sentenced to death After hearing his fate it is said that he found it humorous but he wiped that look off his face when he was being taken to the hanging rope He tried to buy his freedom with two sheep which of course was ridiculous and completely unsuccessful And on July 6, 1934 41-year-old Asghar was hanged in a prison in Tehran in front of the public So although this is a sad story for the poor victims as all of them are of course it's hard to get a real sense of what led him to commit these acts As I had said before we can only at best guess as to what he could have witnessed as a child or endured after he ran away at such a young age My instincts tell me he was a victim of sexual abuse and violence when he was very young and homeless but really who's to say? What do you think? You can leave me a direct message on Instagram at serial underscore killing or a comment on YouTube under the same name as this podcast Consider sponsoring the podcast I appreciate my sponsors so so much and thank you for listening You guys are the best murder family a girl could ask for Your messages of encouragement and kindness are amazing Thank you and have a great day