Bangladeshi domestic helper arrested over alleged murder of elderly couple

AMMAN — The Criminal Court prosecutor was to start questioning a 26-year-old Bangladeshi domestic helper on Saturday, who was arrested earlier in the day for allegedly killing her elderly employers in Irbid over the weekend, official sources said.

The two victims were allegedly bludgeoned to death with a small axe by the suspect, who has been working for them for less than a week, while sleeping in their home on Friday night, Police Spokesperson Lt. Col. Amer Sartawi said.

“We were able to determine that she was the perpetrator based on evidence at the scene. The murder weapon was found and sent to the criminal lab for further analysis,” Sartawi told The Jordan Times.

A second source told The Jordan Times that the suspect allegedly attempted to claim that “an intruder entered the house and murdered the 88-year-old victim and his wife, who is 10 years younger than him.”  

However, investigators did not “believe her story because they spotted blood on her and, upon questioning, she confessed to murdering the couple”, the second source told The Jordan Times.

Criminal Court Prosecutor Qahtan Qawaqzeh was to question the suspect on Saturday to learn more about the circumstances surrounding the double homicide, the second source added.

 “The suspect did not say much during interrogations via a Bangladeshi translator. She only confessed and reenacted the murder in front of the police,” the second source told The Jordan Times.

A postmortem conducted by a team of government pathologists headed by Ali Shotar concluded that each victim was killed from a single blow to the head, a senior medical source said.

“The two victims were each struck once in the head with a blunt object causing skull fracture and laceration wounds that caused acute haemorrhage in the brain,” the senior medical source told The Jordan Times.

Several Facebook users circulated a photo of an elderly couple from Irbid, whom they identified as Mohammad Hanandeh and his wife Khadijeh Hanandeh.

“May God inflict His curse on the criminal who brutally took the lives of my retired uncle Lt. Col. Mohammad and his wife Khadijeh. May their souls rest in eternal peace,” Amer Hanandeh said on his Facebook page, which was accompanied by a photo of the two elderly victims.

He later posted another entry stating: “My uncle took part in the 48 and 67 wars [against Israel] and was killed by his Bangladeshi domestic helper.”