The Sting (Somaya Hussein Ahmed)
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Amica. Empathy is our best policy. The detectives that put their life's work and their life's blood into this, this is very, very serious business. It's not a TV show or a movie. My job is to protect the community and protect the memory of that victim who cannot speak for herself. And that means I got to put everything I got into it. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.

I'm Anna Siga-Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murmur. In this digital age, our phones have become our constant companions. And whether it's a blessing or a curse, it also means that rarely are any of us without a camera.

And those cameras, they're always rolling, constantly capturing all of the outrageous, the mundane, the inspiring, and the shocking moments of everyday life. And if you've ever scrolled social media and watched a supercut of people falling down or a tense confrontation in a parking lot, you probably know what we're talking about. These days, it seems like our every misstep is just destined to be captured on video and shared with the world.

But what happens when a camera captures something even darker? We've probably all seen the shaky footage of an escalating conflict, but rarely do we think about the real-life violence that may have followed, or the very real consequences when a camera may be the only witness to a murder.

I'm Brian Porter. I'm the Commonwealth's attorney for the city of Alexandria, Virginia. You may recognize the voice of Brian Porter, who has been a guest on AOM before. Let's see if you can remember which episode now. Brian started his career as a police officer in Washington, D.C., and in his hometown of Alexandria, Virginia, before deciding he wanted to be a lawyer. ♪

Then I graduated from law school and immediately transferred over from being a police officer to being an assistant Commonwealth's attorney doing traffic cases. And I've been a prosecutor ever since. This is my 24th year as a prosecutor, and I

have done basically every kind of case you could imagine as a prosecutor, working my way up through the ranks. I ended up kind of focusing on gang offenses, firearms offenses, complex drug distribution cases, and then homicides.

Brian has been the elected prosecutor in Alexandria since 2014, and in that role, he has overseen a large number of homicides, including the one that occurred in January of 2019 that set a template for how digital evidence could be used effectively in criminal investigations. ♪

On a cold January night, a young woman was returning to the apartment she shared with her roommate, Sumaya Ahmed, in a multi-story residential complex in the city of Alexandria. She and Sumaya were friends as well as roommates, but they didn't see each other every day because they had different work schedules. So as she turned the lock in the apartment door...

She didn't know if Samaya would be home or not. But as soon as she entered the apartment, she knew something was terribly wrong. She smelled a strong odor coming from Samaya's room. So she made entry and she discovered that Samaya was dead. There was blood staining the bed where Samaya's body was found. What appeared to be a severe injury to her head.

Her shocked roommate immediately retreated from the bedroom and dialed 911. First responders arrived at the fifth floor apartment within minutes, but sadly there was nothing they could do. They got to the bedroom and they saw Samaya dead. A lot of blood. The blood had coagulated and was not fresh, which led them to believe that she had been dead for some time and her body was cold to the touch.

It was also clear that Samaya, who was just 35 years old, had not experienced a natural death. They weren't sure what had occurred, but it looked to be consistent with a gunshot wound. And that was pretty quickly confirmed that she had suffered a gunshot wound inside of her mouth, as though the gun had been placed inside of her mouth.

Common sense suggested that Samaya's fatal injury might have been self-inflicted, but to investigators at the scene, it quickly became clear that her death was not the result of a suicide. Suicide could quickly be ruled out because there was no firearm.

And obviously, if you're alone and shoot yourself, when the police get there, both the cartridge case that was used to kill you and also the firearm itself should be there lying right next to your body. But surprisingly, there were also no obvious signs of a break-in or a violent struggle.

There were no signs of forced entry. The apartment was not on the ground floor. It would be extremely difficult for someone to climb up the side of the building. They'd almost have to be Spider-Man, for instance, to even have a chance of getting in.

And there was no sign of forced entry to any of the windows. So once a gunshot wound to the mouth was confirmed, once no signs of forced entry were discovered, and once it was very clear that there was no firearm or spent cartridge case in the room, it very quickly became a homicide investigation. And the likely suspect? Someone that Samaya knew or recognized who gained access to her apartment without forced entry.

And so investigators' first job was to begin their victimology. Who was Somaya Ahmed? And who did she know that might have wanted her dead? Somaya hailed from Egypt. She was bilingual. She had been in the United States for some period of time. I think she had gotten into the States maybe five or six years before her death. Somaya had legally immigrated to the United States in pursuit of an education and a career.

According to her roommate, Sumaya did not drink, didn't do drugs, and as far as she knew, did not engage in any behavior that would put her life at risk. And so initially, investigators hoped that physical evidence might hold some clues as to who may have been behind her brutal murder.

So the autopsy, of course, in these situations is done as close as possible. From the outside, the autopsy confirmed that there was a significant amount of blood in the mouth and nose area and also dripping from the area of the back of her head. The medical examiner who conducted the autopsy also confirmed that rigor mortis had set in, which helped us kind of narrow down the timeframe as being a little bit longer than we normally see when a body is located.

The medical examiner also confirmed what investigators had observed at the scene, that Soumaya had died of an intraoral gunshot wound. But there was also something unusual about her catastrophic injury. There was no stippling on the exterior of her mouth, meaning that the firearm was deep inside the victim's mouth when it was fired. Also, there were injuries to her front teeth, which were consistent with the gun being forcibly pushed into her mouth.

Just imagining the violence inflicted in that kind of an assault and the fact that this was likely committed by someone Samaya knew, it tells you so much about this murder. So, Ana Sica, there's obviously enough evidence to show this was a violent confrontation having to do with the weapon. It was an automatic, and when the gun was fired inside of her mouth, the slide of that weapon, which is pushed back forcibly by the weapon firing, damaged the back of her front teeth.

But, you know, also the big thing that stands out to me is just the type of wound. It's almost I can picture without knowing it all. This is what actually happened as I was first learning this case of this escalation, like something that is getting heated that then turns into this very physical assault up until someone I can almost picture. I hate to say this, but like grabbing her by the hair and then placing that gun in her mouth. And really what that points to is whatever it was, whatever initiated, whoever it was, deliberate and obviously brutally violent.

Let's talk about the no forced entry into the apartment. It's kind of leading investigators into the theory and the circumstances of the evidence found at the scene that her person of interest was more likely somebody within a very small circle of people. Likely not a random confrontation, but something that was very personal. So whether it's a close friend, a family member, or who knows, even her roommate.

The roommate and Somaya were friends. They had known each other for a while. They were both relatively recent immigrants to the United States, but they weren't particularly close. It was more a financial situation to share the rent. And while discovering the victim and calling 911 is not always a guarantee that someone is not involved in a homicide, in this case, investigators were able to verify the roommate's alibi for the hours they thought Somaya was killed.

Asked if she knew anyone who might want to hurt Samaya, the roommate admitted she didn't know too much about Samaya's personal life at all. They maintained different schedules, a different group of friends. But the one thing that was really important at the outset was that the roommate was able to provide the name of Samaya's boyfriend, Daniel Can-Cam. And her description of Samaya's so-called boyfriend immediately raised eyebrows.

She explained that they had a tempestuous relationship in which she frequently heard arguing either on the telephone or in Samaya's bedroom. According to the roommate, she also knew the likely cause of their frequent disputes. She told us that Daniel was actually married and was maintaining an affair with Samaya and that Samaya was aware that he was married, that he kept promising that he was going to leave his wife but never had, and that caused tension in the relationship.

But according to her roommate, it wasn't just the fact that her boyfriend was married that was causing so much tension. The truth was that they were also very different. There were signs of an unhealthy power dynamic between the two.

She was somewhat reliant on Daniel Cancam for financial support. He occasionally gave her money, access to cars, which she did not own. And I think he used that power dynamic to his advantage in keeping some control over her. And then the final thing I would point out is that Cancam was a very heavy drinker, was frequently drunk. Samaya, as a devout Muslim, did not consume alcohol at all. So he was married, he drank to excess, and he was a bully, it seems.

So if you're narrowing down suspects, that's checking a lot of boxes. But it was actually the roommate's description of CanCam's job that got the most attention.

Daniel was the owner of a small private security business that Samaya sometimes moonlighted for, and that this business would provide security at dive bars and music situations in the Northern Virginia area. This meant that Daniel CanCam had access to and frequently wore a firearm on his hip and a gun belt similar to what law enforcement wears.

So now, Ed, potentially armed to CanCam's dating profile, sounds like a real catch. Needless to say, investigators immediately looked for any proof that CanCam could have been in Samaya's apartment the night she was murdered, starting with the search of security footage of the apartment building.

We did not have any video from the actual apartment building, but there was a brief video that captured his vehicle. The night before the murder, Daniel and Samaya had been working together at a dive bar right outside of the city doing security, and they drove back to Samaya's apartment in a Ford.

former law enforcement vehicle that Daniel had purchased to be part of his security company. So we had video of the vehicle. We could not really see the people in it. And it was not from inside of the apartment complex, but it did confirm that his car was in the parking lot in the early morning hours right around the time of the murder. The security footage placed CanCam's car at Samaya's apartment building the night she was killed.

but it would be something belonging to Samaya herself that would convince police that he was more than just a bad boyfriend. He might just be a killer.

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In January of 2019, a 35-year-old woman named Sumaya Ahmed was found murdered in her apartment, killed by a single intraoral gunshot to the head. Her married boyfriend was immediately on investigators' radar as a person of interest. And while Sumaya's roommate described a man with a temper, a drinking habit, and a gun, investigators were still looking for hard evidence that could tie CanCam to the scene of the crime.

And as investigators the world over have learned in this day and age, there's no better piece of evidence than the victim's cell phone. Samaya's cell phone was located at the scene next to her body. So the cell phone was recovered and that ended up becoming a very integral part of the investigation because of the evidence that was contained upon it.

As we have seen in previous stories, cell phones can provide everything from a victim's location, an archive of texts between the victim and any potential suspects, and of course, photos and videos that might be relevant to the investigation. But as a prosecutor, I will tell you that getting access to this digital information, well, it takes multiple steps and is often not a quick or straightforward thing to get.

I think most laypeople probably assume that it's a very simple and easy affair for law enforcement to obtain all of the contents of a cell phone. But actually, it's a two-step process, both of which can be somewhat difficult. The first, of course, is you have to obtain legal process. In this case, because we had probable cause to believe a homicide occurred, getting a search warrant for the phone was relatively easy. But the next is you have to obtain access.

And that, of course, means not just unlocking the phone, but also bypassing passwords, two-factor authentication, sometimes biometric security measures. Until recently, this was the realm of hackers and whiz kids. But these days, most police departments have their own experts trained to extract critical digital information.

But finally, through the hard work of our electronic surveillance unit, we were able to grab access to her phone. And the phone in particular contained several items of interest. An archive of text messages recorded between Samaya and CanCam corroborated what her roommate had said about their volatile relationship. Those messages revealed a very tempestuous and argumentative situation in which they were frequently bickering about the way he treated Samaya and about his refusal to leave his wife for her.

But nowhere in the text were there any explicit threats of violence, hints that Samaya was threatening to end the relationship, or anything else that might indicate a motive for murder. There was something even more valuable and more terrifying than the text between an argumentative couple. There were videos documenting a relationship simmering with potential violence.

We were able to get into the phone and the electronic guys had been able to download the videos and extract them so that we could view them. Very quickly, Daniel Cancam became the primary suspect. One video in particular shows both Samaya and Cancam in the bedroom where Samaya was killed.

"It clearly shows Samaya wearing the same clothes in which she was found when her body was located. And it also was date and time stamped at almost the exact time we believe she was killed." The camera was being held by Samaya and very deliberately aimed at Can-Can, almost offensively. The couple was in the middle of an argument, and while it's not totally clear why she was filming, whether it was to protect herself or maybe just to show him later, but the exchange between them was most definitely confrontational.

The video shows a very sober Samaya and a very drunk Daniel Cancam involved in a dispute about him leaving his wife and about the way he treats Samaya. Investigators already had video proof that Cancam's car had been seen outside the apartment building on the night of the murder. But this video put him inside the apartment, time stamped within the hour of her estimated time of death.

But also of huge evidentiary value to investigators was how CanCam was dressed.

The other thing that's really important about the video is that CanCam is dressed in his security garb. So for all intents and purposes, he's dressed like a law enforcement officer. He has the pants on that many law enforcement officers wear nowadays. He has boots on. He has an external bullet-resistant vest and a carrier. He even had a fake badge attached to that.

And then, most importantly for our purposes, at all times during this video, he is wearing a full-fledged gun belt that has a firearm in a holster on his right hip.

In other words, CanCam was drunk, angry, and armed, and his temper showed no signs of abating. There's a lot of yelling back and forth. He's getting very incensed with her. At one point, he is so angry that he drops to the floor and starts doing push-ups as though he's trying to work off some, you know, anger, vent his anger by doing physical exercise. And he's yelling at her during this time frame.

All the while, Samaya was filming with her phone. Watching this video, the tension and the threat of violence is palpable. You can almost feel Samaya's fear of what might happen if she puts that camera down, and what might happen if she doesn't. "He finally says something to the effect to her, quote, 'You're pissing me off.'"

And at that point, you can see him get up from the push-up stance and start moving toward her with his hand extended for the cell phone. And at the moment he does that, the phone goes blank.

In the prosecutor's opinion, the video was as close as he'd ever seen to a smoking gun. Watching the entirety of that video, although we did not actually capture him shooting her on the video, it was very evident from my perspective that what we did capture were the very seconds right before her death.

But incredibly, there was a second video, time stamped from a month before the murder, that Brian believed to be just as frightening and just as damning. And in that video, again, it's just Samaya taking the video with her cell phone, and it's CanCam, the suspect, on the phone. And they are outside of her apartment building.

In that second video, it's daylight hours and Can-Cam is very obviously intoxicated. So Maya can be heard confronting him about his treatment of her.

She's obviously very upset. He gets very angry. He's yelling back at her with slurred speech. But the really important part and the very scary part, unfortunately, is that at some point he sits down on the curb, looks at her, and then unexpectedly pulls up his shirt and removes the firearm from his waistband. And then he begins to point the firearm at her while she's videotaping him from just feet away.

And he actually has to take his other hand and grab his right hand in which the firearm is located and kind of force down his hand so that the gun is not leveled at her. And he finally kind of puts it back in his waistband. This video in particular is frightening, not just because it seems to foreshadow her murder, but because it's clear that Somaya seems to have no idea just how close to death she might have been at that very moment.

This also points to the too-often-seen tragedy of domestic abuse, that even despite the earlier threat in her life, she was either unable or unwilling to break off the relationship.

So from the perspective of homicide investigators, I would imagine that these videos, along with the other circumstantial evidence pointing towards Cam Cam as the killer, were about as good as it was going to get. And if I was working this case and taking it to Brian, I'd be pretty eager to tell him to make an arrest.

And while I agree that that video evidence was incredible, as a prosecutor, I'm still going to probably advocate for a little caution here. Because as we know, once that arrest is made, the ticking clock of a defendant's right to a speedy trial begins.

It was very solid evidence. However, I was not convinced that the video alone was enough to charge him with murder. I felt very strongly that additional investigation needed to be conducted. And so, Adesiga, no surprise here. The career prosecutor in Alexandria, Brian, he agreed with you, and the investigators held off on arresting CanCam until they gathered more information about him and potentially even more evidence. ♪

He didn't have much of a criminal record. Notice that Brian said much of a criminal record. While he hadn't been arrested for violent assault, he was far from squeaky clean. What it did seem as though he was, A, a heavy drinker, as I've already noted,

and be kind of a fly-by-night guy who had his hands in several types of jobs. I think he at some point had tried to be a music producer and obviously the security business, but was not particularly successful at any of them. So while Brian wasn't ready to bring murder charges, they did think it was time to invite him to the station to get his alibi for the night of the murder.

Luckily, CanCam was not hard to find as he lived with his wife in an apartment on the west end of the city. But what had the appearance of a routine visit was in reality a test because detectives knew that CanCam's behavior in those first seconds of seeing law enforcement at his door could potentially tell them volumes about his involvement in Samaya's murder.

They went out to his apartment. They knocked on the door. They asked him if he would consent to come down to headquarters for an interview. He readily agreed, although he seemed a bit nervous. He explained that he had been drinking the night before and wasn't feeling 100%. But they put him into a police car, not handcuffed. They were taping the entire encounter to make it very clear that this was a voluntary and consensual situation and that it was not a custodial interrogation.

And they drove him to headquarters in which they interviewed him at length on video and tried to get his side of events. Disarmed by their congenial and routine demeanor, Can-Can was more than willing to talk, oblivious to the fact detectives were holding an ace up their sleeve.

What he did not know, and which is always one of the wonderful things from a law enforcement perspective, is that we had this video from the night of her death, from the night that we suspected he murdered Samaya, and therefore we knew a lot about their interactions before the interview even started. And then the interview started, and he very quickly began to lie.

And what followed was a master class in interrogation. Which if done right, it's less about asking the questions and it's much more about letting a suspect talk.

When law enforcement conducts an interview like this, the way I ask them to do it and the way they're trained to do it is to just get his side of the story first. Let him talk as long as he wants. If he's willing to talk, let him talk. If he's lying, let him go all the way through the lie. In other words, if his very first statement is an obvious lie, don't interrupt him and say you're lying. We can do that later on, right? Once he's said his entire story, if it's all a lie, that can be useful for us at trial, even if he never confesses to the actual crime.

And so detectives let him do just that. And immediately, they noted how the details of his statement contradicted what they already knew from the videos recovered from Samaya's phone and the apartment building's security cameras. For instance, relatively minor, he admitted that he had been with her that night, that they had worked a security detail together, and that he drove her back to her apartment building. But he indicated that he was driving a Ford SUV,

Detectives held their tongues as CanCam dug himself deeper and deeper into a hole.

During his statement, CanCam was careful to include just enough truth to make his story sound believable as to why he would have been at Samaya's apartment on the night she was murdered.

He definitely had the personality that he thought he could talk his way out of anything. He admitted that he was with her the night before. He admitted that he went into her apartment. But the things that would really be important to the murder, he lied about.

But CanCam's biggest lie had to do with the gun seen on that video. The gun that police believed was likely the murder weapon. Because he and Samaya had both worked a security detail, they were both armed. He actually would provide her with a firearm and she would wear a gun belt. And he insisted that she had his Glock the entire evening.

But on the cell phone video that we had, and of course, which he did not know that we had, we could clearly see that his Glock was on his person in his external holster, on his gun belt, at all times relevant to this argument he was having with Samaya. Incidentally, that 9mm Glock was consistent with Samaya's fatal gunshot wound. And while police did not yet have it in their possession to prove it was the murder weapon, it was clear that CanCam was trying to distance himself from it.

His opinion of his own intellect, I think, was that he was smarter than everybody. He had concocted a story that he thought would cover him, but he did not understand that electronic evidence would be his downfall. CanCam also thought he was the smartest guy in the room, but he actually was his own worst enemy.

What he did not know is that he was not smarter than everyone else, that we had the evidence to prove that he was lying, and that the more he spoke, actually, the worse it was getting for him. I will not hurt her because I cannot make a life. Today, I'm a Christian. I'm a Muslim. I will not hurt somebody else.

I think this is actually the hardest part for investigators or prosecutors conducting an interview. It's resisting that urge to finally call out a suspect's lies, their contradictions, and to try to turn the tables and elicit that confession. That's what you see in the movies, right? The moment where the house of cards tumbles and the suspect finally breaks down and spills his guts. Obviously, it's an understatement to say that this rarely happens.

But there is also an argument to be made that it shouldn't happen. Because there is always that risk that the confession doesn't come and the suspect just stops talking. And that could result in investigators missing out on critical information, even if that information comes in the form of a lie. But then this moment happened. Not a confession, but an interesting exchange between an investigator and his prime suspect, blaming the victim...

followed by his own admission of his past of alleged violent behavior towards women. Something happened in there, and that body and that wound is going to tell us a story. And it's going to give us a historical picture of what happened in that room. Please come up with your story. I have nothing to do with it. She is my girlfriend, and I said that. I would never hurt you. I would never do that.

- What did she ever hurt you? - Oh, I mean, she's the one who slapped me around and everything. She's the best. But I got used to it. I never put my hands on her. - Have you ever been arrested before? I'm sorry, I didn't look into your background. I didn't know anything about your background. What have you been arrested for? - My arrest was for domestic violations, which was a lie. None of them stayed.

When we got to the end of the interview, he had lied and lied and lied, but he had not confessed to the offense. He never confessed during that interview to killing her, but he did admit a great deal of information that was extremely vital to the investigation and was also very, very quickly disprovable. And sometimes, as a prosecutor, having somebody tell a great, complicated, detailed set of lies is almost as good as having them confess to the crime itself.

But while they were willing to wait for a confession, detectives were not as patient about waiting to make an arrest. There's this age-old debate that I'm sure you've had in your career in which the detectives want to make the arrest because they realize this guy did it and they're afraid that if they let him stay out on the street, he'll either flee or alternatively, perhaps they'll hurt somebody else.

And that was certainly the case here. Alexandria detectives saw CanCam as both a flight risk and a risk to public safety, made all the more dangerous if he knew he was cornered. And after seeing the video of the night of Samaya's murder and the brutal aftermath of their confrontation, police knew exactly what he was capable of. The boyfriend of Samaya Ahmed had dug himself into a deep hole with the barrage of lies to investigators about the night Samaya was killed.

The police very strongly want to make this arrest. But as a prosecutor, I was convinced that he had done the offense. But I also have to worry about whether or not I can get past a preliminary hearing and whether or not I can get past a motion to strike at trial and whether or not a jury could unanimously final the evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed the crime. Because we're not doing the victim's memory or her family or the community any favors if we prematurely charge a case and then have to drop it or a not guilty verdict is returned.

And this is a pretty common conversation between cops and prosecutors. And coming to the right decision is an exercise in communication, common sense, and most importantly, in trust.

And in this case, I inherently trusted the detectives. I inherently trusted the sergeant. He gave me his word that the case would get better. So in the end, I made the decision to agree with them. And we did arrest him for murder that day by warrant. And after that, he was held in the jail, which led to the next big break in the case. And if Brian was looking for ways to strengthen his case after CanCam was in custody, he got it. Because it turned out that the, quote, smartest guy in the room

did something that was not in his best interest. When he's in jail, he has access to a phone system, but he does not have the regular privacy protections that a normal citizen would have because he's incarcerated in a jail and all inmates are told that their phone calls may be monitored in real time or recorded for later monitoring because they could pose a security threat to the facility.

Now, there's always a recording when you make or receive a jailhouse call, and it warns inmates that their calls are being recorded and that information shared can be used against them in court. But CanCam thought he had come up with a foolproof plan to beat the system. In this case, he called his wife, but he tried to conceal what he was talking about in two ways.

One was he used an arcane language from his home country. It's called Twi, T-W-I, that very few people speak in the United States. And the second thing is he tried to use Vail language using that language.

Now I imagine that speaking an obscure dialect might stump local law enforcement, but never underestimate the resources of our friends at the FBI. So originally we could not understand what he was saying to his wife, but we had help from our federal partners at the FBI who did have translators who could speak to me. We already knew that he spoke it, and so we very quickly asked them to translate for us.

Luckily for Brian, the FBI was just over the river in D.C., and thanks to the Bureau's diverse workforce, they soon had CanCam's call translated. Obviously, everyone was waiting with bated breath to get that translation because he's talking about relatively benign things with his wife in English.

Then all of a sudden they switch and you listen in any language, you can kind of tell the conspiratorial tone of voice, right? And what we learned was that he was calling his wife and asking his wife to call a friend to have that friend come to the apartment and pick up a package.

The hope here was that this package might contain incriminating physical evidence that could further tie Cam Cam to the crime scene. Bloody gloves, bloody shoes, and maybe even the murder weapon itself. The wife told Cam Cam on the phone that she would do as he asked.

And she immediately contacted a friend that both she and CanCam knew personally and told him that she needed him to come to the apartment to pick up a package. The twist is that neither the wife nor CanCam knew that the person they contacted to pick up the package was actually a police informant and had been providing information to the Alexandria Police Department for a significant period of time.

I mean, what are the odds? The friend asked to aid in a bet in the cover-up of a potential murder just happens to be a police informant? Yeah, that's an incredible twist. And that's when you kind of know the investigative gods are really working for you.

And so when that person, that man received the text message from the wife asking him to come pick up this package from her residence, he knew that CanCam had been arrested for homicide. He immediately called the detective who handled him and said, hey, look, CanCam's wife just asked me to come pick up a package. What should I do about that? Not surprisingly, the police began to salivate at the prospect that perhaps the package contained very, very important evidence.

And so homicide detectives borrowed a page out of the narcotics handbook and set up a sting in order to intercept this mysterious package. The police were able to put a microphone on the informant who was driving his personal vehicle. The police were able to set up surveillance vehicles around the agreed-upon location for the exchange of the package. So we had detectives in real time watching what was occurring.

When the informant arrived at Cam Cam's apartment building, detectives were watching as he called Cam Cam's wife, and she stepped outside carrying a black plastic garbage bag. She handed it to him through the driver's side window. The informant took the package, drove around the corner, and met with the police detectives, immediately handed over the package. They looked inside of the package and were absolutely stunned and astonished at what they saw inside.

The contents of the bag included a man's security uniform covered in blood and the same external vest that CanCam was wearing in the video from Samaya's phone. That vest had her blood all over it once DNA was used to confirm the donor of the blood. That, of course, implies that the vest was being worn in very close proximity to her when she was shot because her blood spatter was on the vest.

And most importantly, police also recovered Somaya's wallet and the Glock firearm matching the one seen in the video from the night of the murder. They also found a cartridge case, a spent cartridge case. And that spent cartridge case later was determined to have been fired from the Glock firearm that was also inside of the bag.

To call this a treasure trove of evidence was an understatement. In short, it was an embarrassment of evidentiary riches that took the remaining question marks off the table.

So you've got the victim's wallet, you've got the murder weapon, you've got the cartridge case that was used to shoot the round that killed her, and then you've got her blood on the very security vest that he was wearing. And we could of course establish that he was wearing that vest and carrying that firearm because they were very clearly visible on the video that we had obtained from the victim's phone. So just listening to this, you all probably believe that this is a slam dunk, right?

And maybe with this kind of evidence, you don't even need to go to trial. I mean, look, in some cases, offering a plea in exchange for an admission of guilt is a good way to not only guarantee some level of accountability, but also to mitigate the risks of a trial.

I can tell you from having done this job for a long time, going to trial can be a very complicated and difficult process. And even if the evidence is overwhelming, you're never sure of what's going to happen. They call them trials for a reason. They're trials. They're not preordained. Evidence that you think is going to be admitted sometimes is not allowed by the judge. Witnesses that you think are going to testify sometimes fail to appear and cannot be located. Even if a witness shows up, things don't go the way you expect them to go at trial.

And in the end, of course, the system is that we have to convince 12 lay people who do not do what I do for a living and do not do what the police do for a living that this person is guilty of murder unanimously beyond a reasonable doubt. While I've always been willing to try cases, you can't be cavalier or foolhardy about that. And if somebody is willing to take accountability and accept responsibility for what they've done, you've got to at least consider it.

But in this case, it was pretty clear from his prior behavior and continued defiance that Kam Kan was never going to admit that he killed Somaya. And any potential cooperation agreement was off the table. But the fact that he lied and lied so much in so many complicated ways that were so easily disproved...

coupled with all of the other evidence, I made this a very strong case for trial, but not strong enough to convince him to plead guilty. He still wanted to go to trial and testify in his own defense.

But despite the strong evidence against him, this was still potentially a tricky case to prosecute. With CanCam determined to testify in his own defense, the onus was on the prosecutor to not just so doubt that CanCam was telling the truth, the prosecution also had to piece together all the evidence that both disproves CanCam's story and laid out the actual truthful version of events.

Adding to that challenge is the fact that one of the prosecution's key witnesses was a police informant. And when you're talking about risks of going to trial, asking an informant to testify in open court, that is certainly one.

Obviously, they're being outed as an informant for the police. They have to be identified by name. We have an absolute constitutional duty to give to the defense anything that they've received in compensation for the information they've provided to the police over the years.

And then we actually have to have them come into court and take the stand. An added problem there when you're calling an informant to the stand is the fact that they are involved in criminal activity, which makes them useful as an informant, can make them a difficult witness, right? They usually have a criminal record. They might be suspicious of courtroom proceedings. They might come in not dressed for a courtroom proceeding. They might come off as somewhat suspicious to the jury and therefore perhaps not believable.

But as I've said to so many juries when it comes to a witness that might have a criminal past or is an otherwise less than perfect person, you don't have to like them. The question is, can you believe them? Are they credible?

But the problem or the issue is that when I'm asking the jury to believe someone who has received money in exchange for information, who has felony criminal convictions on their record and who perhaps does not present well, is we have to corroborate what they're saying so that it's not just their credibility that has to be tested by the jury. You know, I think you would imagine that some prosecutors obviously have hesitations about calling an informant to the stand, but it's one that defends

could counter. And here's how the plan may go for them. I mean, they would try to attack the witness's credibility. They could argue that the informant has a strong motive to lie, such as a plea deal, a reduced sentence, or other undisclosed benefits in exchange for the testimony. They would likely try to impeach the witness, talk about potential prior lies they've made or unreliable statements they've made in the past. So it is definitely not just a walk in the park for prosecutors to bring that type of witness forward.

But in this case, the video and audio recording of the jailhouse calls, as well as the sting itself, really came in handy. - So in the end, even though the informant had a significant amount of warts on him as a witness, none of it mattered. But there was no doubt that he was telling the truth because we had police witnesses' video and audio, as well as cell phone communications, that completely corroborated that everything he was telling the jury was absolutely accurate.

The prosecution argued that the contents of the bag removed from CanCam's house was proof that he had not only killed Samaya, but that he had taken great lengths to clean up the crime scene and remove any incriminating evidence from the apartment. And incredibly, they even had more video proof. ♪

We would be able to prove that he cleaned up the crime scene in part because of another small video that was located on the phone. And that video was time and date stamped after the time of what we had surmised was Samaya's death. And while the video was brief, it was just as haunting as the others, showing just a close-up of Cam Cam's face inside of Samaya's bedroom.

It's almost though he made a mistake. You know how you might be trying to do a FaceTime call or take a selfie and you've got the camera lens going the wrong direction? It's him kind of looking at the phone from above while he's in the room, time-date stamped, after the time of her death that we could establish circumstantially. And so that was a very big piece of evidence to help establish that he cleaned up the crime scene.

After the prosecution rested, it was still unclear whether CanCam would actually take the stand in his own defense.

I'm not sure what the defense attorneys counseled him because they're not allowed to tell me. It's privileged. I suspect they knew that he was walking into a very dangerous situation by taking the stand and probably counseled him not to. But CanCam, as I pointed out earlier, was the kind of guy that thought he was smarter than everyone and could explain everything away. And so unfortunately for him, he decided to take the stand. He testified and gave a really ridiculous story.

And in telling this new story, he had to concede that everything he had already told police in the interview room was a lie. But his new alibi was just as hard to believe.

What he said was, they did get into an argument, he had been drinking, that on the video in which we could see him doing the push-ups and then angrily approaching Samaya, and then the video goes black, he indicated that once the video went black, he calmly grabbed her phone, placed it on the bed, calmed her down...

took off his gun belt, took the gun, the Glock, out of the holster and left it on a nearby nightstand. And then because they had had a heated argument, he went into the bathroom, which was inside of the bedroom with a door, closed the door, and then at some point, because he had consumed too much alcohol, he went to sleep. Cancan claimed that after trying to calm himself down, he sat down in the bathroom and promptly passed out, until the moment he was suddenly awakened by the sound of a single gunshot.

He went outside of the bathroom, saw her dead. He assumed somebody had climbed up the side of the building, come into her apartment, come into her bedroom, used his gun to kill her, and then fled. CanCam had also speculated that Samaya had taken her own life, but he figured that one way or another, he was going to be blamed for the crime.

So he decided to clean up the crime scene, collect all of the evidence, and then leave her body, I guess, to decompose so that her friends or loved ones could find her. His testimony did not go over well with the jury.

It was pretty obviously to everyone, I think, that he was lying. And then I began to get really excited about the prospects across examining him. It's rare where a defendant gets on the stand in a murder case. It's rarer still where you're really prepared because he had given a very detailed statement to the police. And it's even better when you know you've got him lying over and over again and can prove it to the jury's satisfaction.

But Brian also knew that his cross-examination, it wasn't just about facing off against an opponent and coming out on top. It was about proving hopefully the truth, and it was about a young woman's life and the justice she deserved.

All that I am focused on is honoring the memory of the victim, doing my best to honor her memory and to understand that she was loved and that people cared about her. The detectives have put their life's work and their life's blood into this. This is very, very serious business. It's not a TV show or a movie.

And so I go into it very somber and very solemn and realize I've got a job to do. And my job is to protect the community and protect the memory of that victim who cannot speak for herself. And that means I got to put everything I got into it. Brian's cross-examination was thorough and relentless. It reminds me of the famous line Mike Tyson used to say, everyone has a plan until they get punched into the face.

And I punched him in the face with a couple of lies. He argued with me. I was going through the police interview. I asked him if anything in there was true. I remember him saying something along the lines of, not all of it was lies. And I said something along the lines of, yes, I agree with you, sir. You did give your correct name and address. At least that part was true.

And from that point on, it was just a slurrage of blows in which he had to concede, for the most part, that he had lied to the police and that even what he had said on direct wasn't exactly correct. But as he knew it would be from the beginning, it was those videos, filmed by the murder victim herself, that proved to be the most effective and most emotional pieces of evidence. ♪

A hush came over the courtroom as the defendant grew visibly uneasy on the stand.

He looked at me very, very angry. I think he knew he was kind of caught at that point. And after a little bit of back and forth between me and him, he said it was a joke. A threat to this woman's life dismissed as a joke. His depraved indifference to her life and her murder sent a chill through the jury.

That's about as close to a Perry Mason moment as I've ever had inside of a courtroom, leaving them with that still frame of him pointing a gun at her and his explanation to the jury being that he was joking. That just left the jury, I think, with an unmistakable impression of the human being they were dealing with that would come into court and tell them that kind of nonsense. And they quickly made short work of it and found him guilty.

CanCam was convicted of two charges, first-degree murder and the use of a firearm in the commission of a murderer. He was sentenced to 23 years in prison for the first-degree murder charge and three years in prison for the firearm conviction. In the end, Samaya's murder was yet another tragic example of why domestic abuse remains one of the most dangerous threats to women, to people in this country. ♪

I think he basically was manipulating her using emotional abuse and emotional levels, lovers to remain in the relationship. And she did have fear for her safety, which is why she was recording these videos. I don't think she suspected that he would actually kill her, but I think she knew she was dealing with a very volatile personality and that his personality became even more volatile when he was consuming large amounts of alcohol.

Like so many victims of domestic abuse, the realization of what her partner was capable of came too late. One of the unfortunate ironies of being a homicide prosecutor is that we never get to meet the victim for whom we are trying to achieve justice. But each and every victim, including Samaya Ahmed, has the potential to leave a profound and lasting impact on the prosecutor's life.

I was able pretty clearly to find that she was an exceptionally smart person. Her friends confirmed this and there were many videos on her phone that just had her own and her everyday life. I found that she was a very warm and loving person. I found that she cared very deeply about her family at home and actually sent them money whenever she could. A young life cut down too soon by the heartless actions of one man.

I don't know how she met Daniel Cancam, but she did not know the danger that had been set in motion from that fateful meeting. If she had not met him, there's no doubt she'd be alive right now. And that's really one of the very sad things about my job is I don't get involved until something really terrible has happened. And unfortunately, I tell the families this. I'm just a human being. I can't make things right. But the one thing that I can do

is give every ounce that I have into trying to relive the situation, feel the situation, and then be dedicated along with the really professional law enforcement detectives who investigated this matter and trying to bring a modicum of justice and solace to the community, to the victim's family and friends. But I think we were able to accomplish that in this case. And we got a guy off the street who is probably primed to do this to someone else in the future if he was not held accountable.

A murder cover-up never truly erases the crime. In fact, it often helps law enforcement solve it.

Desperate attempts to hide evidence tend to be reckless, leaving behind more clues than the killer realizes. From sloppy crime scene cleanups to digital footprints and inconsistent alibis, these mistakes create more opportunities for investigators to crack the case. Ultimately, while a cover-up may delay justice, it rarely denies it.

because there's no such thing as a perfect crime and certainly no such thing as a perfect cover-up. And while it's important to have the right detective on the case, collecting solid evidence, developing circumstantial evidence, it's tying all of that into a tidy bow for the jury. And that takes a skilled prosecutor.

They are the last voice for the victim in the courtroom. And while all of these sleight-of-hand tricks the defendant may have displayed in attempting this sloppy cover-up, Brian Porter was there to make sure that Samaya and her family received justice. Having left the profession some years ago, I can 100% say that it is a heavy load that homicide prosecutors, many prosecutors carry, whether they realize it or not, mentally and emotionally.

We need to compartmentalize to get the job done, but it's also important to feel what these cases are actually about, just as Brian said, because they are about human beings who have lost their lives by violence, and there are so many other additional terrible ripple effects as a result.

Samaya Ahmed was young and had come to this country looking for a better life. She lost it to a man she believed, or at least hoped, cared about her. Samaya Ahmed, you are remembered by your friends, your family, and now this AOM community too.

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 Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond. Researched by Kate Cooper. Edited by Ali Sirwa and Philjean Grande. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?