World's Most Evil Killers - Season 5, Episode 8 - Sabah Khan - Full Episode | Forensic Files

[DRAMATIC TUNE] NARRATOR: In early 2016, a 26-year-old Carer and devoted aunt, named Sabah Khan, sat down at her laptop,
and began to search the internet on how to get away with murder. STEWART CARR: She let her obsession consume her,
and she was determined to get her sister's husband. And she was willing to go to shocking lengths
to carry that out. NARRATOR: For four years, Sabah had been having an affair with her sister, Saima's, husband,
and she wasn't prepared to share him anymore. JO SIDHU: Sabah looked at her sister's life and thought,
that's what I want. But she couldn't have it. And so she decided to take it for herself.
NARRATOR: On the 23rd of May 2016, Sabah Khan stabbed her sister at least 68 times.
Saima was almost decapitated in a vicious attack, that left a river of blood flowing
through the family home. But in the immediate aftermath, Sabah was captured on camera, blaming everything
on an unknown intruder. GEOFFREY WANSELL: It's two sisters. It's killing within the family.
It is Shakespearean in its drama. NARRATOR: Sabah Khan had done the unthinkable,
and had been unmasked as one of the world's most evil killers. [MUSIC PLAYS] NARRATOR: In October 2017, at the Old Bailey in London,
England, Sabah Khan pleaded guilty to the murder of her own sister. The 27-year-old Carer, had stabbed Saima Khan to death,
in a frenzied attack at the home they shared in Luton, Bedfordshire. The violent murder was in stark contrast
to the seemingly quiet young woman, who was represented in court by Jo Sidhu. JO SIDHU: My first meeting with Sabah Khan as my client,
took place at the court. I met her in a room. As opposed to being 26, she came across as somebody who
was perhaps still in her teens. And I got the impression that she was emotionally quite immature.
She didn't want to say what happened, she clammed up. She knew that there was an ongoing investigation,
and she simply told me that she was innocent. NARRATOR: By the time of her trial,
the evidence against Khan was overwhelming. So much so that she had no option but to admit carrying out the brutal murder
of her own flesh and blood. Journalist, Stewart Carr, watched the drama unfold at the Old Bailey.
STEWART CARR: I've covered many crime stories, and I've attended many murder trials,
but the thing that always stands out about the Sabah Khan murder case, is just the sheer personal nature of it.
This was her sister, this wasn't any random person that she chose to strike the life out of.
And I always feel a big sadness whenever I look back upon it. I've dealt with many, many murders in my career.
People who kill each other for money. People who kill in the course of a robbery.
Sometimes you get cases where parents even kill their own children. But the unique nature of Sabah Khan's murdering of her sister,
is precisely that. It is extraordinarily rare for a sister to kill her own blood.
NARRATOR: This killer's story begins in Pakistan. Sabah Khan was born on the 22nd of February 1990,
the youngest of two daughters. Her family moved to the Netherlands when she was still a child.
JO SIDHU: Sabah Khan's family was a Pakistani Muslim family that had migrated from Pakistan to Holland,
and that's where Sabah and her sister were raised. And so she lived a life which hovered
between a traditional Islamic family and a very westernized environment within Holland.
DR. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: This would have been quite a traditional patriarchal household, where
men are the breadwinners, and women are the nurturers and the caregivers. But Holland is quite a liberal society,
so there would have been quite a contrast between life at home and life out there in the community.
JO SIDHU: And so I think the sisters tried to straddle two different worlds. And somehow, they made it work.
NARRATOR: By the age of 18, Sabah's family had relocated again. This time, across the English Channel.
JO SIDHU: They made a good life for themselves in Holland, but it was decided at some point,
that they could have a better life if they shifted to England. So that's the decision that was taken by the parents.
And they moved both Sabah, Saima, and their brother all together into the place that they had in Luton.
Luton is one of the most multicultural towns in the UK. And for the most part, the different communities
live in good harmony. Every part of town has its own identity. NARRATOR: Sabah began studying for a law degree,
but didn't manage to finish the course. DR. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: The fact that she didn't complete
the studies means that she's not able to go on and actually pursue that independence.
So that dependency on the family unit, the centrality of that institution for her sense of identity, really is
quite concrete at this point. NARRATOR: Despite an eight year age gap, Sabah and her sister, Saima, were very close.
STEWART CARR: The two sisters were often seen together. Neighbors would see them going down the street.
And they both worked as carers, so they had similar lifestyles, similar careers,
as well as being from the same family. So I think for a lot of people, they were very much
like two peas in a pod. And indeed the physical similarity between the sisters, was quite striking.
NARRATOR: But the family dynamic was about to change. As part of an arranged marriage in 2007,
Saima had wed a taxi driver, named Hafeez Rehman. JO SIDHU: Because Hafeez came from Pakistan
and he'd never been raised anywhere in Europe, he brought with him much more conservative ideas about what
the role of women should be. His own wife, he expected to be a mother and a homemaker.
In fact, Saima had a job, she worked as a Carer looking after elderly people in the local community.
And Hafeez was OK about her doing that job, as long as she made sure that she looked
after the house and the kids. NARRATOR: The arrival of Hafeez into the Khan family home,
had a direct impact on teenage Sabah. JO SIDHU: Sabah, having been raised quite conservatively,
expected that one day she'd have an arranged marriage of her own. When Hafeez came into the house, this
was the only outside male that she'd ever interacted with. Here he was, sitting at the dining table,
sitting in the living room, laughing and joking with her. She took him for what he was meant to be,
her older brother-in-law, some 10 years her senior. But she was only 18 years old.
And when his behavior with her became rather more flirtatious, she was flattered.
EMILY PENNINK: There came a point where Hafeez assumed the role of a man of the house,
and sort of dominated the family in some respects. And as part of that, he rather took it upon himself
to form a relationship with Sabah, that he shouldn't have done. NARRATOR: By 2012, the entire family
were living together under one roof, in a semi-detached house in Luton. Saima Khan was raising a daughter,
but her husband and her sister had begun an affair. JO SIDHU: I don't know really what Hafeez face expected
to come of all of this, but there came a point when Sabah was so emotionally attached to him,
she'd totally fallen in love with him, head over heels. And I think he realized that this wasn't just an affair.
He now had on his hands a young woman who was obsessed with him. Who wanted him to be with her, and to exclude his wife.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Can you imagine what it must have been like in that semi-detached house?
The emotions that must have been flooding through it. Well, it must have been astonishing.
NARRATOR: Once so close, the two sisters had suddenly become rivals for the affection of the same man.
It was all getting too much for 22-year-old Sabah. She not only became less and less emotionally attached
to her sister, she began to resent her. Because her sister had what Sabah wanted,
and that was Hafeez. NARRATOR: 22-year-old Sabah Khan's feelings of jealousy towards her sister, Saima,
were spiraling out of control. But her brother-in-law, Hafeez, had supposedly devised a way around the complicated love triangle.
After Hafeez started a full blown affair with Sabah Khan under the same roof as his wife and his parents in law,
he began to have the idea that, why can't I have two wives. He went as far as actually consulting a Muslim priest.
And asking the imam, would it be possible for me to marry the other sister and take her as a second wife?
And he was told that under Islamic law, that simply would be unacceptable. NARRATOR: Despite having his plan rejected,
the affair continued, and Sabah fell pregnant by her brother-in-law. EMILY PENNINK: Hafeez encouraged her quite strenuously
to have an abortion. She went ahead with it, but I think it was a very, very difficult thing for her,
because the thing that she wanted most in the world was to have her own family. DR. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: So everything kind of came
crashing down at this point. But she still didn't give up on him. And I think this really is testament to the quite low self
esteem that she had at the time. GEOFFREY WANSELL: She wants everything that her sister has.
Her husband, her children, everything. She just wants it. And so what had begun as an adolescent crush, developed
into a full blown sexual affair, now turns into an obsession. NARRATOR: By early 2016, the affair
had grown even more intense. Sabah had watched on from the sidelines as Hafeez and Saima welcome their fourth child
into the family home. On the outside, Sabah appeared to be a doting aunt, but inside she was as determined as ever
to win her brother in law's affections. STEWART CARR: Sabah, we know became increasingly desperate, because she felt
like she was losing Hafeez. And there's a tone of desperation in some of her text messages.
We can see she's feeling that he's slipping through her fingers, and she feels certainly
the need to take some action. JO SIDHU: She started to describe Saima as that bitch,
in text messages, which she sent to Hafeez. She wanted her sister's life. And the only way she was going to get it,
is if she could get rid of her sister. NARRATOR: Sabah only grew more frustrated with the situation
when Hafeez and Saima made an important announcement to the family. STEWART CARR: I think that Sabah had sensed
that the relationship was starting to wane, and she would soon lose Hafeez. There was talk that Saima and Hafeez
would move out of the family home, and strike out on their own. And that would, of course, have left Sabah with nothing,
and she was not prepared to face that. JO SIDHU: That was the trigger. When he announced with his wife that they were planning
to move out, that meant the end of his relationship with Sabah. And Sabah knew it.
It was the last straw that broke the camel's back. Hafeez wanted to get away from Sabah,
but Sabah was so emotionally attached to him, she couldn't contemplate a life in which he
wasn't the most important part. NARRATOR: While Hafeez and Saima prepared to move out
of the family home, Sabah had begun to concoct a scheme to erase her love rival from the picture.
Sibling relationships are the most enduring relationships of our lives. But in this case, Saima wasn't an ally,
she was a competitor who had to be taken out. JO SIDHU: In her private moments, Sabah began to imagine a world in which she
could get rid of her sister, and take everything that her sister had. Her husband, and the children.
And set up a life of her own. But Sabah was not a criminal. Sabah wasn't someone who knew about violence.
She didn't know how to hurt someone, still less how to kill them. And there she sat on her laptop, googling
away, thinking of how she might be able to get rid of her sister. And all sorts of bizarre ideas came into her head.
NARRATOR: The 26-year-old search history revealed some shocking results. GEOFFREY WANSELL: There is a level of fantasy going on
in Sabah's mind at this point. Literally, breathtaking. I mean, she's also started searching
the web for poisonous snakes. 16 ways to kill someone and get away with it. How to hire a killer.
It's beyond bizarre. This is a well brought up young Muslim woman, who is planning to get rid of her sister, her beloved sister.
Who to all intents and purposes, is someone she's loved from the very beginning of her life.
It defies belief. It defies common sense. And yet, Sabah kept on, and on. STEWART CARR: We know that she spent 5,000 pounds paying
a mysterious figure called the Fixer in Pakistan, who dabbled in black magic. We can imagine just how desperate,
how out of options Sabah must have felt. NARRATOR: In emails to the so-called Fixer,
Sabah had written in the third person. In one chilling message she wrote, you finish off Saima as quickly as possible,
so my Sabah can get her Hafeez back. JO SIDHU: Sabah was somebody who did all those things
because she wants to keep her hands clean, she didn't want blood on her fingers.
It was only after she realized that none of those options would actually work, that she was left with one option
on the table, which is that she would have to be the person to get rid of her sister.
NARRATOR: On the 23rd of May 2016, Sabah Khan saw her chance. She was babysitting her nieces and nephews
while 34-year-old Saima was at work, and the rest of the family were away from home.
The family had all gone out to attend a funeral at a local mosque. It was the funeral of a distant relative.
The mother, the father, her brother, and Hafeez, her brother-in-law, all went to the mosque.
She knew they'd be out for a while. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Sabah even Google's how long
do funerals take, to see how long she's got to kill her sister. It is genuinely a plot worthy of a novel.
This was an opportunity that would never come around again. She texted her sister, Saima, many texts,
encouraging her to come home. On the pretext that the children were playing up. NARRATOR: Just after 11:00 PM, Saima,
concerned about her one-year-old daughter, returned home. JO SIDHU: Saima was an ordinary woman,
leading an ordinary life, who had no idea whatsoever about the devastating act that was going to befall her.
When she returned home that night, as she'd done 1,000 times before. No doubt she expected she'd put her key in the door,
open it, and walk through into the hallway. What she didn't realize was that Sabah was waiting for her
with a knife in her hand. EMILY PENNINK: You can only imagine what she had to face in the hallway.
Because she would have turned around, and she would have been attacked straight away by a figure
in a dark hoodie and dark clothes, and carrying a large knife. And she may not have even been able to recognize who
it was who was attacking her. NARRATOR: In a fit of rage, Sabah Khan repeatedly stabbed her own sister for eight minutes.
As Sabah carried out this attack in complete darkness, the four children were upstairs.
Most of them were asleep, and of course, they had no idea that their mother was being brutally murdered
downstairs by their aunt. DR. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I think Sabah is so determined to kill her sister, that is the tunnel vision that she
has at this point in time. The fact that the children are in the house, I don't think it
even registers with her, because she is so selfishly pursuing that one goal. STEWART CARR: What's most disturbing of all,
is that Saima's seven-year-old daughter upstairs, actually heard something of what was going on
and she shouted down to her aunt. Auntie, are you killing a mouse? Wasn't killing a mouse, she was killing her mother.
NARRATOR: Sabah Khan's lust for blood was insatiable. In total, Saima suffered at least 68 stab wounds.
EMILY PENNINK: Her attacker kept on stabbing her, even after it was obvious that she was mortally wounded.
And the wounds were so horrific, that she was almost decapitated. And one of her hands, I think her right hand,
had almost been cut clean off in the attack. DR. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: This is way more violence
than is actually needed to end somebody's life, and that is very significant. Because what it says, is that it's not
enough to kill your rival, you have to absolutely destroy them and dehumanize them.
JO SIDHU: After the violence was over, the body was left there in the hallway, with blood streaming from the wounds.
And a river-- not just a pool-- of blood going through the floor of that hallway.
NARRATOR: After murdering her sister in a bloody rage, with four children still upstairs in the family home,
Sabah Khan calmly began to cover her tracks. DR. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: She's following through a plan.
She's not panicking, she's not freaking out, she's actually quite composed at this time,
because she just sees it as another stage on the journey. JO SIDHU: The first thing she did
was, she went to the back of the house and smashed the window, to make it look as if a burglar had come into the property.
Then she went upstairs, and in the spare bedroom, she upturned some boxes of jewelry
to make it seem as if the house had been ransacked. NARRATOR: With the house looking just as she planned,
Khan then made herself presentable. JO SIDHU: She then had to change her clothes, because of course,
stabbing her sister some 68 times, meant that blood had splashed onto her own garments.
She changed them, bundled them into a bag along with two rubber gloves that she'd
worn to carry out the killing. And inside that bag, she put the kitchen knife, which
had been used as the weapon. NARRATOR: Khan hid the bag in her bedroom before finally,
10 minutes after murdering her sister, making a call. But not to the emergency services.
EMILY PENNINK: She calls her father. And in a way, she's trying out her story. So she tells him that something's happened,
that they need to come home. And she starts to sort of formulate the alternative reality that she's trying to spin.
And then only after she's spoken to her father and practiced what she's going to say,
she calls for an ambulance. And the ambulance arrive with the police. So she gets the opportunity to actually perform
the story that she's cooked up. NARRATOR: Sabah Khan's simmering jealousy and resentment
towards her sister, had boiled over in the most horrific way. Now she would have to appear as the epitome of calm,
if she was going to get away with murder. JO SIDHU: Soon after the emergency services arrived, Sabah presented to everybody--
her parents, her brother, the man who became her lover, and of course, the paramedics and the police--
as somebody who was a grieving sister in shock. She spoke to the police outside the house, and all of it
was filmed on bodycam footage. STEWART CARR: We can see body cam footage from officers,
showing her deliver the performance of her life, really. Where she describes finding her sister, and what a shock
it was. The shock and the surprise on her face, it's not the type of reaction you would
expect from someone who's just found their sister brutally murdered. There's a certain detachment from it.
She's talking very quickly, she's desperate to get her story out there. She's offering a level of detail that they're not asking for.
She's talking about the mirror being broken, she's talking about blood. So this is her really trying to get a step ahead.
EMILY PENNINK: She seems to be putting on an air of somebody who's almost in shock, who can't quite
understand what's happened. She doesn't really know how her sister managed to be so badly injured.
She doesn't know who might be responsible. And she starts talking about how she tried to save her.
And wrap a scarf around her neck to stem the flow of the blood. JO SIDHU: She had to hold her nerve, all the while knowing
in the back of her mind, but minutes earlier, she had been killing her own sister.
It's an extraordinary situation to find yourself in. And one can only imagine how Sabah Khan got through it
and kept a straight face. STEWART CARR: I think it shows a certain coldness in Sabah's
character, that she could so coldly, and so calculatedly deliver this performance, which was
very precise in its timeline. I mean, she'd certainly covered as many tracks and avenues
as possible, in order to divert suspicion away from herself. NARRATOR: The police investigation
began immediately. Forensic Pathologist, Brett Lockyer, was one of the first people to enter the house.
BRETT LOCKYER: As I walked into the scene, the first thing I saw was obviously there was blood outside.
There was blood on the doorstep. When I went into the hallway, the body of Saima Khan
was lying on the floor, and there were some large pieces of glass on the floor. I was informed by the senior investigating officer,
that the suggestion was that Saima Khan had been the victim of a violent break in.
And as we were processing, and trying to get pieces of evidence or remove items of clothing,
it became more and more apparent about the level of violence that she had been inflicted to.
And I could see straightaway that she had some injuries to her arms, which would suggest
that she put up a struggle. And it was quite an upsetting scene. NARRATOR: Even at this early stage of the investigation,
Brett had his doubts over Sabah Khan's story that a random intruder had killed her sister.
BRETT LOCKYER: It didn't feel that way. Because the suggestion was, by Sabah Khan,
was that she heard her scream from upstairs and that prompted her to come downstairs,
and she found her sister in this way. But the number of injuries that she sustained
didn't fit exactly with that story. Saima Khan had been subjected to a sustained attack,
and that wouldn't have just occurred as a matter of seconds, that would have gone
on for some period of time. And so the suggestion that this was a aggravated robbery which
resulted in her death, didn't quite fit with what I was seeing at the scene. NARRATOR: But in Sabah Khan's mind,
the plan had worked perfectly. Playing the role of the grieving sister, was step one of her twisted agenda.
Her ultimate goal was to have Hafeez all to herself. DR. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I do think, that at this point,
Sabah is so fixated, and obsessive, and deluded to an extent, that she really does think that she
can carry this plan through. Because you got to remember, she is quite isolated.
This family is her only reality. She doesn't have any critical voices, any friends
or any colleagues outside, who would call her out on the kind of thoughts and hopes
that she had. So I really do think that she thought she'd get away with this. I think Sabah Khan was purely focused on herself
and on her own needs. I don't think she put any thought into how this would affect the children, her parents, Hafeez.
All she wanted to do was to get rid of her sister. And then from that, she thought everything would be OK.
But clearly, everything was not going to be OK. And she wasn't about to live the life that she'd fantasized
about for all these months. NARRATOR: Meanwhile, Saima Khan's body lay lifeless in a mortuary.
It is impossible to know what would have been going through her mind during the vicious attack,
by her own sister. BRETT LOCKYER: I often do talk to the deceased when I'm doing the postmortems.
As a doctor, you still treat deceased people as people. You know their soul is gone, but the body's still there,
and it's still a physical form. And so talking to Saima, and trying to really empathize as
to what she had been through, I think that we do that naturally as people, not only as forensic pathologists.
It was one of those that will stick with me. NARRATOR: But the police were already
beginning to suspect that Sabah may have had something to do with the attack. A comment captured on the body cam
on the night of Saima's murder, raised their suspicions. BRETT LOCKYER: I didn't believe the story was really
robust enough to explain, not only the severity of the injuries to Saima Khan, but also
to explain the injury that Sabah Khan had to her hand. And so I was very suspicious that that injury to her hand
was actually caused by her wielding the knife into her sister. And that hitting bone and causing the knife to slip,
hence the reason why she had that cut to her hand, and not as a result of her alleged story
that she brushed the piece of glass off the body. NARRATOR: The house remained a crime scene while the police
investigation continued. And the first person detectives wanted to speak to, was the one adult who was present at the time
of Saima Khan's murder. Her sister, Sabah. JO SIDHU: How naive could Sabah have been to think that people
would believe that somebody had come from outside and killed her sister? What would have been their motive?
When she was investigated by the police, she told them that her sister was having an illicit affair.
It was so untrue, but she wanted to lay a false trail so that the police would believe that somebody else might
have a reason for killing her. So whether it was a burglar, or a lover, or somebody else,
Sabah wanted to draw the attention away from herself. NARRATOR: The grieving Khan family
had to be temporarily rehoused. Their home was still an active crime scene. Despite this, life went on as usual for Sabah Khan.
DR. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: In the week after the murder, Sabah just carries on with life as normal.
Because she's not thinking, I've just killed my sister, how awful. What she's thinking is, I've been successful in getting
my rival out of the way, now let's get onto the next stage in the plan. So she's very calculated, she's very strategic.
She doesn't appear to have any remorse whatsoever. I think she probably thought she'd got away with it.
And she thought that her cover story would hold. We're devoted sisters, we're like two souls in one body,
no one is going to suspect me. NARRATOR: But time was running out for Sabah Khan.
At the end of May 2016, a week after the murder of her 34-year-old sister, Saima, detectives searching
for the killer, made a shocking discovery at the family home in Luton. The killer may have attempted to make Saima's murder appear
as a random attack by an intruder, but this latest breakthrough pointed the finger of suspicion
firmly towards Saima's own sister, Sabah. Sitting upstairs in Sabah Khan's bedroom,
was a plastic bag containing her bloodied clothing with shards of glass from the window,
that she herself had broken. And along with that, rubber gloves that she'd worn to commit the murder.
And indeed, the weapon itself, a bloodstained knife. EMILY PENNINK: I don't think Sabah Khan quite
appreciated what would happen. So she probably thought that at some point, the police would leave and she'd have an opportunity
to get rid of it. But the police were still treating the house as a crime scene, so she really didn't have the chance to dispose of it,
as perhaps she'd thought previously. So she didn't really think it through very well.
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Of course, Sabah becomes the person of the most intense interest to the police.
She is invited for an interrogation. All she says is, I love my sister. And doesn't utter another word.
DR. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: She was really shocked to have been accused of this crime.
So this is saying you are victimizing me, I am the victim here, isn't this terrible.
And the fact that she offered a no comment interview, showed that she was restricting the amount of information
she gave to police. Because the less that you say, the less that they have to pick over.
So it is quite strategic. NARRATOR: Although she continued to deny it, investigators made the stunning decision
to arrest and charge Sabah Khan with the murder of her own sister. JO SIDHU: One cannot even begin to imagine the nightmare that
Mr. and Mrs. Khan, the parents of the Khan sisters, had to go through. To discover their daughter's body in such a pool of blood
in the hallway of their home, knowing that the grandchildren upstairs had now lost the parent who
was to raise them. And thereafter, to see their younger daughter arrested for the murder of that sister.
The trauma that they would have gone through is unimaginable. NARRATOR: As detectives began to gather more evidence,
CCTV was discovered of Sabah, two days before the murder, purchasing a new knife to cut the cake at her niece's
first birthday party. JO SIDHU: Sabah was sent on this errand, and went to a local Tesco.
And she was filmed there on camera, buying the knife. It was a large, kitchen knife.
She bought it in cash, and brought it back to the family home. That was the weapon that she eventually
used to kill her sister. NARRATOR: Incredibly, there was also CCTV footage from a neighbor's home on the night of Saima's murder,
that captured her coming home from work. JO SIDHU: When the CCTV cameras were discovered by the police
from across the road, it was seen that at 11:07 PM, Saima walked through that door, the lights were switched on.
Within a fraction of a second, they were turned off again. And for the next 8 minutes, that house
was plunged into darkness. It was in those eight minutes that Sabah Khan repeatedly stabbed her sister.
EMILY PENNINK: And the fact that it was on CCTV, that the lights had been turned off and then turned back on again,
is another nail in the coffin of the idea that this was a burglary gone wrong. NARRATOR: Detectives had also uncovered
a motive for the killing. Access to Sabah's mobile phone, revealed that she and Saima's husband, Hafeez, were having an affair.
JO SIDHU: The police presented clear evidence to him, that he had been engaged in an affair for many years
with his sister-in-law. The evidence was there laid bare in their text messages on WhatsApp.
Everyone knew by now what was going on. And so he shifted his position. And he claimed, that actually he had been seduced by Sabah Khan.
That after he'd been seduced, he pretended that in fact, he was forced to continue a sexual relationship with her.
It was laughable. NARRATOR: Despite all the evidence against her, Sabah Khan still protested her innocence
while discussing her upcoming court case with her defense lawyer, Jo Sidhu. JO SIDHU: When you spoke to Sabah,
you didn't get the sense that this is someone who was born wicked. Who had wicked thoughts from childhood, as she was
a teenager, or even in her 20s. This is someone to whom darkness came. She plunged herself into a murky world in which thoughts
were racing through her mind. Evil, wicked thoughts. Things that she would never have entertained in her brain
as she was growing up with her sister, close as they were. This was a transformation of a young woman
who had been a perfect model daughter and sister to her family. And watching that transformation,
looking at Sabah Khan shifting from one person to another, it was like Jekyll and Hyde.
NARRATOR: The defense began to question Sabah Khan's mental health, and the impending court case was delayed
on three separate occasions. EMILY PENNINK: And I think one of the reasons for that,
was that the defense was seeking some psychiatric reports that might give Sabah Khan some sort of a defense,
by explaining that she had perhaps attacked her sister while in the grip of some sort of psychosis.
JO SIDHU: Those investigations into Sabah Khan's mind, produced evidence of a disorder, but it
wasn't strong enough to provide her with a defense to murder. NARRATOR: Sabah Khan had run out of excuses.
JO SIDHU: It was only after the evidence became too much to resist and nothing that she could answer, that she
eventually cracked and admitted to us that she was indeed responsible for killing her sister.
NARRATOR: In October 2017, 17 months after Saima's murder, 27-year-old Sabah Khan's
trial date finally arrived. STEWART CARR: By the time that the fourth trial date had been devised, the case was
all over the national media. Everybody knew about it, and it was no longer a story which
just affected the community. Everyone had an opinion on this woman who was accused
of murdering her sister. And the fact that the trial was later moved to the Old Bailey,
didn't surprise anyone. She came to the court, brought from the prison, stood there in the dock, and the charge of murder
was put to her again. And this time she said the word, guilty. NARRATOR: Sabah's plea was a shock to many onlookers
at the Old Bailey, including Emily Pennink, who was in the courtroom. EMILY PENNINK: We were expecting a trial,
and it came completely out of the blue, as far as I was concerned. Because people don't often plead guilty to murder,
because you're looking at a mandatory life sentence if you do. So it was a shock and a surprise when it happened.
NARRATOR: Sabah Khan's guilty plea meant she would not have to explain herself to anyone, including her grieving
family, in a court of law. JO SIDHU: When the judge imposed life imprisonment on Sabah
Khan, and ordered that she serve a minimum of 22 years behind bars, he knew, of course,
that it wasn't just Sabah who'd be paying the price for this horrific murder. It would be the four children who had lost their mother.
It would be the parents who had lost their daughter. And those same parents who would be visiting Sabah for years
to come as they grew older. So many people were affected by this brutal killing.
And like so many murders, it wouldn't just end with a dead body. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Justice was served
by the imprisonment of Sabah. She should never, ever have had the mistaken idea that she could get away with killing her sister.
But by that time, she was so caught up in this extraordinary obsession with Hafeez,
that she probably said to herself, there's nothing else I can do. It's a dreadful, dreadful story.
NARRATOR: In a statement to the media, Hafeez Rehman said, "The ones who are suffering the most
are my children as they have lost the most important woman in their life, their mother.
They are too young to understand fully what has happened. The pain is harder to bear when the murder of someone
is committed by their own. It leaves you with so many questions which are unanswered."
DR. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: The term that we use to describe a case like this is, sororicide.
This is the killing of a sister. And it's part of a wider crime called siblicide,
the killing of a sibling. Now siblicide is incredibly rare. It's less than 2% of all homicides
are siblings killing siblings. And of that number, only 4% are women killing women.
So an incredibly rare crime. STEWART CARR: From the family's point of view, it must have been extremely traumatic
to have all of these details coming out in the press, in the media. Showing, not only the illicit affair, but just how deranged
and jealous Sabah had become in order to kill her sister. Certainly they've never spoken about it publicly,
and I don't think that they ever will. EMILY PENNINK: It's quite ironic in a way,
that if she had just let things take their course and let the family move out, she could have had the space
to recover and to get her own life, which is what she always wanted. So I think she was sorry that it failed.
Whether she was remorseful at the time, it's really difficult to know. NARRATOR: Sabah Khan is not due for release from prison
until 2039. She will be 49 years old. BRETT LOCKYER: This is one case which does stay with me.
Because during my time with Saima in the mortuary, I did find myself sometimes placing
myself into that position that she would have been in. And I think it becomes more horrific when you understand
that it was her sister that was causing these injuries to her. And I think that the level of fear that must
have gone through her, knowing that it was a family member that was doing this to her.
I mean, that's something that really does stick with you. STEWART CARR: I don't think anyone
will ever forget this murder. The facts of it were just so shocking, that one woman would kill her sister in such a savage way.
Many people will always remember that part of town, and the murder that took place there.
And I think it will be decades really before people stop talking about Sabah Khan.
NARRATOR: The murder of Saima Khan was brutal, bloody, and so unnecessary. Made all the more heartbreaking by the fact
it was committed by her own flesh and blood. No matter the hurt and resentment inside Sabah Khan,
there can be no excuse for her actions. Stabbing her sister to death, while her four
children were upstairs in the family home, is unforgivable. And undoubtedly makes Sabah Khan one of the world's most
evil killers. [MUSIC PLAYS]

An investigation into the woman who was driven into a jealous rage and stabbed her sister to death while her children slept upstairs.

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Sabah Khan murdered her sister Saima in a brutal attack fueled by jealousy over an affair with Saima's husband.

Key points

Sabah's Dark Obsession. Sabah Khan's obsession with her sister's life leads her down a dark path.
The Shocking Murder. On May 23, 2016, Sabah Khan brutally murdered her sister, stabbing her 68 times.
A Grieving Sister's Performance. After the murder, Sabah presented herself as a grieving sister to the police.
The Grieving Sister's Coldness. Sabah Khan's calculated performance raises suspicions during the investigation.
The Shocking Discovery. Detectives uncover bloodied clothing and the murder weapon in Sabah's bedroom.
The Unimaginable Trauma. The parents of the Khan sisters face unimaginable pain after the murder and arrest.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

That's what I want. But she couldn't have it.

Sabah's desire for her sister's life.

0:39WatchAug 19, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

More from True Crime Files

Solve the Crime

Read a real case one clue at a time, then see how your call held up against the investigators.