True crime is one of my favourite TV genres, so I’m accustomed to batting away its most common criticisms: that it takes ghoulish pleasure in horrible incidents, for instance, or that it perpetuates rather than challenges reductive ideas about victimhood and deviance. That said, The Body in Room 203 on 5 deserves every one of those condemnations.
A distastefully superficial rehashing of a harrowing crime, the show offers no meaningful insight into its central murder – that of 28-year-old student Nadine Aburas at the hands of her ex, Sammy Almahri. Rather, it whips through the particulars of the crime, pausing only to relish its most salacious details, before delivering a trite conclusion.
Beginning with the discovery of Aburas’s body in the Future Inns hotel in Cardiff Bay on New Years Eve 2014, the documentary quickly lists the scene’s suspicious elements – from a strange “suicide” note to the way her body had been not only washed, but also posed in the bed.
Talking-head commentators give their twopence, but their input feels more like padding than expertise. Retired Evening Standard correspondent Paul Cheston’s weird description of Aburas – “Nadine was talented, she was slim, she was petite” – could have been pulled from a “perfect female victim” mood board, while criminal psychologist Jonathan Taylor gives an overly simplistic explanation of online dating: “In my day you’d go to a bar […] with your friends. […] That’s not where we are with the internet.” Gee, thanks!
Sammy Almahri was given a life sentence (Photo: 5)Aburas did meet New York-based Almahri online, and the distance between them meant he was able to keep up a high-flying façade despite driving limousines for a living. As the relationship progressed to in-person visits, he became increasingly abusive and controlling, blackmailing Aburas with compromising photos when she eventually tried to leave him. Watching CCTV footage of the pair heading to the hotel room together, it’s heartbreaking to imagine her hoping for a negotiation that would end his threats for good. Instead, he ended her life.
Men killing women is, grimly, grindingly unremarkable. What was genuinely notable about this murder was Almahri’s behaviour in its aftermath. Calling police to tell them where the body was, laughing maniacally down the phone as he threatened to kill again and posting online using Aburas’s social media accounts. I would have loved to understand more about Almahri’s state of mind – unfortunately, the closest we get comes from forensic psychologist Dr Ruth Tully, who says his behaviour suggested “some anti-social personality traits”.
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When Almahri is eventually apprehended he flits between justifications – Nadine had asked him to kill her, God had told him to do it. He pleads guilty before his trial ends. Was he overwhelmed by the prosecution’s evidence? Had he simply craved the attention of a courtroom, tiring of the game once he had what he wanted? While the commentators do lots of wondering-out-loud about his motivations, the documentary makes no real effort to ascertain them – nor to consider how it sits amid the wider context of male violence.
A hasty voice-over tries to categorise the case as a cautionary tale about internet safety. Although Aburas initially met her killer online, there was nothing uniquely digital about her murder. Tully fares a little better – “this could happen to anybody, and remembering Nadine will help us remember that”. Rather than feeling profound, however, her closing comment only underscores the show’s cursory engagement with Aburas’s story.
I suppose any of us could be murdered – but surely, the point of programs like The Body in Room 203 is to shed light on the specific circumstances that led to a specific outcome. Done right, true crime can illuminate the most staggering depths of human pain and depravity, teaching us something about ourselves in the process and putting the victims and their stories at its heart. Done wrong, it flattens tragedy into a rote accounting, horror for its own sake. In The Body in Room 203, we’re dealing with the latter.
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