I'm darn Marler and this is a weird darkness bonus bite.

The Autumayr hung heavy in Birmingham's Mesham Grove that September evening in twenty nineteen.

In this quiet suburban cul de sac, where children normally played until dark and neighbors exchanged pleasantries over our garden fences, something was about to shatter the peace.

A figure draped in black fabric moved through the shadows, waiting.

The person beneath the nicab wasn't who anyone would expect, not a religious woman heading home from prayer, but a forty five year old American from Wisconsin with a loaded gun and a mission to kill.

Amy Betro didn't fit any profile of a hired killer.

Born in West Alice, Wisconsin, a Milwaukee suburb no and more for its state fair than international crime, she lived what investigators would later describe as a fairly unacception life.

Her parents split when she was young, and she left school at seventeen, drifting through retail and restaurant jobs before deciding to better herself through education.

She earned degrees in early childhood education and graphic design from local technical colleges.

Her social media showed a woman with blonde hair often styled in playful configurations, someone who wore pink converse sneakers and posted the same mundane updates as millions of other middle aged Americans.

Detective Chief Inspector Alistair Urnkis would later struggle to reconcile the woman in those photos with what she had become.

She had virtually no criminal footprint anywhere in the world, not even a pattern of traffic tickets or minor infractions that might hint at a willingness to break rules.

The transformation from Midwestern graphic designer to would be assassin began improbably with a swipe on a dating app in September twenty eighteen.

The man calling himself Doctor Ice was actually Mohammed Nobil Nazir, a thirty one year old from Derby, England.

Their online chemistry was immediate and intense.

By December, Betro was planning what she told friends was a graduation celebration trip to the UK.

She landed at Heathrow on Christmas Day twenty eighteen, carrying excitement about meeting her online romance in person.

The airbnb in London's King's Cross neighborhood where they spent That first night together would later feature in court testimony, a detail that made the eventual conspiracy even more surreal.

How many international murder plots begin with holiday romance in a rental flat.

While betro was falling for her mysterious British boyfriend, a completely separate drama was unfolding in Birmingham.

In July twenty eighteen, a fight erupted at a clothing boutique in the city's alam Rock district.

The shop belonged to Aslat Mohammad, and the altercation left two men injured, Muhammad's Lak fifty six and his son, Mohammed da Bil Nazir thirty one, yes the same Nazir who was charming an American woman online.

The specifics of what started the fight remained murky even during the trial, something about wedding clothes, honor, and escalating tensions between two families.

But whatever sparked that initial confrontation, it lit a fuse that would burn slowly toward attempted murder.

The Nazir family didn't just want revenge, they wanted elimination.

They began plotting to kill either Oslat Mohammed or someone in his family, and they needed someone who couldn't be connected to them, someone completely outside their world.

Metro visited the UK again in May twenty nineteen, ostensibly to attend drum and bass music events.

She didn't meet with Nazir during this trip, but they maintained constant contact through snapchat messages and video calls.

When asked about her feelings during the trial, she would describe Nazir as very charming and admit she did have feelings for him.

The prosecution would argue these feelings made her malleable, willing to do anything for a man she'd met only a handful of times.

August twenty nineteen marked Beetro's third trip to the UK, but this visit had nothing to do with romance or music festivals.

She arrived with a specific purpose, though she had later claimed complete ignorance of any sinister plan.

Her movements during this trip painted a different picture, one of careful preparation and reconnaissance.

She stayed at hotels across England, London, Manchester, Derby and finally Birmingham.

Each location represented a meeting point with her co conspirators.

Three days before the attempted murder, footage from Nazir's phone showed something particularly damning, a gun being fired and jamming.

Someone was practicing testing the weapon that would soon be pointed at seconder Ali's head.

So Stember seventh, twenty nineteen, Betro appeared at a used car dealership in Birmingham's alum Rock area.

The garage owner would later describe her to investigators in unflattering terms, a short, fat woman in a summer dress with an American accent.

She bought a Mercedes E two forty using the name Becky Booth, paying cash.

The choice of vehicle was deliberate.

It was common enough to avoid attention, but reliable enough for what came next.

That afternoon, security cameras captured the Mercedes driving in convoy with two other vehicles circling Mesham Grove.

Repeatedly.

They were studying the layout, memorizing escape routes, noting where Oscelt Mohammed's family members might appear.

Betro, still in her summer dress and flip flops, looked like a lost tourist rather than someone preparing for murder.

As darkness fell on September seventh, the Mercedes sat idling in Mesham Grove.

Inside Betro had transformed herself the summer dress was gone, replaced by dark clothing and, most significantly, the nikab that covered everything but her eyes.

The religious garment served as the perfect disguise.

In multicultural Birmingham, a woman in a n akab would draw no suspicion, and witnesses would struggle to provide any identifying details.

She'd been waiting for hours when Seconder Ali's black suv finally turned into the cul de Sac at nine ten pm.

The thirty three year old had no idea he had been marked for death, no awareness that his father's business dispute had spiraled into a murder plot.

He parked outside his house, probably thinking about dinner or the football match on television.

Security footage captured what happened next with sickening clarity.

The figure in black emerged from the Mercedes and moved directly toward Ali's vehicle, no hesitation, no second thoughts.

At point blank range, close enough that survival would have been virtually impossible, Betro raised the nine millimeter handgun and pulled the trigger.

The mechanical click that followed saved Seconder Ali's life.

The gun jammed.

In that fraction of a second, everything changed.

Ali's reflexes kicked in.

He jumped back into his suv and fled, tires screeching against the pavement.

Betro stood there for a moment, perhaps processing the failure, before returning to the Mercedes.

There would be assassin had become something else, a loose end and a failed conspiracy.

Most people, having failed an attempted murder due to pure mechanical chance, might have fled immediately.

Betro did initially leave the scene, but something drew her back.

Whether it was rage at the failure, fear of disappointing Nazir, or simply determination to complete her mission.

She returned to Mesham Grove just after midnight.

This time she arrived by taxi, approaching the Mohammed family home on foot.

The house was dark and quiet.

The family wasn't even there, having been moved, to say after the earlier attempt, but Betro didn't know that.

She raised the same jammed gun and fired three shots directly through the windows.

The bullets pierced the glass and embedded themselves in the upstairs bedroom ceilings.

If anyone had been sleeping in those beds, they would have been killed.

The sound of gunfire in suburban Birmingham set neighbors calling police, but by then Betro was already gone, her taxi, disappearing into the night.

By one thirty pm.

The next day, she was at Manchester Airport.

Her appearance on security cameras showed a woman who looked remarkably composed for someone who had attempted murder twice in twelve hours.

She wore her hair in playful space buns, carried a backpack, and moved through security like any other tourist heading home after a British holiday.

Days after Betro's return to the United States, Mohammad Nazir followed.

According to Betro's later testimony, they rented a car and embarked on what she characterized as just a road trip.

The itinerary read like a couple's bake an amusement park, the ailine obsessed tourist trap of Area fifty one in Nevada, Los Angeles, San Francisco.

She claimed Nazir never mentioned the shooting in Birmingham, and she had no idea anything violent had occurred.

The prosecution found this claim particularly hard to swallow.

How could someone fire a gun at a human being at point blank range returned to fire more shots at a family home and then played tourists across America as if nothing had happened.

The cognitive dissonance required for such behavior suggested either remarkable compartmentalization or complete sociopathy.

Meanwhile, back in Birmingham, investigators were piecing together a crime that seemed almost too bizarre to be real.

The gun used was identified as a high point C to nine pistol and American firearms so rare in the UK that experts said that they had never seen one before or since in the country.

DNA evidence from a black glove left in the Mercedes led them to an unexpected suspect, an American woman with no criminal history.

The investigation that followed would span years and involve the FBI, Britain's National Crime Agency, and two UK police forces.

The COVID nineteen pandemic complicated matters, shutting down international travel and cooperation.

Just as investigators were closing in Betro seemed to have vanished completely while authorities searched.

Another piece of the conspiracy emerged in October twenty nineteen, just weeks after the failed assassination, three packages of ammunition and gun parts were mailed from the United States to an address in Derby.

The recipient was an innocent man who had somehow crossed Nazir's path.

The plan was diabolical in its simplicity.

Frame an enemy for illegal weapons importation and let the authorities handle the rest.

But Betro had made a crucial mistake.

Her DNA was all over the gun parts, and security footage from a post office one hundred miles from her Wisconsin home showed her mailing the pasthckages under a fake name.

When confronted with this evidence years later, she would claim it was another American woman who just happened to look like her, sound like her, and wear the same distinctive trainers.

The trail eventually led investigators to Armenia, where Betro had somehow ended up living in a housing complex on the outskirts of Yravonne.

How she got there, why she chose Armenia of all places, and what she did during those five years on the run remains largely a mystery.

When Armdian police finally arrested her, she was living quietly, having almost successfully disappeared from the world.

Extradited to the UK in January twenty twenty five, Betro based a Birmingham Crown Court jury with a defense that strained credibility to its breaking point.

Her story was that another American woman, one who looked like her, sounded like her, used the same phone or the same shoes, and it just happened to be in Birmingham at the exact same time was the real shooter.

The coincidences she asked the jury to believe were staggering.

She admitted being around the corner from the shooting six minutes after it happened, but claimed this was just terrible coincidence.

She acknowledged buying the Mercedes, but said someone else must have used it.

She confirmed mailing packages to Derby, but insisted someone else had put weapons inside them.

Throughout the trials, she appeared composed, even defiant.

She wore purple T shirts and styled her hair in the same space bunds she'd worn at Manchester Airport after the shooting.

When the guilty verdict came eleven to one on the conspiracy and firearm charges, unanimous on the ammunition charge, she showed no emotion, just stared at the jury with her arms crossed.

Detective Chief Inspector Orenkas struggled to categorize Betro even after the conviction she wasn't a professional criminal, had no history of violence, showed no signs of mental illness or addiction that might explain her actions.

Her motivation seemed to be simply that she was in love or infatuated with Nazir.

Though investigators found no evidence she was paid for the attempted hit, the randomness of how she became involved made the case even more unsettling.

A lonely woman swipes right on a dating app, and within a year she's pointing a gun at a stranger's head in a foreign country.

The barrier between normal life and attempted murder proved frighteningly thin, just a few international flights and a willingness to pull a trigger.

Mohammed Oslam and Mohammed Nazir had already been sentenced to ten and thirty two years, respectively for their roles in the conspiracy, but Betro's case felt different, more disturbing in its implications.

She had no stake in the Birmingham feud, no connection to either family, no reason beyond infatuation to involve herself in attempted murder.

The gun that jammed that night in Mesham Grove saved seconder Ali's life through pure mechanical chance.

Had it fired properly, he would have died instantly, and Betro might have successfully disappeared forever.

Instead, she became something unique in criminal history, an American woman convicted of attempting to assassinate a British citizen she had never met, in a city she barely knew, for reasons she could barely articulate.

The prosecution noted that her crime wasn't a moment of passion or madness, but something planned a cross continents with multiple participants.

She flew across an ocean to kill, failed, tried again, and then went on vacation.

The casualness with which she treated at tempted murder suggested someone who had crossed a line from which there was no return.

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