JOANNE Samak had been looking forward to celebrating her 50th birthday, making plans for a trip to Paris with her husband, Mohamed, and a party at home.
So, friends and family were shocked when Mohamed told them she had stabbed herself to death.
In a panicky 999 call, he told the police operator that he had found Joanne, mother of their young child, on the floor with a knife in her stomach.
Despite attempts to resuscitate her, she died at the scene.
However, officers quickly sensed that something didn’t add up and their dogged investigation tore apart Mohamed’s ever-changing story, revealing evidence of a secret relationship, a crucial ‘missing hour’ and a dramatic last-minute discovery that gave them what they
needed to try him for murder.
“With some cases, you just have to accept that you might never fully answer the question, why?” says DCI Leighton Harding, leading the investigation.
“And you just have to be satisfied that you got the right outcome. It’s impossible to always know what goes on behind closed doors.”
The two-part documentary, Murder 24/7, follows West Mercia police from the moment of the emergency call to conviction.
Police took Mohamed’s ‘distraught’ call at 4.09am in which he said, “My wife has got a knife in her tummy. She’s on the floor in her room. I was going to the toilet and I found her on the ground.”
When asked if he thought she had done this herself, he mumbled, “I think so.”
While medics tried, in vain, to save 49-year-old Joanne’s life at their home in Droitwich Spa, Worcestershire, police were suspicious from the start.
Something didn’t look right and the body was cold, meaning she had been dead for a while. Mohamed was arrested on suspicion of murder.
Forensic teams examined the family home and found limited blood with no signs of a struggle. There was no history of violence in the relationship and they slept in separate bedrooms.
There had been six stab wounds around her chest and stomach which the
pathologist said were all quite uniform, suggesting they were self-inflicted. No fingerprints were found on the knife.
But if it was suicide, why? Detectives began to build a picture of Joanne in the days before her death.
Friends, family and her hairdresser all described a woman in high spirits, planning her 50th birthday party, buying bottles of wine, and excited about a new job and a trip to Paris.
Data from Joanne’s mobile phone was analysed to see if anything revealed her state of mind. There was no web history of suicide or self-harm and no messages to friends suggesting she was unhappy.
The data also revealed that Joanne had her hair cut just two days before she died.
In his police interview, conducted by DC Tracey Robinson, Mohamed went into detail of what had happened on the morning of his wife’s death, contradicting his original 999 story.
Now he claimed her had seen her stabbing herself on the landing and
tried to stop her.
When asked why she would have done this, he replied, “I think it’s a lot of things. Jo suffered and she had had enough of life and would say, ‘I wish I could die. The house is all a mess. I’ve had enough of life.’ She was stressing about little things.”
“He changed his account of events,” says DCI Leighton Harding. “Why did he not say, when he rang 999, ‘I tried to stop my wife stabbing herself,’ as he did in his interview?’”
“He claims he tried to stop Jo. In that case, why are her stab wounds so uniform and not more chaotic? And he had no blood on him at all.
“Once your suspicions are raised that a crime has been committed, when you go back and look at the evidence again, you start to see the inconsistencies in a person’s accounts. But it’s so difficult for someone to lie consistently under pressure.
People start to make mistakes and you have to be ready to catch them and you have to ask yourself, why? Why would this person do it? Does he stand to gain anything?
“If you can answer that, you might unlock everything.”
There was bodycam footage of a neighbour who had approached a police officer at the scene, shows her saying that she heard a female scream at 3am on the morning of Joanne’s death. What had been happening between then and Mohamed’s emergency call at 4.10am?
A crucial lead then came from a witness who told police that Mohamed had confided in her that he had been back in touch with a woman he had once had a relationship with.
An examination of records on this former girlfriend’s phone and Mohamed’s revealed that they met up in London and that afterwards she had apologised for not wanting to kiss him as she was uncomfortable doing that with a married man. This was just two weeks before Joanne’s death. Was this his motive for murder?
It was enough to bring him to trial. Mohamed pleaded not guilty.
Despite deliberating for three days, the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision, so it went for retrial.
Seven months later, midway through this second trial, where expectation for conviction was not high, police discovered a top and socks stuffed in a bag and placed in the loft at the family home.
Forensic testing revealed the blood belonged to Joanne. This new evidence was presented to the jury.
Mohamed Sunak, 42, was found guilty of murder and given a life sentence with a minimum of 21 years.
Judge James Burbridge said in his sentencing remarks: “You had the presence of mind in trying to reinforce your lying and, frankly, wicked story that Joanne had killed herself, to try and discard your clothing with her blood, as she lay dying on the floor, probably no more than a foot away from you.
“You opened the latch to the loft and stuffed the blooded items into a bag. I cannot accept you are remorseful. You still deny your responsibility. You destroyed a family’s happiness and joy.”
Joanne’s brother, Mark, remembers a happy sister full of life and compassion for others. “She was an easy person to like and good to be around,” he says.
“She always had a big smile and was very positive. I miss her sarcasm to me as a brother. I can hear her calling me ‘Billy’, which was my nickname. I just miss everything about her.
“We didn’t feel Jo was unsafe, physically, in her marriage. She was probably not getting the normal emotional support you would expect from a partner. He wasn’t particularly present as a husband – certainly in the last few years.
“Her death is a hole that will never be filled for us. It’s been devastating.”
