Ibrahim Hamza Allam

Trim and fit at fifty-five, Herbert Kavale was a bachelor who enjoyed the ladies, and Vienna had no shortage of attractive, willing women. It was not uncommon for his cleaning lady to discover him in bed, exhausted from the night before, when she arrived at eight a.m., and he was seldom found alone. The morning of September 19, 1983, was therefore doubly strange; there was no trace of any female visitor about Kavale’s flat, and he did not respond when she came tapping at his bedroom door. Concerned, she risked a peek inside and found Kavale stretched out, nude, across the bed, a bathrobe cord wound tight around his neck. Police initially suspected that a burglar had surprised Kavale, killing him when he resisted, but a coroner’s report revealed the victim had engaged in sex ten minutes prior to death. Kavale’s car was missing from the parking lot downstairs, and homicide detectives tried another theory on for size, suggesting that Kavale might have hired a prostitute who brought her pimp along for purposes of robbery and murder. Through investigation, Viennese detectives learned Kavale had secured a number of his female playmates through the ads in certain „swinger’s“ magazines. The magazines kept records that enabled them to forward on replies to different ads. Kavale’s latest contacts were Egyptian aliens, Ibrahim and Dahlia Allam, who advertised their availability for „unconventional games“ — a euphemism for spectator sex. Immigration records listed Ibrahim Allam as twenty-five, his wife a mere sixteen; they had been married in July of 1983, in Munich. When detectives called upon their address in Vienna, they discovered that the couple had departed swiftly, on the day Kavale’s body was discovered. Background checks with the authorities in Munich showed that Ibrahim Allam was born in Cairo, emigrating to West Germany at age fifteen. He ran afoul of the police in 1977, as the direct result of his betrothal to a 15-year-old girl. Omar Khalifa, father of Allam’s intended, was violently opposed to the engagement. Furious at the rejection, Ibrahim had drawn a gun and shot Khalifa through the head, in front of twenty witnesses. A murder charge was bargained down to manslaughter, and he had been released in less than four years‘ time, on the condition that he leave West Germany forever. Viennese investigators knew that they were dealing with a killer, now, and matters went from bad to worse with the discovery of Kavale’s car along the Marseilles waterfront. Detectives in the seaport city learned that Ibrahim and Dahlia had struck a deal with two young yachtsmen — Jean Lefebvre and Maurice Delvaux — to sail as passengers en route to the United States. Their 42-foot ketch was found in New York harbor six weeks later, but no trace could be discovered of the owners or their lethal passengers. American police received their break in mid-July of 1985, when Egyptian Ali Bengaza was violently assaulted on a Chicago street corner. Bystanders intervened, and his attacker fled at the approach of a policeman, but Bengaza knew him well enough. The victim had been friends with Ibrahim and Dahlia Allam in Egypt and West Germany. His friendship had developed into love for Dahlia, and Ibrahim had flown into a homicidal rage when Ali had suggested Dahlia should divorce her husband to become Mrs. Bengaza. Prior to the explosion, Ibrahim informed Bengaza he had killed three men since his release from prison in West Germany. The fugitives were run to earth in New York City, shortly after the Chicago incident, and were delivered to the Austrian authorities. Both Ibrahim and Dahlia signed confessions prior to the commencement of their trial in early 1986. According to their statements, Ibrahim had changed his mind about participating in the „games“ Kavale had commissioned. After Dahlia chose to follow through, Allam had gone berserk with jealousy and choked Kavale with his bathrobe sash. For Dahlia, charges of abetting murder were reduced to those of failure to assist a person facing mortal danger; she was sentenced to a year in prison. Ibrahim, convicted on May 9 of second-degree murder, received a term of twenty years. Upon release, he faces extradition to Marseilles, with murder charges waiting in the deaths of Jean Lefebvre and Maurice Delvaux.