Asghar the Murderer

Ali Asghar Borujerdi was born in 1893 in Borujerd, Western Iran. He had two brothers named Reza and Taghi, and one sister, growing up in a family who had a history of theft, murder and defamation. His grandfather Zulfali was a bandit from robbed caravans in the cities of Borujerd, Malayer and Arak, sometimes murdering the caravans' owners.

Asghar's father, Ali Mirza, was also a known bandit who had killed more than 40 pedestrians with his bare hands. His infamy persuaded him to immigrate to Baghdad with his wife and children. On the way to Mashhad, Mirza was killed by the Persian Cossack Brigade in Iran, and later his wife went with the children in Baghdad.

Asghar had heard from his mother that his father was a soldier and killed in one of the wars. The family soon traveled to Iraq on the pretext of visiting the Karbala pilgrimage, deciding to reside in Baghdad afterwards.

Asghar, who sold snacks to children and adolescents, made friends with his clients and promised to give them treats, but instead harassed and raped them. For the first time at the age of 14, due to the persecution of children in Baghdad, he was arrested and imprisoned. But due to his young age he wasn't considered a serious risk, and was released with the consent of the children's parents. He then returned to selling nuts and snacks. Asghar was again sentenced to 9 years in prison, after it was indicated that he had abused five children in Baghdad. From the age of 27, he was ordered to stay away from the police and the court in order to stay away from his raptures. As a result, he killed 25 children and adolescents in Iraq. He himself confessed that he killed the last child in Iraq, he fled quickly to Iran and settled there permanently.

Asghar said the following about his crimes in Iraq:

Asghar did not go back to his hometown of Borujerd. Instead, he settled in Tehran's Reza Khan Caravanserai, where he was particularly busy with athletics. In this way, he also contacted children and adolescents. His prey was mostly teenagers who had come to Tehran to find work. He killed eight people in a brief period and abandoned their bodies in the southern part of the city. The discovery of the mutilated bodies of these adolescents in the furnaces and aqueducts near the Minudasht village became a source of fear in Tehran.

In January 1933, a teenager who was lost in the Qaleh Kharabeh village south of Tehran found a boy's corpse, rushing to tell the news afterwards in nearby Najafabad. Agents from the Office of Provinicial Affairsdiscovered that with the presence of the child's body and two other corpses, that all were under twenty years of age and were killed in the past two weeks.

On February 23rd, in the space of less than two months, another young man's skull was found at Laleh Park, but his body was not located. Five days later, a 31-year-old man's headless body was discovered in the Aminabad district of Dolatabad.

By creating a climate of fear around Tehran, the police and the judiciary worked hard to find a clue for the murders. Sardar Timur Khan, an experienced inspector from Tehran, was ordered to investigate the serial murders in southern Tehran. By harnessing a few wells, the officers continued their quest to solve the mystery in Qarat.

On Thursday, March 10, 1933 in the vicinity of Aminabad qanats, the police came by a middle-aged man in the desert, selling a stack of porterage. The agents inquired about him and his job. The man claimed that he was selling okra. They did not doubt him at first, but upon closer inspection noticed bloody clothes and a blood knife. The man claimed to have bought the clothes from the market near the Shah-Abdol-Azim shrine, and that the rest were his tools. However, the authorities were not convinced by his response, and the salesman was arrested and taken to a commissioner in Tehran.

The agents then visited Asghar's residence in Reza Khan Caravanserai, and asked the neighbors, who said that the night before, the boy whom Asghar introduced as his brother, slept in his room. They identified the clothes worn as belonging to the same teenager.

After a series of interrogations, Ali Asghar admitted that the clothes were related to the adolescent, also named Ali, whom Asghar employed to work alongside him, but after the boy ran away, Asghar found him and proceeded to rape and murder him. Eventually, Asghar confessed to raping and murdering eight children in Iran and twenty-five in Iraq.

Now known as "Asghar the Murderer", the trial began in June 1934. Asghar was accused of raping and murdering a dozen children and adolescents. Finally, the court condemned him to nine years' imprisonment and subsequently sentencing him to death, after the verdict was reaffirmed by the Supreme Court of Iran. Asghar explained reasonsing behind the crimes:

Eventually, on Wednesday morning, July 6, 1934, Asghar was executed in Toopkhaneh in front of the country's national order system. He was at first humorous, but when he saw the rope, he said that if he was released, he would give the person two sheep. "I killed some tramps, I killed them because of you", he said after protesting.

In the story The Well of Babel by Reza Ghassemi, Asghar the Murderer says that "my purpose in life is to see my head over and overcome others. Well, now I'm dreaming of a cord climbing up." The prison director instructs him to reverse it. He then closes a large stone with a twine on his neck and hangs himself from his legs. Of course, this story is only based on him and it is not real.