Victims Confessed to 33 Date apprehended January 1934 Parents Ali Mirza, Ali Aghar | Name Asghar Murderer | |
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Other names Ashare Qatel (Asghar the Murderer) Died June 26, 1934, Tehran, Iran | ||
Criminal penalty Capital punishment | ||
Ali Asghar Borujerdi (Persian: علیاصغر بروجردی) known in Iran as اصغر قاتل (Asghar-e Ghatel or Asghar Qatel: Asghar the Murderer) (1893 – 26 June 1934) is the first Iranian serial killer and rapist reported in the 20th century.
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Moving to Iraq as a child with his family, he started assaulting, raping, and later murdering, adolescent boys in Baghdad since he was fourteen years old. Escaping back to Iran in 1933, he continued his murders in Tehran where he was eventually arrested and executed. Asghar Qatel was convicted for raping and killing 33 young adults, eight in Tehran and the rest in Baghdad.
Early life
Ali Asghar Borujerdi was born in 1893 in Borujerd, Western Iran. His father, Ali Mirza, was a famous road thief attacking caravans around Borujerd, Malayer and Persian Iraq – now central Iran – including Qom, Saveh and Arak.
His family, including Ali Asghar, his mother, and his siblings left Borujerd to Karbala in Iraq when Asghar was eight years old.
Murders in Iraq
Six years later, when Ali Asghar was fourteen, he moved on to Baghdad, where he started to sexually abuse adolescent boys. He learned to kill them in order to get rid of police who were observing him for assaulting and raping young adults. According to his testimony, he killed 25 people in Iraq before escaping back to Iran. In 1933, Ali Asghar was about to be reported to police after he was watched by another boy while he was raping and killing the last Iraqi teenager. Soon he found out that it was unsafe to stay in Baghdad, and as a result he immediately escaped back to Iran.
Murders in Iran
Asghar did not go back to his hometown of Borujerd. Instead he started his new life in the capital, Tehran, where soon he found it easy to trace and hunt new victims.