Freshly Squeezed True Crime

#26, Pride / Pulse...Part#2

• Suhailly Nieves • Season 1 • Episode 25

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 30:05
SPEAKER_02

This is French Squeeze True Crime, a Florida only True Crime podcast. I'm Sunelee, and before we get to this week's juicy episode, I ask you to visit the website at fstcpodcast.com where you'll find all of our social media platforms as well as the newest episodes. And also find us on YouTube where we would like you to follow us, subscribe, share it, do all the things. So pour yourself a tall glass of orange juice and let me tell you a story.

SPEAKER_00

Today on part two, we discuss Omar Sadiq Mateen. Born on November 16, 1986, in New York to Afghan-American parents, his family moved to Florida as a child, where he displayed an interest in violence and had behavioral problems in school, including struggling academically and receiving numerous suspensions. As an adult, he drifted through various jobs and a failed marriage before eventually becoming an armed G4S security guard. Before the shooting, he had been investigated for connections to terrorism by the FBI in 2013 and 2014. During that period, he was placed on a terrorist screening database but subsequently removed. In a call to 911 during the shooting, Matin identified himself as Mujadin or an Islamic soldier and as well as a soldier of God and pledged his allegiance multiple times to Abu Bakhtar Ali Baddi, who at the time was the leader of the militia jihadist group, the Islamic State. He said the shooting was triggered by an airstrike in Iraq that killed Abu Wabim as an IS soldier six weeks earlier. Matin was born Omar Mir Sadiq at Long Island Jewish Medical Center on November 16, 1986 in New High Park, New York to Afghan parents. His father, Mir Sadiq Matin, is from Heret and immigrated from Afghanistan in the 1980s and became a naturalized U.S. citizen on November 17, 1989. Sadik Mateen was a secret informant for the FBI at times between January 2005 and June 2016. Sadiq Matin also owned a nonprofit company named the Duran Girah Inc. based in Port St. Lucie, Florida, which was founded in 2010, where he hosted a political commentary show. This political commentary show aired on a California-based Pami Yves Gargan television channel in which he expressed anti-Pakistani views. His mother, Shalamateen, was taken into custody after she allegedly attacked her husband while he was brushing his teeth on the night of December 7, 2002. Both of his parents first settled in New York, having four children, including Omar. After being raised in New York for a few years, he moved with his family to Port St. Lucie, Florida in 1991. His family was described as being moderate Muslims and, quote, all American. At a young age, Mateen displayed a preoccupation with violence, the Associated Press and the Washington Post reported. For his elementary and middle school education, he attended classes in St. Lucie County, Florida. While at Mariposa Elementary School, a third grade teacher wrote that Mateen was, quote, very active, constantly moving, verbally aggressive, rude, aggressive, much talked about violence and sex, hands all over the place on other children, and in his mouth. In the seventh grade, Mateen was moved to a separate class with the purpose of avoiding conflicts with other children, and suffered from poor scholarly performance due to, quote, many instances of behavioral problems. A classmate at Mariposa said that Mateen was a bully, disrespectful to girls, and acted like he was better than his classmates. Another classmate reported that Mateen was bullied at school because of his weight and his Afghan parents. His parents were described as dismissive of his poor behavior, while his father, quote, had a reputation for being disrespectful of female teachers and dismissive of complaints about his son, end quote. In 1999, while Mateen was in the eighth grade, his teacher sent a letter to his father regarding, quote, attitude and inability to show self-control. Mateen began his secondary education in Martin County High School in 2000 and at the age of 14 was expelled after being in a fight in math class, where he was briefly arrested without being handcuffed and charged with battery and disrupting a school function. Though the charges were later dropped, while a sophomore attending Spectrum, an alternative high school for students with behavioral issues, classmates told the Washington Post that Mateen cheered in support of the hijackers during the 9-11 attacks and stated that Osama bin Laden was his uncle who taught him how to shoot AK-47s. After his outburst, Mateen's father arrived at the school to pick him up and slapped him in the face, with Mateen later being suspended for five days after the incident. Soon after the 9-11 attacks, quote, he shocked other students on his school bus by imitating an exploding plane, end quote, by the New York Times. A retired Martin County high school dean, Dan Alley, said the school personnel tried to counsel him and show him the error of his ways, but it never had the effect that they were hoping for, and that his father would not back up the school and he would always take his son's side. Mateen was later sent to St. Lucie West Centennial High School after getting into a fight with another student. By the time Mateen returned to and graduated from Martin County Stewart Adult Vocational School in 2003, he had been suspended 48 days for being involved in fights and injuring other students. Mateen attended Indian River State College's criminal justice training program, and in a questionnaire, he admitted to committing or being involved in a crime that went undetected, but did not provide specific details. He went on to earn an Associate of Science degree in criminal justice technology from the college in 2006. He worked in a number of local stores and restaurants while attending school. In October 2006, Mateen began working as a recruiter for the Florida Department of Corrections, being assigned to the Martin Correctional Institution. In a letter explaining his juvenile report as part of his successful application, Mateen explained the incident of what he was arrested at school when he was 14. He also wrote that he had experimented with marijuana as a younger teenager. Following the Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007, Mateen suggested in a corrections office training class that he would bring a gun to class.

unknown

P.

SPEAKER_00

H. Skipper, who was the warden at the institution, wrote that in light of the tragic events at Virginia Tech, Officer Mateen's inquiry about bringing a weapon to class is at best extremely disturbing. Days later, on April 27, 2007, Mateen was involuntarily dismissed from the program and never became a certified corrections officer. Mateen then worked for a British-based security firm, G4S Secure Solutions, in Jupiter, Florida, from September 2007 until his death. In 2010, Mateen, while working for G4S, was interviewed for and appeared in The Big Fix, the 2012 documentary about the Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Matteen said of those working on the cleanup, quote, nobody gives a shit here. Everybody's just get out to get paid. They're like hoping for more oil to come out and more people to complain so they'll have jobs. They want more disaster to happen. G4S said two screenings of Mateen, one conducted upon hiring and the other in 2013, had raised no red flags. Under Florida state law, for him to work as an armed guard was required either to make a full psychiatric evaluation of Mateen or to administer a validated written psychological test. The test administered was the updated Minnesota Multifaceted Personality Inventory or the MMPI2, a test used for job screenings and court cases requiring those subjected to it to agree or disagree with statements such as My soul sometimes leaves my body, or once in a while I think of things too bad to talk about. Carol Nundenman, the psychologist listed on the character certification submitted by G4S to the state, said she stopped working for the company in 2005. After the shooting, Nuttleman, who according to the records of the security company G4S, was said to have evaluated and cleared Mateen for his firearms license in 2007, but denied ever meeting him or living in Florida at the time, and said she had stopped her practice in Florida in January 2006. G4S said Mateen was not actually interviewed by a psychologist, but rather a psychologist evaluated the results of a standard test used in job screenings, and his test was evaluated by the firm that brought the Lemon's practice headquarters for a psychological evaluation. On September 10, 2016, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services fined G4S $151,400 for providing inaccurate psychological testing, information that they found the psychologist whose opinion was necessary to permit Matin to carry a weapon was not practicing as a screener. Between 2006 and 2016, 1,514 forms were submitted erroneously, listing Nuttleman's name. Mateen's form was amongst those investigated. He had taken the MMPI2 and Dr. Sae Shaf Rahem, a family physician, who were close ties with Matin's family, gave him a medical clearance. Rahim was also the imam of the Fort Pierce Mosque to which the family belonged and said that Matin had become progressively more reclusive and did not speak to other congregants before or after services. G4S admitted Mateen's form had a quote clerical error and clarified that he had instead been cleared by Rahim, who was from the same firm that brought the wrongly named doctor's practice. Rahim had not interviewed Mateen but evaluated the results of a standard test used in the screening he undertook before hiring. Nevertheless, G4S removed Mateen from his job post at a courthouse because of threats he made towards co-workers, including one threat where he claimed he would have al-Qaeda kill a deputy's family. Mateen had claimed that his co-workers and courthouse deputies were making racist comments towards him. Despite this, G4S quote kept Mateen as an employee but moved him to a kiosk at a gated community in Palm Beach County. They never informed the community or its property management company about why he was transferred there. Mateen held an active concealed carry permit and an armed security guard license. It was also noted that Mateen had no adult criminal record. According to licensing records, he was a proficient shooter who scored at or above the 98 percentile with a 9mm semi-automatic pistol. In 2006, Mateen filed a petition for a name change, adding Mateen as his surname to match that of his parents. In 2009, Mateen married his first wife, Sitora Yusfly, an Uzbekian-born woman who he met in 2008 through MySpace, a social networking site. They separated after four months and divorced in July 2011. Mateen visited Saudi Arabia for an eight-day trip in March 2011 and a 10-day trip in March 2012. The latter was organized by the Islamic Center and New York University. It included 12 New York City police officers and a group from Columbia and Yale and visited Mecca and Medina. Around this time, he went to the United Air Emirates. FBI director James Comey said Saudi officials helped investigate Mateen's trips. In 2016, the House Intelligence Committee said that the U.S. investigators are searching for details about the Saudi Arabian trip. In 2011, Mateen met his second wife, Nwar Salon, on an online dating site. The two married shortly after in Hercules, California on September 29, 2011. She moved into Mateen's Fort Pierce home in November 2012. By September 2013, they were living in a house in Port St. Lucie with Mateen's father and another relative. She reportedly left Mateen and joined relatives in Rodeo, California by December 2015. At the time of his death, Mateen had a three-year-old son with Salomon. At the time of the shooting, he lived about 100 miles from Orlando in Fort Pierce, but received mail at his parents' home in nearby Port St. Lucie. According to Florida Department of Law Enforcement records, he had no criminal record in Florida. Mateen's father, Mir Sadiq Matin, said of his son's actions, quote, this had nothing to do with religion. He was quoted as saying that he had seen his son get angry after witnessing a gay couple kiss in front of his family at the Bayside Marketplace in Miami months before the attack, which he suggested might have been a motivating factor. The elder Mateen had formerly hosted a political TV show called Duran Jirga Show on California-based satellite television network in 2015, in which he denounced the then Afghan president Asharef Ghani, denounced the Pakistani government, self-represented himself as a candidate for the president of Afghan, and had expressed gratitude towards the Taliban. In one of the videos of his shows, the elder Mateen seems to call on the Afghan Taliban, which he called our warrior brothers, to solve the issue of the disputed Duran line, which marks the present international border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Following the nightclub attack, Mateen's ex-wife told media outlets that during the marriage, Mateen was mentally unstable and would beat her and keep her completely separated from her family. She also said that he was bipolar, though he had never been given a diagnosis and had a history of using steroids. Mateen's second wife also said that Mateen became physically and verbally abusive towards her six months into their marriage, though she noted him being kinder in the weeks leading up to the shooting. A former high school student told the Washington Post that when he witnessed 14-year-old Mateen on the day of the September attacks being physically assaulted by his father, Mayor Siddiq Mateen, in front of other students. Imam Rahman at the Fort Pierce Islamic Center told reporters that Mateen would come to the mosque three or four times a week with his father and his three-year-old son as recently as two days before the shooting and said, quote, he was the most quiet. He would come and pray and leave. There was no indication of any violence at all. Brahem added that he did not preach violence towards homosexuals. A former high school friend and co-worker said that Mateen had no obvious conflicts with his gay workers at Treasure Coast Square, a shopping mall at Jensen Beach. A former coworker who worked with Mateen in a gated community in Western Port St. Lucie described him as unhinged and unstable. He also said that he frequently made homophobic, racist, and sexist comments and talked about killing people. The coworker stated he complained to G4S about Mateen several times. And another coworker told us the New York Times Mateen made people wait at the gate for a number of reasons, including, quote, if it was time for him to do his prayers. A resident who had lived at the community since 2011 described Mateen as very polite and very nice, a positive person. However, another customer said Mateen acted like a straight-up predator. Several people who knew Mateen have speculated that he might have been gay or bisexual. A male friend of his from 2006, when the two were in police academy together, said that Mateen went to gay clubs with him and that Mateen once expressed an interest in dating him. Club growers also recalled Mateen dancing with another man. One classmate who asked not to be identified by name said Mateen asked him if he was gay. The FBI investigated many of these claims but never found reasonable evidence to establish Mateen's sexual orientation. After the shooting, the Orlando Sentinel and the Palm Beach Post reported that at least five regular customers at the Pulse Nightclub had seen Mateen visit the venue on at least a dozen occasions. Sometimes Mateen drank in a corner by himself, and other times he would get so drunk he was loud and belligerent. A witness who recognized Mateen outside the club an hour before the shootings told investigators that Mateen had been messaging him for about a year using a gay dating app called Jack. He gave his phone to the FBI for analysis along with his login details for the application. A third witness said that Mateen had tried to pick up men at the nightclub. Dozens of other witnesses, however, told the Tampa Bay Times that they had never seen Mateen at the nightclub. A spokesperson for Barbara Poma, the owner of the Pulse Nightclub, called the statement that Mateen had been a regular patron untrue and totally ridiculous. Mateen's father, Sadiq, denied that his son was closeted, saying, if he was gay, why would he do something like this? Two days later, after multiple reports questioned whether Mateen was homosexual, Mateen's father said, I didn't see any of it and I don't believe that was the case. However, during an interview with the Brazilian television station SBT Brazil, Mateen's ex-wife claimed that his father called him gay while in her presence. Following the shooting, Mateen's father stated in an online video in his native language, in this month of Ramadan, the gay and lesbian issue is something that God will punish. The servants of God shouldn't have anything to do with it. The Wall Street Journal reported Mateen's ex-wife as saying that he did feel strongly about homosexuality. When Axe Mateen was gay, his ex-wife said she didn't know. And recalled that he had confessed to going to nightclubs. On June 16th, the New York Times reported that the FBI was skeptical of reports that Mateen was quote gay and closeted and that he had made use of homosexual bars and apps. On June 18th, the same source added that federal officers say they have no evidence in his effects or online presence to back them up. On June 23rd, the Los Angeles Times reported that the FBI had found no evidence to support claims by those who say Mateen had gay lovers or communicated on gay dating apps. Investigators considered at least one claimant of homosexual relationship with Mateen as not credible. Nevertheless, Mateen's autopsy results confirmed he was HIV negative. On June 25th, the New York Times reported that after exhaustive investigations with help from the FBI, the gay dating network added Adam for Adam concluded that Mateen had never used this app. With regards to reports of Mateen using it at other dating sites and apps for gay men, an Adam for Adam spoke to him and said the following I think it was a hoax. The article stated that after 500 interviews, the FBI had not found any evidence of homosexuality. Through Mateen's web searches, emails, or other electronic data, the FBI reported that they had found evidence that Mateen was cheating on his wife with another woman, but not gay. The FBI investigated Mateen in May 2013 after he made inflammatory remarks while working as a security guard. Mateen had told his co-workers that his family was linked to Al-Qaeda and that he had joined Hezbollah, both rivals of the Islamic State and of one another. Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State during his 2016 shooting. FBI director James Comey commented on the contradictions within Mateen's statements. The FBI interviewed Mateen twice after opening the investigation. In these interviews, Mateen admitted to making the statements but explained that he said them in anger. After 10 months, the investigation was closed and Mateen determined not to be a threat. Mateen had been placed on a terrorist watch list while the investigation was underway, but he was removed shortly thereafter. Matin came to the FBI's attention again in July 2014 when he was linked to Mohammed Abdu Salah, an American who had traveled to Syria and committed a suicide bombing in late May 2014. The two had been acquainted and attended the same mosque. The investigation concluded, but focused on Abdul Salah rather than Mateen, the law enforcement officials told The Wall Street Journal. U.S. Representative Adam Shift, the ranking Democrat member of the House Intelligence Committee, said according to the Department of Homeland Security, Mateen had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Though analysis noted that at this point it's anyone's guess as to how involved Omar Mateen was with either Al Qaeda or the Islamic State. Mateen had also pledged support for a suicide bomber who claimed to represent the Al-Nura Front, a Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda and an opponent of the IS. After Martin's attack, the FBI determined his computer had been used to watch extremist videos, including beheadings, and to seek information on the Islamic state. His wife knew he watched the jihadist videos, but quote, she did not think much of it because the FBI seemed to have cleared them. A survivor of the shooting said Mateen talked about wanting the United States to stop bombing my country and confirmed that Mateen pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. Two months before the attack, Mateen transferred his share of a Port St. Lucie home for only $10 to his sister and brother-in-law. Mateen legally purchased a 6-hour SIG MCX, which is a semi-automatic rifle, and a 9mm Glock 17 handgun. These two firearms later used in the shooting from a gun shop in Port St. Lucie two weeks before the shooting. He also attempted to purchase body armor but was unable to do so as a store where he tried to make the purchase did not sell the product he sought. After several weeks before the attack, he attempted to purchase body armor and 1,000 rounds of bulk ammunition at another gun shop, but the staff became suspicious of him and turned them away. A salesperson at the shop then said he contacted the FBI, but federal officials said they had no record of such a report, and the local sheriff's office also said it was unaware of the incident. ABC News and Fox News reported that early in the morning of June 12, the day of the attack, Mateen posted on one of his Facebook accounts the following The real Muslims will never accept the filthy ways of the West. You kill innocent women and children by doing airstrikes. Now taste the Islamic State vengeance, end quote. As well as America and Russia stop bombing the Islamic State. His final post to Facebook was quote, in the next few days you will see attacks from the Islamic State in the US. These posts, since deleted, were recovered by the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs. Officials briefed on the investigation also said Matin went to an unspecified Walt Disney World theme park with his wife. He visited both Disney Shrinks where security is less strict than at Disney theme parks and Pulse between January 1st and the 6th during the gay days 2016 celebrations at Disney World and Orlando area. An imam for a mosque in Kissimmee said Mateen prayed there with his wife and his child during the week preceding the shooting. He released video footage showing what appeared to be Mateen on June 8th, four days before the shooting, praying for about 10 minutes. Hours before the attack, Mateen stopped by his parents' home to visit his father, who said he had did not notice anything strange about his son during the visit. The same day, Omar gave his wife, Nuor Salem, $1,000 and allowed her to depart to visit her mother in California. On June 14, 2016, NBC News reported that Salem told the FBI she drove him once to the gay nightclub, Pulse, because he wanted to scope it out. The FBI almost immediately aware that this was not true due to its review of cell phone location records from the day in question. Omar Martin has searched for Orlando nightclub locations in the evening before the attack. An official involved with the investigation told the Associated Press that authorities believed she knew about the plot beforehand, but was reluctant to charge her based only on this suspicion. Days before the shooting, she had accompanied Mateen on a shopping trip where he purchased ammunition while she was elsewhere buying a child's toy. She warned him the evening before the event against anything he might be planning. On March 30, 2018, an Orlando jury found her not guilty as the prosecution had not met its burden of providing evidentiary proof. According to the jury foreman, the jury felt she had vague foreknowledge of her husband's intentions. The FBI agent's interrogation went untaped, meaning the jurors did not get to see or hear it. She had been held on jail waiting for trial since her arrest in California five months after the massacre. We'll end this episode here, and in the next episode, we'll finally get to the pulse shooting.

SPEAKER_01

So thirsty and need more, visit us at fstcpodcast.com for links to all our social media handles, including YouTube. Want to keep the juice flowing? Make a donation by buying us a glass. And as always, cheers.