Iran’s Spider Killer: Two Years Later

It was approximately two years ago, on July 26 2001, that the Iranian police announced the arrest of Iran’s most infamous serial killer, dubbed the spider killer by the media because he choked his female victims with their own headscarves and wrapped them in their black chadors, the full-length Islamic cloak.

Saeed Hanayi, a 39 year old bricklayer, had confessed to the murders of 16 prostitutes in the city of Mashad but his victims are thought to number 19. The killings captured the attention of Iran and the rest of the world for several reasons: the gruesome modus operandi that gave birth to Hanayi’s sobriquet; the police’s outrageous laxity in pursuing the killer (instead, they arrested more than 500 prostitutes in the days preceding the arrest of Hanayi); most of all, it was an embarrassing reminder for the Islamic regime that prostitution was and still is alive and well in Iran, thriving even in Iran’s most holy city. (Mashhad is the burial site of the eighth imam of the Shi'ite sect. As such, it is the destination for millions of pilgrims from across the world each year.)

The first of the murders, about a year before Hanayi’s arrest, sparked little public interest. Most of the murdered women had multiple criminal records for drug-dealing and prostitution. Many of them came from broken marriages with husbands who had themselves become involved in drugs and crime. Therefore, it is unlikely that they would have been reported missing or otherwise helped by their family and friends. Most likely, they had been written off and left to fend for themselves.

It was thus that they became so-called “truck women”, standing at busy intersections waiting to be picked up by the truck drivers that often crossed the town of Mashad. Hanayi lured them onto his motorbike, and took them to his house where he proceeded to kill them. He would then deposit the body, rigidly encased in its chador, on the street, in plain view, for the police to find. His arrest came after one woman escaped him by punching him in the abdomen and biting his hand.

At the time of his arrest, Hanayi said he had "killed the women for the sake of God, and for the protection of my religion because they were prostitutes and were corrupting other people". He showed no remorse, adding: "I would have killed 150 if I hadn't been arrested".

In fact, Hanayi was hailed by hard-line conservative newspapers for his crimes and his victims were portrayed as women who deserved their fate due to their loose morals. That is, until Hanayi confessed that he had raped at least 13 of the women before he killed them.

Who was Hanayi? What pushed a married man and father of three to commit these murders? Was it the fervor ignited by religious fanaticism? The rush of a psychopathic sexual predator a la Ted Bundy? Who were these women, someone’s daughter, sister, mother? These are all questions that remain to be answered today. Hanayi was hanged one year after his arrest, ensuring his eternal silence. As for his victims, because of the social stigma prostitution carries in Iran, the women's families never came forward to claim the bodies.