Aimee Betro

Aimee Jean Betro was born on 27 August 1979,^[1][2] and raised in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, where she attended Stevens Point Area Senior High School, graduating in 1996. Her stepfather has described her as a "good girl", who "always went to school [and] got pretty good grades". She played competitive disc golf, and between 2001 and 2016, took part in 29 tournaments, eight of which she won.^[3][4][5] In 2003, she wrote a letter to her local newspaper expressing her support for free birth control for women.^[6] She studied graphic design and early childhood education at Wisconsin's Mid-State Technical College,^[7] and after completing her studies in 2005, held a series of low-level jobs. She left Stevens Point in 2013, severing contact with her family, and was subsequently employed as an administrator by the Milwaukee Brewers Major League Baseball team.^[8] In 2018, she struck up an online relationship with Mohammed Nazir, who resided in the English city of Derby, after meeting him via a dating app, and travelled from her home in West Allis, Wisconsin, to Manchester to meet Nazir in December 2018. They spent Christmas together, before she flew back to the United States in January 2019.^[9][10][11] She also visited the UK for two weeks in May 2019, although she did not meet up with Nazir on that occasion. She would later claim that the purpose of this trip was to stay with a friend in Birmingham, and at "someone's house in the middle of England to take care of their dog".^[12][13][14]

Her involvement in conspiracy to murder occurred after a revenge plot was orchestrated by Nazir, and his father, Mohammed Aslam, following a violent dispute over the price of a wedding suit at Seher Boutique, a clothing store in Birmingham belonging to Aslat Mahumad.^[15] Aslam and Nazir both sustained serious injuries during the altercation, which occurred in July 2018, with Aslam receiving brain injuries that had a long term impact on his cognitive function.^[16] Following the incident at the shop, windows were smashed at Aslam and Nazir's home later the same day.^[17] The pair subsequently hatched the plot to kill either Mahumad, or a member of his family, in retribution.^[18] It is unclear why Betro became embroiled in the plot, but in his sentencing statement, Simon Drew KC, the judge who presided over her trial, suggested that it "appears [she was] acting out of infatuation or love" for Nazir.^[17]

Posing as a tourist, Betro returned to the UK on 22 August 2019,^[9] landing at Manchester Airport.^[19] In the following days she posted pictures of a number of UK landmarks on social media,^[9] and documented her activities while staying at various hotels in London, Birmingham and Manchester. Among these were attending the Tranzmission Festival at Crystal Palace, taking a boat tour of the River Thames, and travelling to Manchester to visit what she described as her "partner in crime".^[20] She also rented a Mercedes car, which was involved in a collision with two other vehicles in a suspected £12,000 "crash for cash" insurance scam involving Nazir.^[13][21]

On 4 September she travelled to Derby, where she met Nazir. On the same day, the handgun she intended to use was test fired on waste land.^[11] Having booked herself into the Rotunda Hotel in Birmingham, she bought two burner phones, one of which she gave to Nazir. She initially contacted Mahumad on 6 September under the pretence of wanting to buy a VW Golf he had advertised for sale on Gumtree. He declined to meet her, because he had not posted his telephone number online, and instead offered to send someone else to show her the car.^[22][23] On the morning of 7 September, she left her hotel and bought a second hand Mercedes E240 from a garage in Alum Rock, using the name Becky Booth, then travelled to the Yardley area of Birmingham, where she lay in wait outside Mahumad's property. At 8.10pm, Mahumad's son, Sikander Ali, arrived at the house in his SUV. As he exited his car on the property's drive, Betro, disguised in a niqab, approached him, produced the gun and fired. However, the gun jammed and Ali was able to escape by getting back into his vehicle and reversing at high speed, damaging the driver's door of Betro's car in the process. Betro then drove away, and abandoned the Mercedes nearby. Sikander alerted his family about the incident, and they found the empty car following a search of the area. After changing her clothes, Betro returned to the area in a taxi during the early hours of the following morning. Instructing the taxi driver to park some distance from Mahumad's property, she walked to the house and fired a number of shots through its front windows. The property was empty at the time.^{[9][11][21][24]}

Betro returned to the United States on 9 September,^[19] and Nazir joined her there three days later. Betro would later testify that she and Nazir rented a car "just for a road trip", visiting locations including Seattle, Area 51 in Nevada, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The pair also devised a plot to frame a former associate of Nazir's, a man with whom he had once cultivated cannabis. This would involve mailing ammunition and gun parts to him from the United States, then tipping off the police. Nazir returned to the UK on 13 October, where he was later arrested.^{[9][10][21][25]}

Police became aware of Betro following the attempt to frame Nazir's former associate. West Midlands Police launched an investigation into the incident, and Betro's movements were tracked using CCTV footage and mobile phone data. A video of a handgun being test fired was found on Nazir's phone, with the date on the footage, 4 September 2019, coinciding with Betro's visit to Derby to meet Nazir. CCTV footage was found showing Betro wearing a distinctive summer dress as she left her hotel on the morning of 7 September, and of her purchasing the car. Footage was also obtained showing the Mercedes repeatedly driving past Mahumad's property, along with a red Volvo belonging to Aslam and Nazir. Police also discovered that Betro had purchased burner phones during shopping trips as she planned the shooting.^[2][15][19] Her DNA was also found on the contents of three packages she posted to the UK, as well as on a black glove discovered inside the abandoned Mercedes.^[10][15]

The investigation and subsequent hunt for Betro, as well as efforts to extradite her, required the collaboration of several police forces, including West Midlands Police, Derbyshire Constabulary and the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States.^[2] A June 2024 Independent report suggested that extraditing her from the United States could be difficult, because the UK would need to provide evidence of a "reasonable" demonstration of guilt under both US law and UK law to request her extradition.^[20] However, Betro was not in the United States, but had travelled to Armenia in 2021.^[26][27] During her time there, she had continued to post pictures and have conversations with friends on social media platforms such as Snapchat and Instagram.^[27][28] She was eventually located in Armenia following a two-day investigation by journalists from the Daily Mail newspaper, who analysed background details in pictures she was posting on social media to pinpoint her whereabouts. The Mail then passed the information they had gathered to West Midlands Police, who began proceedings to extradite her.^[18][27]

The UK issued an international arrest request for Betro in June 2024.^[2] On 2 July, she was detained by Armenian Police at her rented apartment in a housing complex in Proshyan, a village on the outskirts of Yerevan, Armenia's capital city.^[27][29][30] She was extradited to the United Kingdom in January 2025,^[26] arriving at Gatwick Airport on 16 January, accompanied by officers from the National Crime Agency's specialist National Extradition Unit.^[31] On the same day, the Crown Prosecution Service authorised West Midlands Police to charge Betro with conspiracy to murder, possession of a firearm and fraudulently importing prohibited goods into the UK.^[32] Betro was transported to Birmingham, where she was charged.^[31] On 17 January, she appeared before Birmingham Magistrates' Court, where she was remanded in custody.^[33] On 14 February she entered a plea of not guilty during a hearing at Birmingham Crown Court, where she appeared via videolink from HMP New Hall.^[34] A trial date was also set for July.^[35]