Menhaz Zaman, 23, was considered a promising young man with a bright future.
He always puts his family first and was about to graduate with an engineering degree.
Menhaz lives with his parents, Dad Moniruz, 59, Mom Momotaz, 50, his sister Malesa, 21, and grandmother Firoza Begum, 70, in Markham Ontario.
His parents had originally emigrated from Bangladesh to Canada seeking opportunities.
Moniruz managed to establish himself a local taxi business then Momotaz got involved in property rental, so her mom Firoza also emigrated to Canada to help raise their children.
By 2019, Malesa was attending the university and wants to be a Neurosurgeon. Menhaz on the other hand is taking Mechanical Engineering studies at York University.
Menhaz’s graduation was going to be on July 28 and talks about taking up a master’s degree afterward. But little do they know that he has a big secret.
He’s been living a double life all this time and there will be no graduation for him.
Menhaz hasn’t attended York University at all. He enrolled at a local college instead where he failed his classes and dropped out in 2015 after a couple of semesters.
Every day Menhaz left the house with his backpack and laptop and pretended that he was going to the university. It went on for years and he did not bother to tell his family. He didn’t even raise up any suspicions from his family because of his trusting behavior at home.
In the beginning, Menhaz did head to campus, but he wanted to find someplace quiet where he could play his multiplayer role-play video games that he was so obsessed with and made online friends around the world.
By the summer of 2019, his parents were excited about attending his graduation. Menhaz knew his secret was about to be discovered.
For three years he was thinking of ways to avoid telling his parents this irresponsible action of his.
On July 27th, the day before his graduation, Menhaz’s dad was at work, his sister was at her part-time job, and his mom and granny were resting at home.
At around 3 PM, he killed his mom by hitting her with a crowbar and slitting her throat with a kitchen knife. Then an hour later, he did the same to his grandmother.
Menhaz even played video games for hours while waiting for his sister to come home. As soon as Malesa walked in the door, he hit her over the head and slit her throat too.
An hour later, his dad got back from work, Menhaz bashed his head and cut his throat. He is now surrounded by the dead bodies of his family.
“I’ve just slaughtered my entire family,” Menhaz started talking to his online gaming friends and told them that he was likely to spend the rest of his life in prison.
He even sent some pictures with selfies of his family’s corpse to his online friends, and it got them extremely worried and shocked.
The online community rushed to alert the authorities and provided Menhaz’s gaming username and Canada as his location.
Finally, the police officers were able to track Menhaz’s home thru an IP address and they arrived on the afternoon of July 28th. Zaman was still there with the bodies of Momotaz, Moniruz, Firoza and Malesa.
Menhaz was arrested and initially charged with four counts of first-degree murder. The massacre shocked the entire community.
He confessed that he killed his family because they were about to find out that he lied to them for years.
Investigators later discovered that he had texted friends after the murder saying he had been “planning this for three years”.
In September 2020, Menhaz pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder involving his dad, sister, and gran, and one count of second-degree murder involving his mom.
The court was told that he slit the throats of his entire family just to prevent them from knowing the truth.
“I would like to just apologize to anyone I have impacted negatively with my actions, especially to the people who knew my family – friends and loved ones who I know could have never seen something like this from me happening,” Menhaz stated in virtual sentencing on a Covid-restricted courtroom, two months later.
The judge was extremely disappointed about his actions and said that it was “deeply disturbing” and that he deserves severe punishment.
“Words such as brutal, cruel, cold, and callous do not begin to convey the enormity of his violence,” the judge said. “It is difficult to imagine a more horrific way to take a human life than by slitting the victim’s throat.”
“Mr Zaman did so not just once, but four separate times over a span of hours,” the judge added. “No right-thinking member of society would see any remote correlation between the imminent disclosure of the secret of Mr Zaman’s non-attendance at school and the vicious taking of the lives of the four people closest to him.”
The judge added that what happened in the family home was a “betrayal of trust”.
Menhaz was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of bail for 40 years.