What Happened To Menhaz Zaman After He Killed His Family?
Menhaz Zaman was once considered the "golden boy" of his family and community, according to Mirror. He was reportedly friendly, helpful, kind, and a devoted scholar. So it came as a great shock when Zaman committed a quadruple homicide in 2019. As Global News reported, Zaman's victims were his own family members: the 23-year old had killed his father, mother, grandmother, and sister.
Zaman had occasionally seemed disturbed to his friends, especially those who talked to him online because he mentioned that he might commit violent acts. At one point, he wrote, "gonna kill my parents and go to jail yo" (via YouTube). Then one day, he finally did. So what were his reasons for committing the crime?
Zaman was hiding a double life from almost everyone except his online friends. His family was proud that their son was attending college, and he had even given them a date that he was supposed to graduate. But after a brief stint in community college, Zaman dropped out. For the next three years, he pretended to go to his college classes each day, sometimes going to the York University campus, and other times going to the gym or a nearby mall (via Mirror).
Deadly deceptions
To pass the time when he was supposed to be in classes, he got involved with the online game Perfect World. According to the game's website, Perfect World is a multiplayer online game where gamers can explore new environments and battle undead creatures. Zaman met lots of people through the game, where players can build guilds of up to 80 members.
All the while, Zaman knew that time was running out -– his supposed college graduation date was July 27, 2019, as Mirror reports. He couldn't deceive them any longer, or they would find out he had lied to them for years. Around 3 p.m. the day before he was supposed to graduate, Zaman killed his 50-year-old mother, Momotaz, hitting her with a crowbar and then slitting her throat. According to Toronto Life, he then killed his 70-year-old grandmother Firoza who was napping with Momotaz.
While waiting for his sister and father to get home, Zaman played Perfect World. He hit his sister, 21-year-old Malesa, as she walked through the door, and slit her throat too. Roughly an hour later, around midnight, Zaman attacked his final victim, his 59-year-old father Moniruz, who he also bludgeoned before cutting his throat.
As one player put it, he seemed to have murdered his family and told his online Perfect World friends about it in real-time, sending graphic crime scene photos to prove it (via YouTube). Zaman even texted other friends, saying that he had been planning the violent attack for the entire time he was in college, Mirror reported.
Aftermath of a killing spree
Surrounded by the bodies of his four murdered family members, Zaman just kept playing Perfect World, sending graphic photos and messages of the bodies to his online pals. As Mirror reports, Zaman knew at this point that he would probably go to jail for life, and wanted to enjoy his last hours of freedom.
When one of Zaman's gamer friends contacted the police, he said, "I have a friend, he told me that he killed his family, and he even sent me pictures" (via YouTube). But due to the nature of the online game they played together, no one knew his full name, where he lived, or how to tell authorities about the atrocities.
The information they had to go on was sparse: his username was "Zaman," and his location was somewhere in Canada. After locating Zaman's IP address with the help of Perfect World players, police arrested him the day after the murders.
In 2020, Zaman pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, and one count of second-degree murder. Today, Menhaz Zaman remains in prison. He is serving a life sentence and is ineligible for parole until he is 64 years old. As Global News reported, he will be banned from having weapons for at least 10 years if he is ever released. After killing his family, Zaman will now spend his entire life in prison — and his once-secret life has become an open book for anyone on the internet to discover.