WorldWideWeird Episode 3 Transcript

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9pbtmIr-fRw&t=36s

It’s not uncommon in our hyper-connected age to receive phone calls from unknown numbers. Usually, it’s just a recording trying to sell you a hotel room, or a scammer trying to get your social security number. If you’re lucky, it could just be someone misdialing their friend. But what if the unknown number isn't just a call about your last hotel stay, what if it’s the start of a harassment campaign that will follow you for the next decade, would you still pick it up?

Hello, welcome to WorldWideWeird, I’m your host. I hope you are all somewhere safe and cozy because tonight’s episode will cover the terrifying case of Bashir Kouchacji, a man haunted by threatening phone calls. To old listeners, welcome back, and to new ones, welcome. I hope you enjoy.

July 1974, in Beirut, Lebanon, Bashir Kouchacji was on his way to pick up his wife from a party where she was performing. After waiting for over an hour at the location she specified, Bashir figured he had gotten the wrong address and turned to leave. However, as soon as he had started heading back, a white van drove him off the road. Men jumped out of the van holding guns and grabbed Bashir, abducting him. His captors then locked him in a basement for five days, periodically torturing him. They accused him of working for the CIA, but Bashir denied it, insisting they had the wrong man. The abductors were not convinced and continued to deny him sleep and feed him very little. Bashir was forced to listen to the screams of other prisoners as he waited for more rounds of torture himself, eventually causing him to begin hallucinating, and to attempt to take his own life. When his captors saw that he was bleeding out, instead of letting him die, they strangely rushed him to the hospital. It was there that Bashir was able to contact his mother, who got in contact with the United States embassy and the Lebanese government, which allowed him to escape. He probably thought his nightmare was over, but it was only just starting.

Bashir moved to Los Angeles two months later and became an American citizen, as well as a single man after divorcing his wife. There he ran a successful restaurant that was frequented by celebrities. In 1983, nine years after his abduction, Bashir moved again, this time to Washington D.C., to open a Morrocan themed restaurant called The Marrakesh, with his sister. This is where his past came back to haunt him. As soon as they installed a phone line in the restaurant before it was even open, strange phone calls started coming through. At first, it was only the sound of breathing on the other end, but after an answering machine was set up, stranger messages started getting left. They contained the sound of someone laughing, with strange sounds in the background. When this caller actually spoke, they sounded like a young child, threatening the lives of Bashir and his employees, and listing off the names of his friends and family. Since the caller sounded so young, they earned the name L’Enfant, French for the child. The noises in the background increased, now clearly sounding like screaming and gunfire. Bashir claimed he recognized the background noise, saying it sounded like what he had heard in the five days he was kidnapped. For the next decade, the restaurant would receive 15-20 calls a day from L’Enfant, and if Bashir visited the Philadelphia branch of The Marrakesh, the calls would follow him there. Other than the phone calls, Bashir’s Mercedes was defaced and the wires in his Jeep were cut, which caused the car to catch fire, however, nobody was actually hurt. Bashir went to the FBI, who placed a wiretap on the restaurant phones. In 18 months, over 3000 calls from L’Enfant were recorded. They were all traced to payphones around the D.C. metro area. The calls were also made at such a frequency and at so many different phones that it would be impossible for one person to be making all of them, suggesting a large, organized group, dedicated to harassing this one man. Due to these calls, Bashir became paranoid and angry, he even broke up with his spouse at the time. After four years, he estimated that L’Enfant had called him over 7000 times. Because of all of this, Bashir checked himself into a mental hospital in 1987 so he could escape the calls, however, the calls still came, following him to the hospital. Fortunately for him though, the staff would answer the calls for him. Back at The Marrakesh, the calls didn’t stop either, they were now getting directed to the current manager of the restaurant. L’Enfant would share personal details about his schedule and personal life, just as they had done with Bashir. Three weeks into being the new target of L’Enfant, the manager’s son Richard was attacked by two unknown men, and L’Enfant was quick to call and take credit. The next day, the manager also found the phrase “Richard will die” spray-painted on his front door.

Bashir continued to live in the hospital off and on for the next six years, every time he would leave, paranoia and fear would overtake him and he would go back. The FBI eventually closed the case after making little progress with it for years. They figured there was nothing they could do, and people weren’t really getting physically hurt, outside of the manager’s son. In 1993, the case was featured on the popular show Unsolved Mysteries, and after that the calls actually seemed to stop. Some speculated that the added media attention scared L’Enfant off, however, it is unclear why the FBI investigation wouldn’t. While the calls were over, that was not the last time people would hear about Bashir Kouchacji. In 2002 a website run by Bashir came to light, one centering around violent homophobia, misogyny, and antisemitism. He also had paid tens of thousands of dollars to publish ads in the opinion sections of both the Washington Post and the Washington Times under The Marrakesh’s name, despite no longer being a part of the restaurant. These ads were littered with hateful messages and antisemitic conspiracy theories, containing such quotes as “Only the united states can ensure that the new world order will be truly responsive to the rights and needs of the oppressed.” In July of 2002, Bashir posted even more ads in the Washington Post that had the restaurant's address and phone number attached. His family then tried to distance themselves from him, cutting him completely out of anything having to do with the restaurant. The papers eventually drew the line at publishing ads that promoted Bashir’s website, which has since been taken down. The question that came to many people’s minds after learning this was: could Bashir’s extremist beliefs have been caused by the constant harassment by L’Enfant, causing him to become hateful and paranoid, or were these beliefs something Bashir had always held, and the harassment had just revealed it. Some wonder if these beliefs could have been the reason Bashir was targeted in the first place.

Theories as to why this happened tend to vary quite a lot, due to just how strange this case is. Many believe that Bashir knows more than he’s letting on. Much of what we know surrounding Bashir’s kidnapping has been hearsay. He was the only one there that could verify what really happened, besides the abductors, so everyone has had to trust his word, but his story has some holes in it. Where was Bashir’s wife that night? This all started when he went to pick her up and she wasn’t there. Whenever she was asked about it later, she would only reply in vague answers. The venue she frequently performed at also just so happened to be a hotspot for diplomats and arms dealers. Maybe Bashir saw too much and had to be taken care of. However, that still doesn’t explain why he was brought to the hospital, why did they care so much if he lived or died? And why go to all these lengths to harass this one man? If it was really a case of mistaken identity as Bashir claimed, then why did L’Enfant not figure out he wasn’t who they were looking for in over a decade of calling him 20 times a day? And why did they have the nine-year gap between the kidnapping and the phone calls? This all makes Bashir’s story suspicious, to say the least. However, if he was in on it or knew more than he appeared to, then why call in the FBI or Unsolved Mysteries?

Taking it a step further than Bashir just knowing more than we thought, some believe Bashir was in on it the whole time. This theory brings up most of the evidence in the previous one, like his story not making sense, but also adds in the fact that L’Enfant never allied themself with any organization, and never made any real, consistent demands. However also like the previous theory, many bring up why he would call in the FBI and the media if he was running an elaborate hoax. Why would he stage a kidnapping and suicide attempt and then wait nine years to start sending himself weird phone calls? And how would he even send the phone calls in the first place? He would have to be incredibly tech-savvy or have a large group helping him stage this for ten years.

Some theorize that the kidnapping and phone calls might not even be connected. The kidnapping could have just been a case of mistaken identity as Bashir claims, or it could have something to do with the arms dealers and diplomats he and his wife could have been involved in. The calls themselves seem very personal, not something a large group with other things going on would spend their time doing. This would also explain the nine-year gap between the occurrences. Someone could have had a vendetta against Bashir due to his hateful beliefs. Some even think the calls weren’t really directed at Bashir at all, they seem to surround the restaurant way more. The calls only started when The Marrakesh was built, before it was even open. So that raises the question of how L’Enfant got the phone number so quickly. Most of the calls also were only to the restaurant, not to Bashir’s home. Even after he left The Marrakesh, the calls kept coming. Even though Bashir was still receiving them in the hospital, the frequency of calls decreased to about seven a week. Then the manager after Bashir started to get harassed just like him. The only actual evidence connecting the calls to the kidnapping were the timing and likelihood of it all. What are the odds this man goes through two different horrific life events? There’s also the fact that Bashir recognized the background noises as the ones he heard during his abduction, however, this was nine years after the kidnapping and it could have only sounded similar. Or L’Enfant knew Bashir had been kidnapped and tried to replicate the sound in their calls intentionally.

Even if the calls were from someone personally wronged by Bashir, or someone with a vendetta against the restaurant, it would still have to be a large group to pull this off right? Well, not exactly. Phone Phreaking, that’s phreaking spelled with a ph, was a practice that got its start in the 1950s. It’s basically computer hacking but for phones. People who experimented with phreaking were usually interested in manipulating or exploring telecommunication systems, usually connected to public telephone networks. Using these techniques as well as other technology, one person could have been behind all the L’Enfant calls. They just bounced the calls around different payphones to make it seem like multiple people. This would explain why it seemed to be the same voice doing different impressions on all the calls, and how someone could get away with it for so long. Large groups have more people and it’s easier to grab one of them, one person running the show means that it would be more difficult to track that one person down, especially if they were experienced in technology. Even if it was just one person though, that is still a lot of time to dedicate to harassing a man and a restaurant. Sure they could have used recordings, but that’s still almost 20 calls a day that they would have to make. Seems like a lot to go through.

The official report that the U.S. State Department has gone with has been that Bashir’s abductors could have been connected to the Palestine Liberation Organization. They could have mistaken Bashir as a spy, finding it suspicious that he was waiting in a fancy car with Belgian plates in an area where he should not have been hanging around in, but no evidence has ever really surfaced to corroborate this theory, leaving it as nothing but a guess.

In the Unsolved Mysteries episode covering this case, they brought their own theory. They speculated that the people who kidnapped Bashir could have held political offices in Washington D.C. and when Bashir opened his popular restaurant there, they worried he would run into them and recognize them, so they tried to drive him out of the city. This would explain why the calls only started after his move to D.C., despite already being well known in L.A., however, this is the only thing this theory seems to explain. What would be the chances of Bashir running into these political figures and not only recognizing them but convincing other people that they were the ones that abducted him nine years ago? And if they really were worried about that, why wouldn’t they just have him killed? That seems way easier and more straightforward than staging a ten-year plot to get him out of a city.

In any case, it’s been over 20 years since the phone calls have stopped, and it is very likely we will never know who L’Enfant really was. All we really know is despite the name, L’Enfant was nothing even close to a child, one former employee of The Marrakesh said it best, “This L’enfant should have grown up by now, but it’s the same voice”. Even if we could find out who was behind it all, the statute of limitations has run out for all of their crimes anyway. But who knows, maybe L’Enfant is still out there, planning their next harassment campaign. Just hope you're not the one unlucky enough to be on the other end of it.

Thank you for listening. If you would like to follow this podcast on social media, see when new episodes are posted, and have input on future topics, check it out on Instagram at world underscore wide underscore weird and on Twitter at world underscore wide weird. Have a good night, stay safe, and don’t pick up any unknown calls.