Season one · Episode 1

The Cask of Marrakesh

Morocco’s first serial killer. Marrakesh, 1906.

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Marrakesh · 1906 · Historical · 58 min

This episode describes violence against women and an execution. Listener discretion advised.

In 1906, behind a cobbler’s shop off Jemaa el-Fna, the bodies of dozens of women were found buried under the floor and in the walls. The man who owned the shop had been selling their belongings in the souk for months.

What sits worst in this case is the address. The shop was not somewhere remote — it stood on a working lane a short walk from the busiest square in Morocco, and people went past its door all day, for months, while it was doing what it was doing.

This episode is who he was before any of it began, how a small business on a public street became the thing it became, and how long a city can look directly at something and not see it. What Marrakesh finally did about him is where the episode ends, and we have kept it there.