Hopium Copium

Police came to check on a 28-year-old nurse who hadn't shown up for work. Her husband opened the door holding their baby. By then, prosecutors say, she had been dead for three days and her body had been cut apart and thrown out with the trash. Calmly, he told the officer: "She destroyed that phone, and then she left." She was going to New York or Texas, according to him. He wanted to know if he'd have to file a complaint. And there was something else: she had "mental issues." Two years later, on the witness stand, he finally said it out loud: "I had a saw, I used the saw." Naresh Bhatt says he found his wife Mamta dead in their bedroom, panicked and cut her apart. In his version she took her own life. He denies killing her. July 2024, Manassas Park, Virginia. Mamta Kafle Bhatt was a nurse from Nepal and a new mother. Prosecutors say she was killed at home on or about July 30. The next afternoon, cameras at a Walmart filmed her husband buying carpet cleaner, cleaning supplies and body wash. He didn't want to report her missing, and only did it three days after the police visit. On August 22 he was arrested for concealing a dead body while she was still, officially, a missing person. That December came the first-degree murder charge. Her remains have never been found. Investigators say blood on a power saw likely matches her DNA. For two years he said he had no idea what happened to her. Now he admits to the saw and the trash bags, and insists the one thing he didn't do is kill her. The jury could get the case this week. In the video below is the police bodycam from August 2. He holds the baby the whole time. She wouldn't see a psychiatrist, he says, because in her words, "I'm a registered nurse." When the officer asks him to call if she comes back, he answers: "Until Sunday, I don't think so." Then the clip cuts to the courtroom. Three days, one saw, two years of "she left." A panicked husband, or a man who waited two years for a better story?