Riverwalk

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24:24Phoebe Judge:On November 29, 2019, police were called to the Thames. They had received a report that there was a body on the riverbank in front of the Riverwalk complex. This initially is a John Doe investigation. The body had no ID, no tattoos. There was no suggestion of who this person was. He had no shirt on or shoes, just sweatpants and socks. The police assumed that he had jumped off a bridge somewhere else and that the body had drifted downriver through the night. About 30 people are found every year in the Thames. Most of them are people who died by suicide. The body was taken to the police station and then the mortuary.

25:14Phoebe Judge:Police began trying to ID him. If you imagine how big London is and how big the Metropolitan Police Scotland Yard is, is you have this kind of bizarre situation where there's this body, but they don't know who it is. And in another part of the city, there's a missing persons investigation that starts where they're looking for this missing kid, Zach Brettler. And the left hand and the right hand aren't talking for about four or five days. And finally, the police put it together. They realized that the body found out in front of the building was the same kid who went missing. On December 5th, 2019, police arrested Virinder Sharma on suspicion of murder.

25:56Phoebe Judge:Zach had told his parents Virinder Sharma was a rubber tycoon. But police knew that Virinder Sharma had a long criminal record. He was also known as Indian Dave. Police had investigated him for drug smuggling and potential involvement in a homicide from a drive-by shooting. with an AK-47. At one point, he faked his death when he was charged with blackmail, but he'd actually gone into hiding in Monaco. There were accounts that he would hold people over the sides of buildings so they would pay back their loans. When he was questioned about the night that Zach died, Virinder Sharma said he believed that Zach had killed himself.

26:42Phoebe Judge:He said he had fallen asleep after midnight. He'd been drinking whiskey and had taken a sleeping pill, so he didn't remember much about the night. He said Zach had been crying and was upset about his heroin addiction, but that by the end of the night, they had hugged. He said, I would like to state for the record that I was not responsible for Zach's death in any way. When officers asked him more questions, he answered, no comment. Which is the English equivalent of pleading the fifth. You know, this is a guy who was a very seasoned, hardcore English gangster who'd been in prison and had been investigated for murder.

27:23And he did what those kinds of hard men tend to do in these situations, which is he totally clammed up.

27:33Phoebe Judge:Police had also arrested Akbar Shamji. He told them he thought that Zak was, quote, kind of slightly schizophrenic. Akbar Shamji told police that on the night of November 28th he went home and his wife had been angry with him for staying out so late so he'd slept in his car but the police officers had evidence that he was lying they had footage from CCTV cameras from the night that Zach died and they looked at the CCTV footage he was there and then he left and he drove away And then Akbar didn't drive home. He actually just kind of drove around the area as if he was sort of hanging out just in case.

28:19And it was late at night. You know, this is 1, 2 in the morning. And Zach was alone in the apartment with Sharma for about 20 or 30 minutes. And then at a certain point, Indy and Dave called him. We know that from the phone records.

28:32Phoebe Judge:The phone records showed that around 2 a.m., Verinder called Akbar. And as soon as Akbar got that call, he turned his car around and he started speeding back to Riverwalk. He heard something on that call that made him desperate to get back there. And he pulls up in front of the building and gets out of the car and goes in and starts heading up. And just at the moment he pulls up in front of the building, the footage shows Zach walking out onto the balcony and walking over to one end and seeming to kind of look over the side and then walking over to the other and then walking to the center and jumping.

29:11So moments after Zach goes up the balcony, Akbar goes into the apartment. He's in there for about 15 minutes. We don't know what happens when he's inside because he wouldn't tell the police and neither would Sharma. But afterwards, Akbar goes downstairs and you think he's going to go home again. Instead, he walks around the building to the other side, which is where the river is. And he walks right over to the river, and there's a river wall there. And he walks right over to exactly the point where Zach had just gone into the river. And the cameras capture Akbar Shamji leaning over and looking down into the river at just the point where Zach's just gone into it.

29:55Then he straightens up, walks back around the building, gets into his car, and drives home.

30:04Phoebe Judge:Police asked why Akbar Shamji had gone to look in the river. He said, it's a nice bit of the river. One police officer said it seemed like too much of a coincidence. But Akbar said that he would have called the police if he had seen Zach. One week after Zach's death, Rochelle and Matthew met with the lead detective, a man named Rory Wilkinson. He explained that Zach had several injuries, most of them related to his fall, but the police said he had a broken jaw that they couldn't explain. Detective Wilkinson said police had video showing Zach alone on the fifth floor balcony. But he said, if someone is so scared that they jump, even if it's of their own volition, that still is obviously a criminal offense, possibly murder.

31:01Phoebe Judge:Police officers had also searched Verinder Sharma's apartment and found Zach's phone broken in two. It wasn't his main phone that he used to text with his parents. It was a burner phone with special encryption. But police didn't have enough evidence to hold Akbar Shamji or Virinder Sharma. Both men were released on bail. How do Zach's parents feel the investigation is going? You know, when the police start, are they happy with the information they're getting? initially the police were very reassuring and they said listen you know this is scotland yard it's one of the biggest uh most well-resourced police departments in the world we will leave no stone unturned um the bretlers basically took it for granted that the police would do what they said that they would do and so initially they uh i think felt as though it was in good hands but then the COVID pandemic kicks in and things kind of slow down and they're not sure how much of the non-responsiveness of the cops is a function of COVID and how much of it is that they seem to have sort of lost the thread on the investigation.

32:27And over time, they become more and more uneasy. And so Rochelle and Matthew, rather than be passive, feel as though they owe it to their son to get to the bottom of what happened to him.

32:41Phoebe Judge:Matthew and Rochelle had also hired a private investigator after Zach had gone missing. They started calling Zach's friends to find out for themselves what the last few weeks of his life had been like. One friend said that a few days before he died, he'd noticed Zach kept checking his surroundings. Zach said he was thinking of going to the police because he was being threatened. But his friends weren't always sure if what Zach said was real. He claimed that his father was an arms dealer. Later, Rochelle found out that when Zach was 13, during his first year at Mill Hill, he told his classmates that his mother had died.

33:25Phoebe Judge:She learned that the neighbor she thought Zach had been dating, a woman named Zamira, had believed Zak was from Kazakhstan. She was from Russia, and they had become friends. She sometimes made Zak food, and had once invited him to celebrate New Year's with her family. Sometimes when they talked, Zak threw in a word of Russian. Rochelle learned that her full name was Zamira Ismailova. Zak had used her last name for his fake identity, with Akbar Shamji and Verinder Sharma. Rochelle and Matthew began to worry that the two men had been trying to extort money from Zach. They eventually start learning more about the gangster past of Farinder Sharma.

34:13And Akbar, it turns out, has a very checkered history in terms of his business and his life. And in fact, in the months before he meets Zach Brettler, Akbar has actually declared bankruptcy. Now, you wouldn't know it. He's still living a very luxe lifestyle with the apartment on Mount Street, and he meets people at these various private clubs that he's a member of. But he's actually in some financial trouble at the point where this young kid who says that he is the son of a billionaire oligarch suddenly wanders into his life.

34:48Phoebe Judge:And where did Zach fall in this threesome? Zach was adopted by them, basically, as a kind of friend and protege. He would spend time with their families, with Akbar's kids, with Indian Dave's kids. And so he really kind of, in that sort of classic way with Zach, he went from not knowing people at all to ingratiating himself with them really quickly. I think they were amused by him. I think they absolutely were enticed by the idea that he might have access to hundreds of millions of dollars that he could help them out with or he could channel some of that money in. The problem was he kept telling all these stories about how he was going to come through with money and investments, and the money itself never materialized.

35:37Phoebe Judge:Rochelle and Matthew checked Zach's bank account. They had saved checks from his grandparents over the years and money he'd gotten from his bar mitzvah. and put it in a savings account. They'd given it all to him after he turned 18. It was about 18 ,000 pounds. He had kind of blown through that money, it turns out, pretending that he was the son of an oligarch, you know, paying for meals, doing this and that, kind of here and there, to seem credibly like a rich person. And in the days before he died, Zach, in his bank account, had only four pounds. He was close to empty. They tried to contact some of the people Zach had said he was doing business with, but they said they didn't know anything that could help them.

36:23Phoebe Judge:Zach's father, Matthew, spoke with the owner of a cafe in one of the Riverwalk's buildings. He'd been there the morning Zach's body had been found by the Thames. He helped them get in touch with some of the doormen from Riverwalk. And then, at the end of 2020, the lead detective on Zach's case called with news. Virinder Sharma had been found dead.

36:54Phoebe Judge:We'll be right back.

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39:10Phoebe Judge:In December of 2020, Virinder Sharma had been found dead in his apartment. Police believed he had died from a drug overdose. This is a year after Zach's death, almost to the week. But the officer who told them about it was a little ambiguous. He said it might have been a suicide, it might have been an overdose. He didn't really know the details. And he said he wasn't able to learn the details. He said we're being kind of kept sterile from that part of the investigation. And they were confused by this. if you're leading a murder investigation and your lead suspect dies, why it is that if you were that cop, you would be kept sterile from knowing the circumstances of that death.

39:55Phoebe Judge:A year later, Detective Wilkinson asked to meet with Rochelle and Matthew. He had an update on the investigation. He told them that he wouldn't be able to give them a copy of the case files, but he would read everything aloud and they could record it. Rochelle and Matthew were told about text messages on Virinder Sharma's phone, that in the days leading up to his death, Akbar and Virinder no longer trusted Zach. Virinder Sharma had written to Akbar trying to find out how much money Zach had, and texted that they should take Zach to an ATM. He also texted, I want 5 % of that$205 million. Akbar sent a voice memo back and said, I'm highly skeptical about this$205 million.

40:47Phoebe Judge:Verinder responded, saying that they were owed 50 % of everything Zach owned. The night Zach died, Akbar had texted another man that he had been, quote, heating up the knives and clearing up blood. Matthew and Rochelle asked if the police had interviewed that man. They said no. They also learned the police had not interviewed the chauffeur, who knocked on the door and told Rochelle that she couldn't be Zach's mother. It had been two years since Zach died. The cops really had very few answers and basically kept sort of suggesting, well, you know, maybe he just committed suicide. Maybe that's what this is.

41:29And at that point, the Bretlers were a little bit more aggressive because they had really done more homework than the police had. And the lead detective kind of defensively says, you know, I feel like I'm the criminal here and you guys are interviewing me. You know, you're interrogating me.

41:46Phoebe Judge:In February of 2022, prosecutors in London said they would not file charges against Akbar Shamji in connection with Zach Brettler's death. Ten months later, about three years after Zach had died, the coroner's office held a public inquest about his death. Anytime there's a death in the UK that is unnatural or kind of unclear, ambiguous, there's what's called an inquest. And it's an interesting procedure. It looks a little bit like a judicial inquiry. There's a coroner who acts essentially like a judge. You have evidence presented. It's a somewhat adversarial situation in the sense that the Brettlers in this case had a lawyer who was able to cross-examine witnesses.

42:32And so this was kind of their last bite at the apple in terms of an opportunity to really try and get to the bottom of what had happened to Zach. In some ways, it was very dramatic in the sense that they were able to kind of confront face-to-face some of these people who clearly knew more than they were saying about the circumstances of Zach's death.

42:53Phoebe Judge:The coroner said at the beginning of the inquest, We're here simply to find the answers to four questions. Who the deceased was, where he died, when he died, and how he came by his death. Akbar Shamji testified over video call. He had left London and was now working at a cryptocurrency company. He spoke for several hours. Matthew and Rochelle's lawyer asked Akbar about the text Verinder had sent him, saying he wanted 5 % of that$205 million. Akbar said that Zach was always promising huge sums of money. I pretty clearly told Sharma, I don't think there's any golden pot at the end of that rainbow.

43:41Phoebe Judge:The Brentler's lawyer also asked about some of the texts Akbar had sent before Zach died, including the one where he said he was heating up knives and cleaning up blood. Akbar said he was, quote, a little bit drunk. He said he hadn't meant literal blood. He said that blood is, quote, a more earthy, streety way of saying bro. The lawyer asked about the nine-minute call between Verinder and Akbar at around 2 a.m. that ended just a few minutes before Zach had jumped from the balcony. Akbar said he didn't remember what they had talked about. The lawyer asked if Verinder Sharma had seemed angry. Akbar said everything was fine.

44:29Phoebe Judge:The coroner asked Akbar if he had ever talked with Virinder about what happened that night. Akbar said, I never pushed too hard. I'm not sure what kind of hornet's nest I would have been kicking. When his testimony was done, the coroner allowed Akbar Shamji to continue listening to the rest of the inquest over video call. Most of the time, he kept his camera off. But at one point, he accidentally turned it on, and the courtroom realized he'd taken his computer to the bathroom, where he was taking a shower. The inquest took two days. At the end, the coroner's official finding was that the cause of Zach's death was inconclusive.

45:18The coroner says, could have been suicide, Could have been something more sinister. I'm not in a position to say. And so the Bretlers come out of that really kind of shimmering with fury because they feel as though this was the last opportunity when the authorities, the British authorities, could help them find answers about the death of their son. And they were let down once again.

45:45Phoebe Judge:What do Rochelle and Matthew think happened to Zach? Zach. The Brattlers believe, and I think they're right, that Zach thought that if he stayed in that apartment, he was going to die. And so he went out onto the balcony and he did a swan dive. He thought, the only chance I have is of making it to the river. And it was a fifth floor balcony. And the worst part of this is that had he made it clean into the river, he might actually have survived. He probably would have been quite badly hurt jumping into the river from that height, but he might have survived. But on his way down, his hip clipped the embankment wall, and so he died in the water.

46:32Phoebe Judge:Patrick Radden Keefe wrote a book about Zach Brettler. After he finished it, Rochelle invited him to visit. It was last September, and Rochelle wrote to me and said, we're going to have a little ceremony at our home to mark what would have been his 25th birthday. And it was about 30 or 40 people, friends and family, people who knew Zach and loved him. And it was the most extraordinary thing. It was actually kind of a joyous event. It was a celebration of his life. I think that Rochelle and Matthew and Joe, Zach's brother, they think a lot about Zach and they try and honor his memory. But in kind of a strange way through this process of kind of trying to solve his death.

47:16They've come to see him in a way that is more full and complete than they were ever able to when he was alive. And as flawed and complex as he turns out to be, to love him in that complexity.

47:38Phoebe Judge:Richella said, Zach always stretched the truth a little. He should have been an actor. He should have been a writer. Zach's brother Joe told Patrick that he sometimes has dreams about his brother. He said they were usually happy dreams of Zach when he was younger. In January of 2025, the Brettlers met with two senior officers with the Metropolitan Police. One of the officers said that he still talked with the lead detective from the investigation, Rory Wilkinson, about Zach almost every week.

48:30Phoebe Judge:Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, and Lena Sillison. This episode was fact-checked by Katie Sederborg. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter. Patrick Radden Keefe's book is called London Falling. We hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal Plus.

49:14Phoebe Judge:You can listen to Criminal, This Is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus, you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and Criminal co-creator Lauren Spohr talking about everything from how we make our episodes to the crime stories that caught our attention that week to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to patreon.com slash criminal. We're on Facebook at This Is Criminal and Instagram and TikTok at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com.

49:56Phoebe Judge:I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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