DoubleTake: The kidnapping of Kayla Mueller, Part III

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
Additional support comes from The Voice of the Martyrs, serving persecuted Christians for almost 60 years.
VOM founder, Pastor Richard Wurmbrand's story of persecution and torture by communist jailers shocked the Western world. Free copies of his book, Tortured for Christ, now available at vom.org/saturdayspecial.

**Les Sillers** (0:25)
From World Radio, this is Double Take. I'm Les Sillers.
This is the final episode in our three-part series, The Kidnapping of Kayla Mueller. Kayla was a humanitarian aid worker who was kidnapped in Syria on August 4th, 2013 A group of ISIS terrorists known as the Beatles held her captive. August 4th, 2014, marked one year since Kayla's abduction.
The ISIS Beatles were getting restless. They had threatened to kill Kayla unless her parents paid a ransom of 5 million euros, about 6.2 million dollars at the time. A deal that was never done.
The execution deadline came and went, but Carl and Marsha Mueller knew their daughter was still alive. There was still a chance to negotiate. In October of 2014, they learned the ISIS Beatles had handed her over to a senior leader in the organization who reported directly to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-proclaimed Caliph of ISIS. Baghdadi promptly claimed Kayla as his wife. As the year drew to a close, the FBI, the US military, and others continued to try to locate Kayla. Meanwhile, Prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick of the US. Department of Justice sought to bring Kayla's original captors, the ISIS Beatles, to justice.

**Dennis Fitzpatrick** (1:44)
One primary motivation, rationale, foundation of the US justice system is to achieve justice for victims of crime. And there's really no more compelling case than this one.

**Les Sillers** (1:59)
But first, the government had to find them. The Beatles had gone into hiding.
World correspondent Jenny Ruff picks up the story from here.

**Jenny Ruff** (2:14)
The sound of the owls always reminded Marcia and Carl Mueller of their daughter Kayla. She loved owls. The Mueller's home in Arizona backs up to the Prescott National Forest. The owls fly into the trees in their backyard, or hang out on top of the garage where Carl keeps his camper.
Back in 2014, whenever Marcia heard the owls, she wondered what was going on with Kayla in Syria. For the first year of her abduction, Kayla had been held hostage by a group of three men known as the ISIS Beatles, John, Ringo, and George. Here's prosecutor Dennis Fitzpatrick.

**Dennis Fitzpatrick** (2:50)
And in part called the Beatles because they all had British accents.

**Jenny Ruff** (2:55)
The Beatles had origins in Africa or the Middle East. Their families had relocated to London and attended the same mosque. That's where the Beatles met and united.

**Dennis Fitzpatrick** (3:04)
They all shared an affinity with what they were hearing on the Internet. And they all decided to travel to northern Syria and originally joined al-Nusra Front, which is another say faction of the sort of religious and political terrorist group.
And they traveled there in late 2011, early 2012 to join the cause.

**Jenny Ruff** (3:35)
Eventually, the Beatles split from al-Nusra Front to join ISIS, and the Beatles oversaw the international hostage cell. They had taken dozens of Westerners hostage, mostly Europeans, but also four Americans, three men and Kayla. They kept Kayla for a little over a year.
Then, on August 19th, 2014, the Beatles beheaded one of the American men and posted the killing on social media.

**Dennis Fitzpatrick** (4:00)
A horrible video was released by the Islamic State, a message to America. And it is Jim Foley on his knees, orange jumpsuit, and then you see the knife go to Jim Foley's neck. And the video is meant to terrorize the West.
And then a week later, Stephen Sotloff is killed. And then Peter Kasig was killed in October of 2014

**Jenny Ruff** (4:35)
The Muellers had been in contact with the Beatles through email. But after the Beatles began their killing spree, the emails stopped.
Here's Marcia.

**Marsha Mueller** (4:43)
You know, we kept reaching out. They didn't respond, kept sending messages, sending emails, emails. They weren't responding. We don't know what happened to Kayla, whether she lived or died.

**Jenny Ruff** (4:53)
In October 2014, the Muellers learned that the Beatles had turned Kayla over to someone else in ISIS and disappeared. The militants who now held Kayla were Abu and Um Sayef, a married couple. They locked Kayla inside their house and kept her on behalf of their leader, the founder of ISIS. His name, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Prosecutor Fitzpatrick again.

**Dennis Fitzpatrick** (5:16)
Abu Sayef was a lead lieutenant of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and she was basically transferred to his custody so that she could be Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's slave. I mean, there's nothing more horrific than the beheading of US citizens and then, you know, the rape and sexual abuse of, you know, an American woman at the hands of the leader of the terrorist organization.