Salman would spend over a year in prison during these legal proceedings, some of it in solitary confinement. Though she was ultimately acquitted, the verdict did little to dissipate the cloud of suspicion that hung over her in Orlando. For many Pulse survivors and family members of those killed, her acquittal was just a technicality, a failure on the part of prosecutors to legally prove their case. “She was found not guilty, but she is not innocent,” said Christine Leinonen, whose son Drew was killed in the attack. “She was morally culpable, and at some point she had to rationalize why she would not protect society.” Equally adamant are those who believe Salman was another victim of Mateen’s violence, and of a justice system that was able to scapegoat her because she was Muslim. They point to the fact that she herself showed no signs of extremism or a history of violence and that key parts of her confession were proven false. “I thought the whole thing was a travesty,” said Jacquelyn Campbell, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing and domestic violence researcher who submitted expert testimony for the defense during Salman’s pre-trial hearings. “I do not believe she aided and abetted. I believe she was trying to get through to the next day,” she told VICE News.Though she was ultimately acquitted, the verdict did little to dissipate the cloud of suspicion that hung over her in Orlando.
In the lead-up to her first interview, Salman started telling me she was hesitant. As I was boarding my flight, she FaceTimed me with a barrage of questions. “Can I get in trouble again?” she asked. “Could speaking up get the FBI after me?” Speaking out, she feared, could put another target on her back.Salman has finally told her side of the story, one that provides a glimpse into how the private violence of domestic abuse can evolve into the public terror of a mass shooting.
She was nervous to ask family, immigrants from the West Bank, for help. Her father owned a liquor store when she was growing up, and he died suddenly in 2012. Salman’s mother, with whom she has a rocky relationship, was left struggling financially while battling chronic illness.At one point, though, Salman said she did reach out. In 2012, shortly after her father died, Salman turned to her father-in-law, Seddique Mateen, and asked him to talk to his son about the way he was treating her. Salman said Seddique told her that he did ask Mateen to treat Salman better. But it wasn’t like his family was treated well: One night, Salman recalled that Mateen threatened his brother-in-law with a knife after an argument. She was firmly instructed not to tell anyone about the incident, though other family members witnessed it. “I felt like it was like, what happens in this house stays in this house,” she said. (The Mateen family did not respond to a request for comment.)“It hurts sometimes to think that people assume that I am this kind of monster.”
In an interview with VICE News, Shurooq said her sister was hyper-alert and anxious in Mateen’s presence and that Mateen “wouldn’t let her out of his sight.” Shurooq also noticed that Noor’s weight was fluctuating wildly. When Shurooq asked if Mateen was hurting her, Salman insisted things were fine. Shorooq was unconvinced but did not press the matter further. Though Shurooq Salman now believes her sister was in an abusive relationship, she insists her sister still would have sounded the alarm had she known of her husband’s violent plans. “I do believe in Stockholm syndrome, but I don't believe that it got to that point,” she said. “If she believed somebody was going to be hurt by his actions, she would have made sure—even if she was put in the line of danger—she would make sure that the right people knew.”“If she believed somebody was going to be hurt by his actions, she would have made sure—even if she was put in the line of danger—she would make sure that the right people knew.”
The problem, of course, is that Mateen likely fell into the first category. The terrorist connections he told coworkers about in 2013 were merely claims of grandiosity, and the declaration he made to ISIS three years later may have also been just that. “ISIS has never heard of this person and they certainly shouldn't have been given credit for that attack,” said German. Salman grew agitated when I asked her how much she knew of Mateen’s fascination with ISIS and other jihadi groups. “How, if our own government did an investigation and dropped the ball,” she snapped. “How is a girl that has no training supposed to know what the signs are?” Three years after the FBI first learned about Mateen, around 4 a.m. on June 12, 2016, Noor Salman was jolted awake by a phone call. It was the night of the Pulse nightclub shooting.William Hall, a long-serving officer with the Fort Pierce Police Department in Florida, was calling; he had just gotten a dispatch telling him that this was the home of an active shooter in Orlando and was next to her brick apartment building. He’d been warned the house could be booby-trapped with explosives. “Come outside,” Hall told Salman. He waited for her and crouched behind a tree holding a long-range rifle. Four other officers encircled the long, dark entryway that led to apartment 107.Mateen fell right in the FBI’s blind spot: a man obsessed with violence whose propensity for acting upon it was most apparent in his romantic relationships with women.
When agents told Salman that her husband had committed “a violent act,” as they called it, she denied that it was possible, pointing to the fact that he’d paid bills the night before and purchased tickets for the family to visit California. But toward the end of the interrogation, Salman would dictate a 12-page statement that would form the basis of the case against her. In the first one, Salman admitted to seeing Mateen visiting jihadi websites, expressing anger at events unfolding in the Middle East, and buying a rifle that he told her was for work.In another statement, she told the agents something that they took to be an admission of advanced knowledge: “I am sorry for what happened. I wish I’d go back and tell his family and the police what he was going to do.” According to his trial testimony, the agent questioning her then said, “You know, Noor, I realize that you knew what Omar Mateen was going to do. You knew what was gonna happen.” Salman denied knowing, but he pushed back. “I know you knew,” he said.In court, the agent testified that this is when Salman broke down in tears and told him “I knew.”The last statement Salman gave mentioned Pulse by name. She admitted to casing Pulse with Mateen the week before the attack. She claimed he showed her the Pulse website and told her that it would be his target, just two days before the shooting. News of Salman’s confession ricocheted around the country. But within days of the shooting, the FBI would determine that these claims were likely false. There was no evidence of a visit from Mateen’s devices on the Pulse website’s servers, and an analysis of the couple’s cellphone location data concluded they hadn’t been to the club either.Morning broadcasts played grainy cellphone videos of club-goers running for their lives on a loop, some carrying their injured friends toward a swirl of red and blue police lights.
After the shooting, Susan Adieh drove down to Florida to extricate her niece from the growing media maelstrom. Adieh drove Salman back to Adieh’s home in Mississippi and described Salman as catatonic during the 13-hour drive. “There were no words that could come out of her, only crying,” she said. FBI agents in black SUVs trailed Adieh’s car as she drove and remained outside her home for the entirety of Salman’s stay.“There were no words that could come out of her, only crying.”
As the proceedings continued, the government’s case began to crumble. Contrary to key parts of Salman’s confession, it turned out that everything about Mateen’s movements that night indicated that his decision to attack Pulse was made on a whim the night of the attack. Authorities ultimately concluded that his original target was likely Disney Springs, an outdoor entertainment complex in Orlando that had a heavy police presence that evening. The testimonies shared, however, were harrowing. One woman said that she survived by hiding under dead bodies. Surveillance footage shown in court showed the shooter spraying the packed club with bullets. It also was the first time the public got a detailed look into the makings of a mass shooter: a peek into the man’s internet search history, his habits, his relationships, and his gradual but steady path to mass murder. But despite the two weeks of testimony, the details of the domestic abuse Salman endured at the hands of Mateen were never fully explored. While Salman’s lawyers originally planned to delve into the abuse, they changed their mind. As Salman’s lead defense attorney, Charles Swift, explained it, that aspect of Salman’s story could have hurt more than it helped in court. “You see: Yes, she was abused. But here's the problem with that part of it: Why would that be relevant if she didn't know? I'm not making excuses. She didn't know, right? That's what the evidence says. Ultimately, I decided I've got enough. I don't need it. I need to keep it simple. Forget the rest.”Despite the two weeks of testimony, the details of the domestic abuse Salman endured at the hands of Mateen were never fully explored.
To build the database, Peterson and Densley combined open-source data like media reports with their own interviews with five incarcerated mass shooters and over 50 people who were related to or knew a mass shooter. They found that 36% of the mass shooters who kill strangers also had a history of domestic violence, engaging in “coercive control against their wives and families as a precursor to committing a public mass shooting.” In this way, domestic violence is not completely separate from the public violence of a mass shooting but can be a steady march toward it. Peterson and Densley resist being too prescriptive with their findings, and most abusers never become mass shooters. But Salman’s story, and Mateen’s own violent evolution, tracks with much of the Mass Shooter Database project findings. These days, as Salman tries to recover from the events of the last five years, she is focused on raising her now 9-year-old son.Domestic violence is not completely separate from the public violence of a mass shooting but can be a steady march toward it.
At the gala, she looked polished in a black blazer and plaid trousers as she entered the reception hall. The event’s organizer, Arshia Ali-Khan, attempted to give Salman a pep talk before her speech. “Speak from your heart,” she said.Only half the tables at the event were occupied. “It's been really hard to get people in the room,” Ali-Khan admitted, looking down at the empty chair beside her. “Some people have said to us they didn't want to associate with you even for this event.” Salman nodded in recognition, unsurprised. “I still have people that won’t associate with me even after my acquittal,” she said. Salman’s voice shook, and at times broke, as she read her speech from a tattered piece of white paper. “Two years later, I cannot sleep without a pill and I never want to leave my home. I've had to build a wall around myself for my own protection. I flinch if someone touches me, and I hate surprises, and that innocent, happy girl who used to wear colors dresses in black,” she said The room listened in polite silence. She walked off the podium to scattered applause. Looking around, it seemed like attendees did not quite know what to make of her speech, that perhaps the entire thing was just too heavy to process. Over a year later, in June 2021, Salman told me she had stopped going out in disguise. The fear is still there, but she thinks more about her son now. “I realized my son's not going to be small forever, and I do need to get over my fear before he gets old enough to realize why is my mom not like every other parent? Why is mom hiding?” She’s begun applying for jobs out of necessity, but that slowed down due to the pandemic and her son’s virtual learning.“I still have people that won’t associate with me even after my acquittal.”
One ongoing struggle for Salman is the matter of forgiving herself for what she says she did not see when it came to the man she married, when she simply did not realize the danger she was in or the danger he posed to others. “The first day of therapy, I remember to this day saying why was I so stupid? How did I not see the red flags?” she said. “If [I] now went into the past and saw his behavior, then yeah, I would be like, oh shit, something's wrong.” She says her main form of self-protection now is to trust no one. “I need to think there's more to somebody than what they're showing you,” she said. “You don't know anybody these days.”“The first day of therapy, I remember to this day saying why was I so stupid? How did I not see the red flags?”