Authorities are not saying how the victim was killed.

Graycap23 said:

Umm...didn't they just say she was strangled to death?!

KidaDynamite said:

U have 2 love these creative writers.

This is an outrage.

A few months ago here in Dallas, a man, I believe he was Iranian and the mother was white, killed BOTH of his teenage daughters because they were dating black guys and wanted to be more independent.

SCNDLS said:

Wow.....very sad.

ATLANTA -- A jury found Chiman Rai guilty Thursday of arranging the murder of his daughter-in-law.

Prosecutors asserted throughout the eight-day trial that Rai was so enraged that his son married Sparkle Michelle Reid and fathered a child with her that he shelled out $10,000 to arrange her killing. They pointed to statements from Ricky Rai, Chiman's son, who told investigators after the killing that his father was "a little racist."

"Ladies and gentleman, Sparkle Michelle Rai was murdered for no other reason than she married Ricky Rai, she had a child with Ricky Rai," prosecutor Sheila Ross told jurors.

Defense attorneys countered that there's no evidence that Chiman Rai had a role in the killing. They said it would be a "senseless, awful tragedy" to convict him of a crime he didn't commit.

"Their whole case rises and falls on whether you believe that Mr. Rai was such a terrible racist, was such a man that was so overwhelmed with anger at his son for having a relationship with Sparkle Reid that he, for no good reason frankly, would hire somebody to murder her," said defense attorney Jack Martin. "Does that really stand up to close scrutiny?"

Sparkle Rai was found dead in her Union City, Ga., apartment in April 2000, her 7-month-old daughter unharmed nearby. But investigators could find little hard evidence pointing to a killer.

The case went unsolved until two witnesses came forward in 2004, a breakthrough that investigators said helped them connect the killing to Chiman Rai.

Prosecutors charged that Rai teamed up with Willie Fred Evans and Herbert Green to serve as middlemen for the hit squad. The two men passed along $10,000 to brothers Cleveland and Carl Clark, they say. Carl Clark allegedly drove the car and Cleveland Clark, a 300-pound ex-con who also faces the death penalty, carried out the killing.

Evans and Green testified they arranged the murder. Defense attorneys say the two are lying to cover up their role in the murder, which they say had the look of a robbery-gone-bad. They also suggested that Evans and Green plotted the killing, perhaps in pursuit of drug money, and they pounded prosecutors for giving the two a "sweetheart deal" in exchange for their cooperation. Evans and Green are expected to get probation.

Defense attorneys portrayed Rai as a hardworking man who brought his family to the U.S. around 1970 and later became a citizen. He taught math at Alcorn State University, a historically black college in Mississippi, and later ran a supermarket in a predominantly black area in Jackson. He also helped purchase a hotel in Louisville, Ky., where he made his 18-year-old son Ricky the general manager in 1998.

Ricky soon hired Sparkle Reid, a 20-year-old Atlanta native, as a clerk. They started dating in October 1998. Two months later she was pregnant with their daughter Analla. A few weeks after their March 2000 wedding, the 22-year-old mother was found dead, strangled with a vacuum cord and stabbed more than a dozen times.

Defense attorneys say Chiman Rai was no doubt frustrated with his son's relationship, but not because he married a black woman.

They also asserted he had an "unblemished" character and called to the stand a handful of Rai's black customers and fellow jail inmates who described him as a close friend and calming presence.

Prosecutors reminded the jury of Chiman's strained relationship with his son. The family didn't attend Ricky's wedding, never met the couple's daughter and proceeded with the wedding of one of Rai's daughters shortly after the murder.

Ross also dismissed the notion that the elderly Green and Evans -- whom she called the "geriatric squad" -- could mastermind the killing, and defended the decision to offer the pair a plea deal.

"In order to get to the devil," she said, "you have to go through a few sinners."

Graycap23 said:

Yep. He killed them in the back of his cab, I wanna say around Christmas time and he's STILL not been found.

My aunt was telling me last week about an Indian man that put out a hit on his daughter-in-law because she was black and married to his Indian son. The wife answered the door, the killer shot her and it was all traced back to the father-in-law. My aunt said they had the story on Good Morning America or some show last week. Has anyone heard of this????

SCNDLS said:

That was here in Atlanta. I posted a thread on it.

The Dallas Morning News

01/06/08: Slain Lewisville sisters mourned at Christian, Muslim services
Sarah Said's final phone call rang into the Irving police dispatcher about 7:30 p.m. on New Year's Day: "I'm dying, I'm dying, I'm dying ..."

About an hour later, a man walked up to an orange cab parked at the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Irving. He discovered carnage – the bullet-shredded bodies of 17-year-old Sarah and 18-year-old Amina Said, honor students and athletes at Lewisville High School.

Almost immediately, police issued an arrest warrant for the girls' father, 50-year-old Yaser Said, an Egyptian-born cab driver who family members said was given to fits of violence, threats and gun-waving rants about how Western culture was corrupting the chastity of his daughters.

In the week since their murders, friends and relatives on Patricia Said's side of the family say they have been haunted by that final phone call, a cry for help that went unanswered for years. They say Mr. Said physically and emotionally abused his children.

In October 1998, when Amina and Sarah were 9 and 8 years old, they accused their father of sexual abuse.

The allegations were reported to the Hill County sheriff's office, where the girls told a detective their father had been touching them inappropriately. Amina told authorities she had been penetrated at least once.

Their mother swore in an affidavit that the allegations were true.

In early January 1999, the two girls told authorities that they had lied about the allegations because they didn't want to attend rural Covington schools and wanted to go live with their grandmother. A district judge later dropped the charges of aggravated sexual assault against Mr. Said.

Irving police's murder suspect flyer of Yaser Abdel Said is posted at Islamic Center of Irving. George Burnett, a fire chief in the small town of Covington, visited the Saids' homestead a few times when their cows got out. He said the girls "were sent home several times from school with lice problems and asked not to return until they got it straightened out."

He said authorities in the town about 45 miles south of Fort Worth are on alert.

"We're keeping an eye out," he said. "We know he knows the area."

Mr. Said often espoused his version of traditional Middle Eastern values, prompting speculation the murders were "honor killings," an ancient Arab tribal custom in which the man of the family kills women he believes have shamed the family. The practice is now widely repudiated.

In a brief phone call in which she declined to comment further, his wife, Patricia, angrily rejected the notion that Mr. Said's Muslim religion or culture had anything to do with the murders. Her son, Islam, 19, agreed.

"Why is it every time an Arab father kills a daughter, it's an honor killing?" Islam said. "It didn't have anything to do with that." He declined to answer other questions.

Mr. Said has not been arrested, and some family members suspect he may have fled to Egypt, which he visits each year.

"We haven't gotten any information that will move this case forward," said Officer David Tull, an Irving police spokesman. "We don't know if he's local, if he's gone nationwide or international. If we do get a direction, then we will definitely let people know."

According to public records, the Saids moved around North Texas in recent years – Garland, Duncanville, Bedford, Hurst, Grand Prairie, Arlington and Euless. About two years ago, the family moved to Lewisville.

By most accounts, the family did not regularly attend religious services, or practice daily Muslim prayer.

But cultural differences – especially divisions over gender roles – led to tension in the family.

Mr. Said immigrated to the United States from Egypt in 1983 and was granted U.S. citizenship in about 1997. Family members said he met and married his wife, Patricia, 36, when she was about 15 years old, while he was working as a convenience store clerk in Tarrant County. Their three children were born in quick succession.

Connie Moggio, Mrs. Said's sister, said his controlling and violent nature gripped the family from the start.

Once, he shot out the tires on his wife's car to keep her home. Another time, Mrs. Moggio said, he blocked her car in a driveway because he thought she was going to help her sister and children escape.

Years later, when Amina was a sophomore at Euless Trinity High School, a friend said she showed up at school with red welts across her arms and back. Another time, Amina confided that her father had kicked her in the face.

"He found notes from her boyfriend," said a 17-year-old Trinity senior, who asked not to be identified. "Her lips were pretty much attached to her braces, but they wouldn't take her to the doctor because her family feared her father would be taken to jail."

She said the abuse continued and threats intensified.

"I remember her telling me that her dad told her he would take her back to Egypt and have her killed," she said. "He said it's OK to do that over there if you dishonor your family."

Eventually, friends and family members say, Mr. Said moved his family from Euless to Lewisville to break up his daughter and her boyfriend. Some Muslims believe that it can be religiously acceptable for Muslim men to marry non-Muslim women but that it is never acceptable for a Muslim woman to marry outside the faith.

Friends said the sisters suffered quietly through a life controlled by their father, a life in which social interaction with their peers was forbidden. One friend said Mr. Said installed spy software on the home computer and plotted with a relative to tap the phone lines.

Sarah never shared her address with her closest friends for fear of what her father might say or do if they came by the house, said Zohair Zaidi, a devout Muslim whom Sarah turned to in her quest to become more religious.

Still, Sarah knew her father would have disapproved of their friendship, primarily because Mr. Zaidi is male.

"She always used that term, 'He would kill me, I would be dead,' " said Mr. Zaidi, the 18-year-old college freshman. She kept his phone number under a female name in her cellphone.

Justin Finn, an 18-year-old senior at Lewisville High School, said Amina told him her father walked into her bedroom with a gun about two years ago.

"He was basically threatening her and waving around the gun," he said. "He was basically trying to send a message, 'You do what I say or I'm going to do something to you.' "

Relatives say the girls kept much of their lives hidden from their father. Amina had been awarded a $20,000 scholarship for college. Sarah dreamed of a job in the medical profession.

"School was everything to them. That was their way out. They were active in sports. That's what made them happy," said the girls' aunt, Jean Martinez.

Massoud Nasseri, owner of King Cab, has known Mr. Said for a number of years.

He described him as a good father and a decent man.

He said Muslim children who are born here or spend most of their lives here are "caught between a rock and a hard place." They want to do what their parents want, but they also want to follow their friends.

"They always battle within themselves about what they need to do," he said. "I call it the clash of the culture and that's what it comes down to. The kids were born here and part of their blood is Muslim, part of their blood is Christian, and they are caught in between."

By December, both of his daughters were dating, and tempers were boiling.

"Me mina and my mom r running away!" Sarah Said wrote to Mr. Zaidi in an instant message conversation, according to a transcript he saved. "My dad found out abt mina and is goin to kill us."

Mr. Zaidi was concerned. He asked his friend whether her father had threatened harm.

"B4 he tld me that he was goin to put bullet thru her head...today he tld me to get used to my sis bc shes not goin to b w us lng," she wrote.

Mr. Zaidi never knew where the Saids were going. Sarah was too afraid to tell him, he said.

On Christmas Day, Mrs. Said, her daughters and their boyfriends fled the state. They stopped at a relative's house in Kansas and then rented an apartment under an assumed name in Tulsa.

Mr. Said had filed a missing persons report with Lewisville police on Dec. 26.

Mrs. Said called Lewisville police Dec. 27 to tell them she and her daughters were safe. The report reads:

"Patricia stated that she was not going to call back again, as she was in great fear of her life. Patricia said she is very fearful of her husband harming her and/or her children, which is the reason she left her husband. Patricia further advised she and her children, Sarah and Amina, are just fine, and are going to continue hiding from her husband."

The next day an officer filed a reported recommending the case be closed, citing an interview with one of Mrs. Said's relatives.

"Patricia had told her that since they are Muslim that the daughter was only allowed to date other Muslims. Yaser had found out she went on a date with a non-Muslim and became very angry and threatened her with bodily harm. This concerned Patricia because Yaser has been violent in the past and Patricia was afraid that Yaser would severely hurt their daughter. At that time Patricia decided it would be best to leave her husband and take their daughters and go into hiding."

On New Year's Eve, Mrs. Said and her daughters returned to Lewisville. Amina told her aunt that her mother lied to her, saying the trip was to put flowers on their grandmother's grave. Mrs. Said told police she felt guilty about leaving her husband.

Sarah wore a brown sweatshirt with yellow puppies when she left with her dad to go to dinner on New Year's Day. Amina had on a tan hooded jacket with fur trim, similar to one she's wearing in a photo on her MySpace page. A headline on the page reads: "I don't want to ... become a memory."

Later that night, a dispatcher at the Irving Police Department picked up a 911 cellphone call from Sarah. The police report reads: "Female kept saying she was dying over and over again."

It seems that humans display a lack of respect 4 other humans more and more each day.

Graycap23 said:

No different than it was 20, 50, 100, 500+ years ago. Sh!t, not too long ago, folks were lynched every day in this country.

Graycap23 said:

Umm...didn't they just say she was strangled to death?!

Police said Chaudhry Rashid strangled his 25-year-old daughter to death because she wanted out of an arranged marriage. More Details

yep sure did

Dont you love when certain reporters cant keep THEIR facts straight?

"Just the facts ma'am, just the facts." lol

toots said:

I'm sayin'...haven't they ever heard of proof reading?!
[Edited 7/7/08 15:33pm]