Criminology - Yaser Said

Episode Date: December 4, 2022

On January 1, 2008, Yaser Said murdered his two teenage daughters, Sarah and Amina, in Texas. He would later say that he was upset that his daughters were dating American boys and that they were becoming too westernized. Yaser escaped capture with the help of family members but was eventually apprehended and held responsible for his crimes. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the acts committed by Said and what he has referred to as honor killings. Yaser Said was reported to be abusive to his wife and children. His wife Patricia left the home with the children on multiple occasions, but she later said that Yaser threatened to kill her family if she didn't return. Were these murders honor killings, as Yaser has claimed, or did he say that to try to justify these unthinkable acts? You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, moms and mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for moms and mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to moms and mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello, everyone, and welcome to episode 235 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And I'm Mike Morford. Mr. Morford, man, how are you?

I'm doing great. How are you doing? I'm doing pretty good. You know, we're getting into that part of the year. You and I were kind of talking about it before the episode started where it's getting dark sooner. So a lot more darkness at nighttime. And I think it kind of plays on me a little bit as far as my emotions, my feelings. I think a lot of people have that as well.

Yeah, I think there's something in the change of the seasons when it gets to be this time of year that happens to a lot of people. But hopefully the holidays coming up gets everybody cheerful and excited. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shoutouts. We had Cody Grunenwald, Andrew Britain, Stephanie Ferruly, Iona Holcomb, and Paula Motzny. So a lot of great new support, a lot of names that we've heard before. I think people coming back to the show, which is also amazing. Yeah, and we can't thank everyone enough that takes the time to support the show.

And for anyone out there that would like to support criminology, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. So we just mentioned our wonderful Patreon supporters. We are very lucky to have so many supporters of the show, not only on Patreon, but on social media as well. And people that email us, tell us that they listen to the show while, you know, working out, doing stuff around the house. Yeah, and that really means a lot to us that many people have been part of the criminology family over the last five years and through almost 250 episodes. and it's all of our wonderful listeners and supporters that we want to hear from for our upcoming special Q&A episode where the Ask Me Anything episode that we will air on New Year's Eve. So you can ask us questions about the show any of the cases we covered or even, you know, more personal questions about Morp and myself, maybe what kind of music we listen to or what we're into outside of the world of true crime.

I know morph that in a previous Q&A, it was revealed that you love flock of seagulls and at one time had a flock of seagulls haircut. I never had a flock of seagulls haircut. That's just a rumor. But you did love and maybe still do flock of seagulls. I do. Okay. That's one of my favorite ones. That's my favorite song.

I ran. Can't get enough of it. And for people listening that want to take part in the Q&A episode to ask your questions, reach out to us. on Facebook by going to Facebook.com slash criminology podcast. You can also hit us up in the Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast, discussion and fans.

And then we're on Twitter at Criminology Pod. And you can also send us a voicemail that we may play on the air by going to speakpipe.com slash criminology podcast. But don't wait. The deadline to get all of your questions, comments, and voicemails in is December 13th. We hope to hear from a lot of our friends

and supporters of the show. Speaking of friends of the show, we'd really love to see some of you at CrimeCon Orlando in September, 2003. You know, we had a blast at CrimeCon Vegas. We had a really fun meet up with a lot of great people. And at CrimeCon trip might be the perfect holiday gift for yourself or someone special. CrimeCon is happening September 22nd through the 24th, 2023 at the World Center Marriott in Orlando.

And to save a bit of money when you book your trip. trip, you can use our promo code criminology at checkout when you go to crimecon.com. That promo code will save you 10% on your standard badge. So don't wait. Book your trip now before a spot to sell out. All right, Morf, now that we have all of that out of the way, it's time to jump into this episode. And let's start with some audio of a 911 call. What's going on, ma'am?

I'm dying. That's whatever. Carvering fire department. Anybody still there? ma'am, are you still there? Oh, I've got to see somebody she's dying. I'm getting... I've got it.

Why are you still there, ma'am? Ma'am, what is your address? Ma'am. That 911 call you heard was placed at around 7.30 p.m. on January 1st, 2008, from somewhere near Dallas, Texas, by 17-year-old Sarah Saeed. The words help. My dad shot me. I'm dying, alerted police to an unthinkable and tragic crime.

The murders of both Sarah and her 18-year-old sister, Amina, at the hands of their own father, Yasser Saeed. Though the line remained open, Sarah stopped talking and authorities couldn't trace her location to send police officers to help her. This is probably because the car she was in was still moving. Instead, they were able to find the address that the phone was registered to, and officers went to the Saeed home, Patricia Owens was waiting for her husband Yasser and their two daughters, Sarah and Amina, to return home from dinner together. Patricia was startled to see police arriving and frightened when they told her why they were there. Panicked, Patricia called Yasser's cell phone, but he didn't answer. Then she called both of her daughters, and they didn't answer either.

She next called Yashra's brothers to see if any of them knew where the three were, but no one heard from any of them. An hour after Sarah's phone call, another 911 call was placed from outside of the Omni Mandalay Hotel in Las Kalinas, just outside of Irving, Texas. Hotel manager Nathan Watson had found both Sarah and Amina in a bloody taxi dead in front of the hotel. According to a Daily Beast article, Watson reported to the dispatcher that the two were hurt really bad. Also stating

they don't look alive. Police and first responders arrived and were greeted by a bloody and shocking scene. Sarah sitting in the backseat had been shot nine times and Amina in the front seat had been shot twice.

Their father, taxi driver Yasser Saeed, was missing from the scene. The orange taxi was parked in the taxi stand with no keys in the ignition and the headlights all. And the headlights off, Watson had knocked on the window because the taxi was in line, but not moving. He looked inside only to see the bodies of the two teenagers. A police check of the taxi's registration found that

Yasser Saeed was not the owner, but he had rented the taxi just 10 days earlier. Police had to relay the heartbreaking news of the girl's deaths and their missing father to Patricia Owens. And I want to take a minute to talk about this hotel manager Nathan Watson. I've never been a hotel manager. I've had a lot of jobs. The one thing morph that creeps into my mind in a lot of these cases that we do is in a situation like this when a person is just going about their daily routine. And I'm sure for Nathan, he had a daily routine. There were some variances from day to day, but by and large, we kind of fall into routines, right? In our jobs, well, this was far from routine.

But what was routine was, you know, him maybe being outside, making sure that the taxis were moving along. What changed all of it was when he looked inside this taxi and saw that two teenage girls were dead. And I don't know how, you know, a person reacts. and then how they deal with the aftermath of that. Yeah, I don't think anyone's ever prepared to find a body, even if it's someone that's died of natural causes,

it's got to be pretty shocking to find something like that, but to look in that cab and see these girls that have been shot and they're all bloody and stuff, that had to be something that's etched in his mind. Police suspected that it was Yasser Saeed himself who had murdered his own daughters, but they didn't know where he might be. Meanwhile, medical examiners were left to determine just how brutal the murders of Sarah and Amina were.

An autopsy revealed that Amina died instantly from one of those two close-range shots to her chest. Despite being shot nine times, Sarah was somehow able to call 911 and communicate for a short time before she succumbed to the injuries of her lung, liver, and kidney. Listening to the call, it sounds like she was still being attacked while she was on the phone. You can hear her say, oh my God, saying it after you hear some kind of noise, maybe a car door opening. Every transcription of the call we can find has Sarah crying out, no, not again. Stop it, stop it. But some people have said that they instead hear, no, dad, no, stop it, stop it, no.

The audio on the phone connection during the call wasn't very good, but you don't seem to hear any gunshots. Police pooled surveillance video from the Omni Hotel to try and see how things played out, but it was dark and grainy. You could see a figure emerged from the taxi, but it was impossible to tell who it was due to the low quality of the video. The aftermath of Sarah's and Amina's murders were obviously tough on their family. Islam Said, Sarah and Amina's older brother, and their mom, Patricia, moved in with Yasser's brother,

Mosin after the murders. Eventually, Islam left the United States and lived with family in Egypt. He stayed in Egypt until 2000. 11 when he moved back to Texas. Patricia Owens, Amina and Sarah's mother continued to cooperate with investigators, helping them figure out why her husband would have done something so horrific to his own daughters. Patricia told Fox News that she had heard things while living with Yasser's family that made her sick,

saying one of his brothers told me that I was really lucky that Yasser left their bodies for me to find, for me to put my girls to rest. If it was him, nobody would find his girls. According to Patricia, Mosin plainly told her once that Yasser didn't want to raise whores as daughters. Patricia would later learn that Yasser called Mosen after shooting the girls. His wife, Mary, answered because Mosen was in the shower, but Yasser instructed her to tell Mosen to meet him at Denny's, their old place. Mary claims that Mosin was home all night. Sarah and Amina's aunts don't believe that, wondering how Yasser could have gotten anywhere while covered in blood with his taxi still at the Omni. Patricia says that she assured that Mary would lie if Mosin needed

her to. And this information comes from a 2014 documentary called The Price of Honor. The Power Balance was always off in the rocky relationship between Patricia and Yasser. When he was 29, Yasser married Patricia Owens, who was just 15 years old. They were married in February 1987. Soon after that, Yasser applied for a green card since at the time he only had a student visa. Within three years, Sarah, Amina, and Islam were all born. In 1998, with the help of their maternal grandmother, Sarah and Amina reported that Yasser had been sexually assaulting them.

Patricia took the three children and fled, but after Yasser threatened to kill her family if she didn't come back, she returned with the children, and Sarah and Amina recanted their accusation. Both of the girls were extensively interviewed, and they indicated that Yasser would touch them at times when their mom was away. According to the Price of Honor documentary, in one of those interviews in 1998, Sarah indicated that she was afraid of her dad and his brothers, and that she was afraid they will take her. Though they were candid, Amina wrote her Aunt Connie a letter telling her that they were being told by their parents to say they had lied. Eventually, after the murders, Patricia divorced Yasser and took back her maiden name of Owens. So, Morve, we already know that these two girls end up dead at the hands of their father. But then, you know, when you look at this information, that they made allegations that their father had molested them. Now, they recanted those accusations later, but it was said that it was on threat of death,

that they did so. You know, I don't know if you've been watching the new Hulu documentary on Casey Anthony, but my wife and I are watching it. We're not all the way through it. But what really comes out in this documentary, you know, whether you believe that she's telling the truth or not, and I know a lot of people don't, she does make a lot of of accusations against her father and brother about molestation and stuff like that. And as we were watching it, my wife turned to me and said, how could a father do that if it

were true? Because I don't know that my wife believes all of it either, but it's a good question. My wife is not a true crime officianto. She watches the stuff with me. I can't imagine it. I know you can't imagine it. We both have children. I can't imagine hurting my children in any way.

That way, especially, you know, ending their lives. I mean, it's just something that is beyond belief, kind of, to me. Yeah, I think as fathers, we are, you know, it's built into us that we want to protect our kids and we would defend them and lay down our lives for them if it came to that. So it's very foreign to me and to you, I'm sure, to think of any situation in which you're intentionally harming your child in any kind of way. So it's very hard to grasp the idea of that. Yeah, my wife made a point to me that I think you and I have talked about before, you know, the father, right, supposed to be the protector. And mother too, right?

Mothers are supposed to protect their children as well. as a father, I've always known that one of my biggest jobs is to protect my children. I'm there for them. I would walk through fire for them. I would do whatever I had to do. So, you know, back to your point, this type of stuff is so at odds with the way that most people think when it comes to being a parent. The police worked hard to track down Yasser Saeed, but he was hard to find.

Although Yasser was missing and there was nothing that had come to light directly implicating him as his daughter's killers, it was pretty clear. Based on everything police could gather that he was responsible, there was the 911 call in which Sarah was able to name her attacker, her own dad. Amina's boyfriend told police that he had seen Amina and Sarah in the taxi with Yasser just minutes before Sarah's 911 call. police kept hunting for Yasser Saeed, and they looked for anything that may help them piece together why this all happened. On December 21, 2007, just 11 days before Amina and Sarah were killed, Renee Hopkins, a history teacher at Lewisville High School, received an email from Amina. Amina had explained in the email that Yasser had planned and arranged marriage for her, but that she was going to escape. According to investigation discovery, the email read in part. My dad said, I cannot put it off anymore and I have to get married this year. The girls didn't want to marry someone their father chose for

them. And as Amina put it, especially men we don't know or love. Amina begged Hopkins in the email not to inform authorities. The Daily Beast reported that she specifically wrote, he will without any drama or doubt. Kill us. Just days after Amina sent that email, Patricia, Sarah, and Amina fled their home again. Yasser was being very controlling, and he was upset they wanted to date,

and especially that they wanted to date American boys. He put a gun up to Amina's head during one argument and threatened a killer. Patricia didn't have the same views as Yasser. She knew and liked the boyfriends of both girls, but she didn't tell Yasser about them, not wanting the girls to be punitive. or harmed. Amina and Sarah had met their boyfriends while working at a Kroger grocery store,

where Patricia also worked. It was like the girls were allowed to live one life in public, but they had to hide it and live a different life at home. Patricia probably understood their yearning for independence. She was a Christian, and she was still a child when she married Yasser, who was almost 30 years old, and he was Muslim. Between their age difference, their religious beliefs, and abuse at the hands of Yasser, the relationship was doomed to suffer. Patricia like her own daughters had also been a teenager living a Western lifestyle, but being controlled by Yasser, just like Sarah and Amina. Patricia thought she was helping the girls escape punishment, judgment, and disappointment by Yasser, by keeping their secrets from him. She never thought

he would murder them. She told the Dallas Morning News. I just thought he would like punish them, like take their phone away and stuff like that. Sarah's boyfriend, Eric Panamino recalled having to keep their relationship secret, telling the Daily Beast that if Yasser knew they were dating, something bad would happen to me or something bad would happen to her. Sarah, Amina, and Patricia all stayed in an apartment in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The lease was signed under a fake name so that Yasser could not track them. On December 26th, Yasser officially reported all three missing, filing a report with the Louisville Police Department. According to Oxygen.com, Yasser said to Louisville police officer Jason Williams, find my daughters, I need them.

Patricia made contact with an officer to let authorities know that she and her kids were okay, but they were in hiding from her husband. According to Patricia, eventually the girls ended up wanting to go back home and finish school, and they missed their friends. Both Sarah and Amina were honor students that both wanted to be doctors one day, and the absences wouldn't help them achieve their goals. Amina's friend, Edgar Ruiz, however, disputes the claim that the girls wanted to go home, saying that she didn't want to return to Texas. Edgar told the Daily Beast, she knew she was going to die.

Amina's Aunt Connie backs up Edgar's version of events. saying, she said her mom was wanting her to go home and she didn't want to. She said she would rather be dead than go back there. Eric, Sarah's boyfriend, told Oxygen, I think Sarah wanted to fix things, and Patricia kind of convinced us all it was going to be safe. During the last conversation that Connie had with Amina, just hours before she and Sarah were killed, she told Amina to go to the police station and file a restraining order against Yasser.

The email Amina sent to Renee Hopkins indicated that they were planning to go. go to the authorities about the situation. But for some reason, they were holding off. So there's a lot going on here, Morf. Let's unpack a little bit of it. You know, I don't think there's any doubt that Patricia, Sarah, and Amina were afraid. They were afraid to the point that they had to get away. They had to lease a place under, you know, a different name.

But then, you know, there's this idea that, the girls wanted to go home. Not so much probably to be with their father, but to get back to their friends and specifically to finish school. You know, these were great students. They wanted to be doctors. Kind of hard to do that if you don't get through high school keeping up, you know, a high GPA. So I guess my thought is, were they in a very tough position besides the fact that they were afraid of their father, this had to have been, you know, a real conflict. What do we do? And then I think there's some conflicting statements, you know, some people saying that the girls didn't want to return. Some friends going as far as saying that they knew if they went back that, you know, they would die.

I don't know. There's a lot going on here. And then, you know, talking about filing a restraining order. I've actually been watching a show on Netflix called I am a stalker. And it's a very interesting show. And you get to hear from these people who have been convicted of very bad, horrific, stalking type incidents. And there's a lot of talk about restraining orders. And I think you and I have probably talked about it before. But they really stress it, you know, in this show.

The fact that it is a piece of paper. And this piece of paper cannot stop someone who is intent on doing you harm. It's a good tool. Don't get me wrong. But it's a piece of paper that can't stop someone from hurting you if that's really what they're intent on doing. Yeah, this seemed like a real impossible situation for everyone involved. You know, Patricia's got away.

In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Keeping them safe and protecting them versus honoring their wishes of letting them go back. to school. And if that's true, again, there's a little bit of mixed signals on that.

But the situation just in general sounds like it was very, very tough. In hindsight, obviously we can look back and say, yeah, keeping them away would have been a good thing. But unfortunately, that wasn't happened to happen permanently. Welcome to another round of drawing board or Mero board. Today we discussed technical diagramming with systems architect Maya. Let's go. First question. You've spent 10 hours slogging over a sequence diagram that should have taken five.

Drawing board or Miro board? Drawing board. And if I'm being honest, Miro would probably cut that time down by half. You know, with its AI tools and ready to go templates. Next, your diagrams become so bulky. It's more complex than the solar system. But all it takes is a few clicks and... It's Mero.

I've used those technical shape packs way too many times. and stuff is just digestible on its infinite online canvas. Now, the final question, everyone's brought in, but you have to make all these tasks all the way over in Jira. But wait, it's done. Is it? Mero, easy with its two-way Jira sync. Easy to plot dependencies.

Everyone always knows what's up. And she's done it. Join over 60 million people creating technical diagrams without workflow glitches. Get your first three boards for free at Miro.com. That's M-I-R-O.com. On December 30th, 2007, Patricia took Sarah back to Yasser's house, but dropped Amina off at Edgar's house. Though Yasser didn't know she was at a boy's house, he was still upset that she didn't come home.

On January 1st, Patricia recalled that Yasser was biting the inside of his cheeks a lot, which apparently he did when he was upset. That evening, Patricia brought Amina back to the home. When Amina left Edgar's house to return home, according to. according to court TV. The last thing she said to Edgar was, you will never see me again. Yasser said he was going to take Amina and Sarah to Denny's

because Amina was hungry. Patricia wanted to join them, but Yasser said he wanted to talk to his daughters alone. She told Fox News, he said, no, I just want to talk to the girls and we'll be back in a little bit. I didn't think anything of it. Instead of taking his daughters out to eat,

Yasser drove them around before he killed them, leaving them in the taxi about 20 minutes south of their home. Aminas and Sarah's murders have been referred to his honor killings. It's been called an honor killing, but as Dallas County District Attorney, John Cruz said on law and crime.com, there's nothing honorable about what Yasser did on January 1, 2008. Irving police detective Eric Curtis added that Yasser didn't like the way that his daughters were living their lives, dating American boys who were not Muslim. He said, I think it frustrated him, and he couldn't handle it, and he killed them. A Dallas County grand jury indicted Yasser in absentia on two counts of capital murder.

In December 2014, almost seven years after his daughter's deaths, Yasser Saeed was added to the FBI's top 10 most wanted fugitive list. A reward for information on his whereabouts was increased to $100,000. The search for Yasser was extensive. He had citizenship in both Egypt and Egypt. in the United States, and he also had ties to Canada. The manhunt was international, and authorities feared he had help evading capture. Yasser's son, Islam, Saeed was living back in Texas again and claimed that he had not seen

or spoken to his father since 2008, when Sarah and Amina were murdered. In 2017, the director of maintenance at Islam's apartment building in Bedford, Texas, had to fix a leak in his unit. There was an older man. in the apartment that had been in a previously locked room. The man kept his head down and wore baseball cap the entire time. This maintenance man realized that this older man was Yasser Saeed. The maintenance worker Jorge Camacho contacted the FBI and gave them the information and location.

Officers visited Islam's apartment, but he refused to let them in to search the residence. Islam called his uncle Yassim. and told him there was a big problem. By the time the FBI Dallas SWAT team returned with a warrant at 1 a.m. Yasser was gone. The apartment was empty. The back door was left unlocked and it looked as though someone had left in a hurry. There was a pair of smashed eyeglasses on the ground and the branches of a bush underneath

the back patio were bent like someone had jumped off the balcony. agents collected DNA samples from the apartment. And those samples confirmed that Yasser Saeed, not just Islam, Said, had been living in that apartment. Just 12 days later, Islam was a passenger inside a car, stopped at the border of Canada, over 1,000 miles away from his apartment in Bedford. According to the FBI, Annie Medhat, who was driving the car,

claimed that they had taken a spontaneous crazy road trip but agents searching his phone found a text to his employer, claiming a family emergency, so his story seemed fishy. Agents would later learn that Yasser had escaped to Canada. He didn't stay there long, though. In August 2020, FBI agents began surveilling two houses that they believed Yasser may be hiding at. Both of the houses belonged to Yasser's niece. One day during the surveillance, they saw Islam and Yassin drop off groceries at one of the homes,

and then take trash from the home 20 miles away. way to a shopping center in South Lake where they disposed of it. To them, that was proof they were on the right track. On August 26, 2020, Yasser Saeed was arrested at one of the homes in Justin, Texas, just 35 miles northwest of Dallas. There was a cop hidden in a room in the back of a converted garage, apparently where Yasser would spend his time in hiding. Despite having connections in Egypt and Canada. He spent his time hold up in a small room on a cot surrounded by his trash as he waited for supplies just miles from the scene of the crime. Now, we've seen the links that fugitives even recently have gone to try to disappear. Caitlin Armstrong is accused of the May

22 murder of Mariah Wilson in Austin, Texas, after 43 days as a fugitive. The U.S. Marshal's Lone Star Fugitive Task Force located her in Costa Rica. She was using her sister's passport. And she had undergone plastic surgery to change the way she looked. She also dyed her red hair, dark brown. But Yasser Saeed didn't do any of that. He didn't travel to Egypt and hide out there. He was still in the area where he had lived, still in the same area where he had killed his daughters.

He didn't have plastic. surgery. He wasn't wearing wigs. Now, he was putting on some baseball hats and he was hiding. And like many fugitives, he did have the help of some members of his family to hide. So I think one of the questions that jumps out to me and will probably jump out to a lot of people is why didn't Yassir try to get much farther away from the area? I mean, he didn't even go to a a different state. He wasn't even in a different state, let alone trying to get to Egypt, where he probably would have had friends and family and could have disappeared or maybe hold up much more easily. Yeah, there's the indication he had gone to Canada for a while,

but he apparently didn't stay there. So I wonder what made him come back. And I wonder if, you know, we mentioned that Egypt was a possibility. He didn't go there. That would have been probably harder to find him and get him back into the states. But perhaps it's because he knew they'd be on the lookout for him at an airport or at a place where he could take a ship. So he maybe thought that was a harder risk and harder and more of a risk to get to Egypt. And maybe it had something to do with, you know, unlike a lot of fugitives, he apparently had family members who were more than willing to help him hide. I don't think a lot of killers

have that option. Yeah, their families love them, but are they going to hide them knowing that they've just killed two of their family members? I don't think a lot of people are. Amina and Sarah's Aunt Connie and Patricia's Aunt Jill had publicly stated that they believed Yasser was still in Texas, and they were right. Amina's boyfriend's mother recalled in the documentary Price of Honor that Amina always knew this was going to happen to her and said that Yasser loved the states too much to leave. Yasser's brother Yasser, as well as his son, Islam, were arrested at the other home in Ulyss, Texas on August 26th, and they were charged in relation to hiding Yasser and helping him evade capture. Since Yasser held dual citizenship in the United States and Egypt, he was considered

a flight risk and was held without bail. Yasser denied being responsible for the murders of his daughters, writing to a judge, I was not happy about my kids' dating activity, but I did not do the killings or any plan to hurt them. Islam was charged with conspiracy to conceal his father and harboring a fugitive from 2017 until 2020. He was also charged with conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding. In January 2021, he pleaded guilty to all three years. counts. He was sentenced to 120 months in prison, much longer than the recommended time. According to court documents, the harsh sentence was said to be due to Islam's attempts to blame

individuals of another race for his sister's murders. The vast resources expended by law enforcement in apprehending Yasser threats Islam made against the agents who arrested Yassin and unexpectedly, material that appeared to be child pornography found on his phone pursuant to his arrest. In February 2021, 59-year-old Yassin Said was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for harboring his brother as a fugitive. The sentencing guidelines were only 24 to 30 months, but U.S. District Judge Reed C. O'Connor noted the extravagant links taken by Yassine to help his brother Yasser. These included implementing countermeasures, purchasing a home, and constructing an area within that home for Yasser Saeed to live. So there is no doubt that these two individuals, Yassin and Islam, went to great lengths in order to hide Yasser Saeed. I mean, the court even

recognized that in giving them much harsher sentences, then the guidelines recommend it. I think what it really shows is that you can get in really big trouble for attempting to help someone, even a family member, hide from the law. Yeah, and this was Islam's sisters that his father had murdered, but he apparently didn't have any problem with helping him stay on the run, which is, you know, again, that opens up whole dynamic of how is he okay with that? And we don't know the answer to that, but it's just very disturbing that he would help someone that could have done this to his own sisters.

At Yasser Syed's trial for the murder of his daughters, one attempted defense was simply that he was being targeted due to his faith. Defense attorney Joel Patton told the Daily Beast, the state wants to convict Yasser for being Muslim in 2008. But lead prosecutor Lauren Black refuted those accusations, saying it has nothing to do with Yasser. your race or religion, all signs point to Yasser Saeed. No one else. No one else. When Yasser testified in his own defense, he claimed that he had left his daughters in the taxi and told them to take it because he thought someone who wanted to kill him was following them. Defense attorney Patton explained to the jury that when Sarah called 911, she was in shock

and experiencing hallucinations, which she mixed with reality, and any indications she made pointing to her father as her attacker couldn't be trusted. Prosecutor Black pointed out to Yasser on the stand that Yasser didn't even attend the funeral for the girls. Yasser agreed but claimed that it was because of the unfair and hateful media coverage at the time. Black also pointed out that Yasser had left his gun in the taxi, which would be an odd move for someone who thought they were being pursued by someone who wanted to harm them. So, you know, more of one of the more interesting parts to me in a lot of cases is the trial. You know, what comes out at trial, you know, the prosecution has quite a bit of evidence.

What is the defense going to do to try to counter that evidence? Now, it sounds like they are saying that this all comes down to targeting because Yasser was Muslim. And then the prosecutor fires back saying, no, it's got nothing to do with that. All of our evidence, all of the signs. point to Yasser Saeed. And then, you know, this thing of him not even attending his daughter's funerals, wow, man, I get it.

His point was, oh, I couldn't go. There was so much media. There was hate. There was this. There was that. It doesn't make you look good. Now, I'm not saying that makes you guilty just by not attending the funerals, but it sure does not paint you in a good light.

No, and I look at it as if he had nothing to do with the murder. why not come forward to the police early on and say, hey, I've been hiding out. Someone's been after me, but I didn't kill my daughters and let me help you catch the person that did. You know, that didn't happen. So I think the whole story just looks pretty flimsy right, right from the beginning. Well, because I don't think that the defense team had a lot to work with, right? I think they were, they were trying to throw some stuff out there just because I don't think

they had a good foundation, really, to, on which to build. In August 2022, 14 years after killing Sarah and Amina, 65-year-old Yasser Saeed was found guilty of capital murder and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jury in the case deliberated for just three hours before returning their guilty verdict. Patricia celebrated the conviction of her ex-husband for the murders of their daughters. Per investigation discovery, she said, you deserve. to die now, not in prison. You took my life. You took my family all in one night. This case made waves in the news, and much of it has to do with the honor killing aspect. According to one Fox News article, a 2016 study found that an estimated 23 to 27 honor killings

per year occur in the U.S. and that 91% of victims in these honor killings in North America are murdered for being too westernized, which certainly fits what we've heard about Sarah and Amina's relationship with Yasser. Some in Yasser's family have backed up his actions telling Patricia that she was lucky to be, that she was lucky to even be able to bury her daughters. Stephanie Barak, who's the executive director of the AHA Foundation, explained to Fox News. In sharp contrast with domestic violence, families and communities often condone honor violence, which makes it more difficult to identify and stop.

Many Muslim people have publicly stated that they disagree. that these killings have any religious motivation, or at least that using Islam, honor is no excuse. Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American Islamic Relations, told Fox News, if anyone mistreats women, they should not seek refuge in Islam. Prosecutor Lauren Black agreed, saying to the Daily Beast, this is a case about a man obsessed with possession and control. He controlled what they did, who they talked to, who they could be friends with if they and who they could date, and he controlled everything in his household.

Whatever you call it, honor killing or just cold-blooded murder. This case is remembered for sensational aspects. As we mentioned, the 2014 documentary on the murders of Sarah and Amina is called The Price of Honor. The current IMDB description for the documentary describes that the girls were killed in a premeditated honor killing, planned and executed by their father. In the documentary, criminal journalist Tanya Eiser explained that Yasser wasn't a particularly religious man. He didn't go to the mosque every week. He didn't strike anyone as particularly devout.

She goes on to explain that it is more cultural. He did not want his daughters dating Western American people. He felt they were too westernized. I think he felt that culturally they were becoming too American. Some people have publicly asked if Amina and Sarah's mom, Patricia, played any way. role in their murders. There is a clear rift in the Owen side of the family. Patricia's side of the story does not match up to anyone else's in her family. And she denies a lot of things that Amina herself put in writing by a text and emails to friends. Patricia's aunt started a petition for the Irving

Police Department to bring charges against Patricia as an accomplice. This never happened. Patricia herself was a victim of Yasser. She was a child. When she married him, she suffered under his rules. We know that she fled with her kids multiple times to try and keep them from Yasser. And this is an extremely interesting aspect of this story. You have the mom, Patricia, who as we just said, you know, seems to have been a victim of Yasser. It also seems as though she went to some great links to try to protect her daughters. But then you have members of her own family thinking that she had a role in this, starting a petition to, you know, have her charged as an accomplice. Yeah, I think that paints a picture of just how divided the family is over these murders

and if Patricia could have helped prevent them or, whereas somehow she actually played a role. The history of alleged sexual abuse of his daughters at the hands of Yasser, and the fact that he thought he would be getting a large bounty for his daughters when they got married to men in Egypt is part of why we spent time talking about domestic violence. And whether this case should be remembered as a so-called honor killing or as something else. Many parents who kill their children have financial motives and a long history of child abuse. We've also seen this so many times in families from different cultures and religions. many families keep secrets for each other and even kill for each other.

Patricia Owen said of her daughters to Fox News, my daughters were loving, caring, smart, they loved everybody, would help anybody. They were two of the most awesome kids in the world, and they did not deserve what happened to them. Amina and Sarah are buried next to each other at Denton Muslim Cemetery in Crum, Texas. At the end of the day here, Morph, I mean, whatever you want to call this case, Nothing changes the fact that two young women who were smart and had promising futures were murdered by their father. And we talked about how they were honor students at Louisville High School. They had dreams of becoming doctors someday and helping people.

They also wanted to be kids, right? They wanted to live, have fun, fall in love. Real love was someone who was their own age and someone. of their own choosing. I think for me, as we wrap up this case, you know, it really does come down to the question of whether Yasser killed his daughters because of these things that they were doing, that they wanted to do. And the fact that he felt as though it was against what he wanted them to do.

It seems pretty clear to me that, you know, from the research, that was a big part. of this case. He wanted to control their lives. He wanted them to act a certain way, to do things in a certain way, and they didn't want to do or follow all of his rules. Now, is that why he killed them? And my question would be, if not that, then what was the reason? Because a lot of the signs really seemed to point to that. Yeah. And I wonder if at the end of the day, if him calling it an honor killing is just an excuse or crutch to something to hide behind because for whatever reason he wasn't happy with them he wasn't happy with the level of respect he thought they gave him whatever it was you know it seems like he had a history of mistreatment of them and their

mom and if the sexual assault accusations are true then that's a further history that's troubling of him harming them from an early age. So at the end of the day, I just don't know if an honor killing is really what's going on here. And not that that would be justified anyway, but in his mind, I wonder if he's just using that as something I can say this is an honor killing. And that justifies why I did it. Yeah, I don't know the answer. But in some respect, does it even matter?

I think that's another question that I have. like I just said, it doesn't change the fact, right, that he killed his daughters, whatever he wants to call it or however he wants to try to explain it. I don't know that it, it matters. Now, it might matter to some people. Yeah, and the takeaway for me is that just at the end of this discussion here is that there's two girls who had bright futures and as we mentioned wanted to help people, they wanted to be doctors.

And now they're not going to get to do that. someone out there is not going to be helped by by them and you know this is very tragic for the family all around so that's it for our episode on yasser saeed and at least what he is called the honor murders of his daughters amina and sarah sai if you love the show and you haven't done so yeah take a minute give us a rating leave a review all that stuff helps out also keep telling your friends. Word of mouth about the podcast is huge. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Facebook to search for criminology podcast. You can also join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion

and fans. And we're on Twitter as well with the handle at criminology pod. So that's it for another episode of criminology. But Morph and I will be back with everyone next Saturday night with an all new episode. So for Mike and Morf. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.